Town Planning & the City
Why Did Rome Build Cities?
When Rome conquered new territory, it did not simply station soldiers and move on. It built cities. Across the empire, from Britain to Syria, Roman towns followed recognisable patterns: wide streets laid out on a grid, a central forum for business and politics, public baths, temples, markets and amphitheatres. This consistency was not an accident. The Romans understood that a well-planned city reinforced Roman identity, encouraged commerce, and projected the power of the empire onto a conquered landscape. Understanding the design of a Roman city is therefore not just about architecture — it is about understanding how Rome controlled and civilised its world.
The Grid Plan
Most Roman towns were laid out on a grid plan. Two main roads formed the backbone: the cardo ran north to south and the decumanus ran east to west. They crossed at the heart of the town, usually at or near the forum. Secondary streets branched off these two main arteries, dividing the town into rectangular blocks called insulae (islands). This plan made it easy to navigate, to administer, and to expand a city in an orderly way.
Pavements lined the main streets, raised above the road surface so that pedestrians were protected from wheeled traffic and from the mud and waste that accumulated in the roadway. In Pompeii, wide stepping stones allowed people to cross from one pavement to another without descending to road level. The gaps between the stepping stones were spaced to allow cart wheels to pass through. This detail, preserved at Pompeii, tells us a great deal about the volume and type of traffic on Roman streets and the practical solutions Romans devised to manage it.
The Roman town grid was organised around the cardo (north–south) and the decumanus (east–west). They crossed near the forum, the civic and commercial heart of the city. This grid plan was used across the empire, from Pompeii in Italy to Timgad in North Africa.
Water Supply and Sanitation
No Roman city functioned without water. Aqueducts brought fresh water into the city from springs sometimes many kilometres away. At Pompeii, the main aqueduct fed a high-pressure water tower called a castellum aquae, from which lead and terracotta pipes distributed water to public fountains, the baths, and wealthy private houses. Most ordinary residents collected their water from the public fountains placed at regular intervals along the streets; fresh water was never more than a short walk away. Inscriptions on the water tower at Pompeii suggest that the system was carefully maintained and that officials were responsible for its upkeep.
Drainage was equally important. Deep stone-lined sewers ran beneath the streets, carrying waste water away from fountains, baths and latrines. The great Cloaca Maxima (Great Sewer) at Rome was an engineering marvel that drained the low-lying area of the Forum Romanum and discharged into the Tiber. Its construction was attributed in ancient tradition to the early kings of Rome, and it continued to function throughout the imperial period.
The Forum
The forum was the beating heart of any Roman city. At Pompeii, the main forum took the form of a large rectangular open space, measuring roughly 38 by 157 metres, surrounded on three sides by a two-storey colonnade. This colonnaded walkway provided shade for the merchants, lawyers and citizens who gathered there daily. At the north end of the forum stood the Temple of Jupiter, the most important religious building in the city, its raised podium dominating the space. On the other sides stood civic buildings: the basilica (a large covered hall for legal and commercial business), the comitium (an assembly room), and offices for the elected magistrates who governed the town.
The forum was not merely practical. It was a statement of Roman values. By placing the temple of the chief god at its head, surrounded by the buildings of law and government, the Romans visually demonstrated that their civic life was underpinned by divine authority. Statues of emperors and local benefactors stood throughout the space, reminding every visitor of the hierarchy of power that made their ordered city possible.
Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, preserving streets, buildings and even food in extraordinary detail. This makes them our richest sources for everyday Roman town life. Pompeii was a medium-sized town of perhaps 12,000 people; Herculaneum was smaller but its wealthier character is clear from the quality of its surviving houses and wall paintings. Both towns demonstrate the grid plan, the forum complex, and the full range of amenities — baths, theatres, food stalls, temples and private homes — that characterised a typical Roman city.
Ostia, the port of Rome, offers a different perspective. Because Ostia continued to be occupied and altered after the eruption that preserved Pompeii, it shows how a Roman city evolved over time. At Ostia the famous Insula of Diana — a multi-storey apartment block — illustrates how the city housed its growing population by building upwards. Taken together, Pompeii, Herculaneum and Ostia provide complementary evidence for Roman urban life at different social levels and different stages of development.
Streets, Shops and the Busy City
Roman streets were not quiet. The poet Juvenal, writing in the late first or early second century AD, painted a vivid picture of the dangers of navigating Rome at night: carts rumbling past, buckets of waste thrown from upper-storey windows, and the constant roar of the city. His Satire 3 describes a man who cannot sleep for the noise and who walks in fear of collapsing buildings. While Juvenal exaggerated for satirical effect, his complaints reflect genuine conditions. In Rome, wheeled traffic was banned from the city centre during daylight hours to ease congestion, so deliveries were made at night, adding to the noise.
The ground floors of buildings lining Roman streets were typically given over to shops and workshops. At Pompeii, hundreds of small commercial premises — identifiable by their wide doorways designed to allow goods and customers easy access — opened directly onto the street. Many were thermopolia: food and drink stalls with stone counters set with large ceramic jars, from which vendors served warm food to customers who had no cooking facilities at home. The inscriptions and painted notices preserved on Pompeii’s walls also reveal an active culture of political campaigning, advertising and personal messages, bringing the city to life in a way no other Roman site can match.
Roman towns were full of commercial activity. The thermopolia (hot food stalls) at Pompeii show that many residents ate street food rather than cooking at home. Around 80 thermopolia have been identified in Pompeii alone, suggesting that not having a kitchen was normal for ordinary city dwellers.
It is easy to think of “Roman city life” as meaning only the city of Rome itself. But the Roman empire was covered in cities, many of them following similar plans and containing similar buildings. Pompeii, Herculaneum and Ostia are all Italian towns, not Rome itself. This matters because they give us evidence for what life was like in a typical medium-sized Roman city, rather than in the extraordinary capital. When you use Pompeii as evidence, you should note that it was a prosperous but unremarkable town — not an imperial showpiece — and that this actually makes it more useful as evidence for ordinary Roman life.