Main entry:

Rykwert, Joseph, 1926-2024

Title & Author:

The idea of a town : the anthropology of urban form in Rome, Italy and the ancient world / Joseph Rykwert.

Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1976.

Description:

242 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Town and Rite: Rome and Romulus -- Romulus and Remus -- The Ritual Books -- The New Community -- Planning Techniques: Rational and Irrational -- The Choice of Site -- The Founder and the City -- Recording the Foundation -- City and Site -- How to Choose the Site: -- (i) the Theorists -- (ii) The Rites Observed -- Romulus Again -- Templum -- The Surveyors -- Haruspication -- Mundus -- Orthogonal Planning and the Surveyors -- The First Furrow -- Castrum -- Destruction Rites -- Square and Cross -- The Etruscans -- Terramare -- Marzabotto -- Spina -- Spina and Orghogonal Planning -- Myth and Rite -- The Boundary of the First Rome -- Luperci and Lupercal -- Guardians of Centre, Guardians of Boundaries -- Roma Quadrata -- Vesta -- Boundary and Terminus -- Boundary and Centre: Mundus and Terminus -- Boundary of the Land and Boundary of the People -- Troy: Trojan Horse and Trojan Game -- Mundus and Pomoerium -- Boundary, Strength and Fertility -- The Boundary and the Gate -- The Guardian of the Gate -- The Riddle and the Maze -- Maze, Dance, City -- The Guilty Founder -- The Parallels -- Mandala -- The Mande Rites -- The Bororo rites -- The Sioux -- The Tiwi -- Separation, Guilt and Reconciliation -- The Quartered Body as a Picture of the World -- The Hausa -- the Dogon -- the Everyday Microcosm -- The Great Plan -- The City as a Curable Disease: Ritual and Hysteria -- The First Builders -- The Sign for a Town.

Summary:

Roman towns and their history are generally regarded as being the preserve of the archaeologist or the economic historian. In this famous, unusual and radical book which touches on such disparate themes as psychology and urban architecture, Joseph Rykwert has considered them as works of art. His starting point is the mythical, historical and ritual texts in which their foundation is recounted rather than the excavated remains, such texts having parallels not merely in ancient Greece but also further afield Mesopotamia, India and China. To achieve his reading of the Roman town, he has invoked the comparative method of the anthropologists, and he examines first of all the 'Etruscan rite', a group of ceremonies by which all, or practically all, Roman towns were founded. The basic institutions of the town, its walls and gates, its central shrines and its forum are all of them part of a pattern to which the rituals and the myths that accompanied them provide clues. Like in other 'closed' societies, these rituals and myths served to create a secure home for the citizen of Rome and to make him feel part of his city and place it firmly in a knowable universe. -- from Amazon.com.

Resources:
Publisher description
French equivalent / Équivalent français

ISBN:

0691039011
9780691039015

Subject:

City planning History.
Cities and towns, Ancient.
Urbanisme Histoire.
Villes antiques.
Social groups & communities.
City planning
Planejamento Territorial (Historia)
Cities and towns Rome.
City planning Rome.
Architecture, Roman.
Rome Antiquities.

Form/genre:

History

Holdings:

Location: Library main 26727
Call No.: HT166.R94 (ID:88-B12731)
Status: Available