From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Urban Public Building in Northern and Central Italy, AD 300-850

The aim of this book is to examine one of the most dramatic physical changes in Italian urban life to occur between classical and early medieval times: the abandonment of the secular Roman monuments and the rise of a new Christian tradition of public building. Elsewhere, particularly in northern Europe but also to some extent in the Byzantine East, this change can be explained in terms of an almost complete breakdown of classical urban life at the end of antiquity, followed by a gradual resurgence of the towns over the next few centuries, in an entirely new climate, with new traditions of public building. In Italy, however, there was no such break in urban life, and throughout late antiquity and the early Middle Ages towns continued to play an important role in society, and, above all, never lost their position as the seats of the secular and ecclesiastical administrations. The radical changes apparent in Italian urban building must, therefore, be examined against a background of considerable urban continuity, and must be seen as a gradual transformation from one tradition of patronage to another, caused not by a complete collapse of Roman-style urban life but by slower changes in the political, social, economic, and religious history of the peninsula. The history of Italy’s buildings is not just a story of bricks and mortar, but also a mirror of vital changes in Italian society in a difficult and little-known period.