Roman Architecture: Italy

Although Rome may have been founded in 753 BC, the earliest surviving buildings of any size are of the 1st century BC and anything older is now generally described as Etruscan. During those centuries, however, a great deal of building was done in the various Greek colonies (collectively known as ‘Magna Graecia’) around the coasts of Sicily and south Italy, where one can still see the ruins of many Greek Doric temples, all erected between about 575 BC and about 430 BC. In Sicily these include three temples at Syracuse, six at Selinus, six at Agrigentum, and the temple of Segesta; on the mainland there are three at Paestum and one each at Metapontum, Locri, and Pompeii. This last example was erected about 550 BC, but most of the other public buildings of Pompeii, including the large theatre, the basilica, the Stabian baths, and the temples of Apollo and Isis, are of the 2nd century BC, though the small theatre and the amphitheatre are of the following century. By that time classical Greek or Hellenic architecture had given place to Hellenistic or Graeco-Roman architecture, that is, Greek architecture as modified and practised after around 300 BC.

In AD 79 the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were overwhelmed by an eruption of Vesuvius; but excavation of both sites during modern times has revealed the high standard of domestic life in these Graeco-Roman towns and the delicacy of their decorations. The chief Roman buildings surviving in Italy (excluding Rome and its neighbourhood) are: the theatre at Aosta (about 40 BC); the Arch of Augustus at Rimini (27 BC); and the bridge of Augustus (AD 14); the triumphal arches at Ancona (AD 113), and at Beneventum (AD 114–17); the amphitheatres at Verona (AD 290), Capua and Pozzuoli; as well as that at Pompeii already mentioned; and the Villa of Maximian, Piazza Armerina, Sicily (4th century AD).

See also Roman architecture, ancient, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture: Italy, and Italian architecture.