"Commercial Streets" in Roman Cities. Places of Shopping in Italy between the Mid-Republic and the Mid-Empire

We are living in a consumer society and we are used to doing some shop in “commercial streets” or “shopping centers”. In Antiquity, the Romans' habits of consumption were different and most people only looked for food and what was absolutely necessary. Nevertheless, as the Severan Forma Urbis Romae shows, the streetscape of Rome was dominated by tabernae, which are usually associated with commercial and handcraft activities. We observe the same phenomenon in Ostia where almost all of the streets are lined with shops. In these cities, tabernae are distributed across the whole urban fabric from the wider into the narrower thoroughfares. Elsewhere, the situation is a bit different. Shops are mostly located along the main streets, as Via dell'Abondanzza in Pompeii or Via del Miliario in Alba Fucens, while the others are free of tabernae. In some cities, like Norba or Fregellae, there are hardly any streets with shops.
Obviously, there were shops in these cities inside some buildings, like macella and insulae, or periodic markets, which left little archaeological evidence, but most of the fixed shops were located along the urban thoroughfares. So, this paper focusses on the “street-as-market” between the Mid-Republic and the Mid-Empire in Centrale Italy. How can we explain the development of these shops along the streets ? What are the effects of the transformations of the street architecture on street design, on the Roman practice of shopping and on the other marketplaces ? Why is the streetscape of Rome and Ostia different from other cities ? The increase in the number of tabernae along the thoroughfares contributed to designing new spaces of consumption, where goods for sale were displayed through the large doorways which characterised the Roman shops. This paper eventually shows that the commercial streetscape development attests some significant changes in the Roman consumption.