Roman Street and Urban Economy

The streets played a key role in shaping the ancient economic townscape. Usually, we just consider the street as a way for traffic, but this conception is presumably wrong as a reading of ancient authors like Martial or Juvenal suggests. The “space of the street” was built in three dimensions and was an important place for the social and economic interactions constituting the urban sociability during Antiquity. Such a function clearly appears in the architecture of the street shaped by numerous tabernae built within atrium houses, rows of shops or multi-storey buildings and by the activities which happened there. In other words, the economy of ancient cities was not confined to specific buildings such as macella. On the contrary, economic activities extended beyond the walls of such buildings and invaded the whole urban fabric along the streets. The papers of the panel “Ancient Streets and Urban Economy” intend to shed new light on the role of the space of the street in the urban economy in ancient societies between the 2nd century BC and the 3rd century AD in particular. To further our understanding, the different authors propose to examine some case studies such as Alba Fucens, Athens, Lugdunum, Norba, Ostia or Pompeii.