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GREEK URBAN PLANNING IN MAGNA GREECE AND SICILY – Second Part:

The Greek  Sanctuaries can be:

  1. a) Intramural
  2. b) Periurban
  3. c) Extraurban

 

Their location was linked to methods and needs that varied from city to city and that underwent evolution over time.

 

Urban and Periurban Sanctuaries:

 

They were preferably located on the “Acropolis”, citadel built on a high hill, but also in the same “agorài” (main squares), and then along the line of fortifications, to define a sort of “sacred belt”, or, in the case of coastal cities, at the mouth of the rivers, near ports and landings.

 

Extraurban Sanctuaries:

 

The “pòlis”, from the moment of its establishment in a foreign land, in addition to carving out a large urban space clearly oversized for the needs of the first comers, subtracted from the natives and also annexed a portion of territory outside the city. This space, functional to finding food resources, was the “chòra politikè”, an essential part, together with the city, of the “polis” political institution. Therefore, exactly as in the mother country, from the beginning the colonial “pòlis” was composed of an inseparable unity between the city (àstu) and that portion of the territory directly subjected to the government of the city (chòra politiké), dotted with sanctuaries from the earliest phase and variously articulated over time. Since the first generations,  the main extra-urban sanctuaries were almost never more than 10-12 km away from the city: it suggests that the size of the most ancient “chòra” allowed farmers however to reach their property (in the “chòra politiké”), to work the land and to return in city ​​over the same day.

 

Chòra Politiké:

 

It is clear how the best portion of the “chòra” was divided and assigned to the colonists according to a very well regulated property regime, of which we also have extraordinary testimonies of an economic-juridical or cadastral nature, although much later – the Tables of Eraclea (1), the Tables of the Sanctuary of Zeus Olympios of Locri or the Alesina Table. It is equally clear how at the edge of the divided and assigned countryside there was the “eschatià”, that is a sort of no-man’s land set against the indigenous territories or a neighbouring “pòlis”.

It is important to underline that the limits of the colonial territories towards the wooded areas of the “eschatià” and those inhabited by the indigenous populations were not well defined. Along the coast, on the other hand, especially in the case of (A remove) direct proximity between two neighbouring “pòleis”, the borders had to be established more strictly, so that the historical sources refer to border conflicts, trespassing and raids in the enemy territory, similarly to as documented for the motherland. In these cases the borders were often marked by natural elements, especially rivers, also sometimes marked by the sacred.

The sacred mediated between the Greeks and the indigenous communities of the hinterland, in those very permeable areas, defined as frontiers, in which the meeting of the different cultures became more fruitful and where the interests of the indigenous aristocracies were united with those of the dominant classes of the colonial “pòleis”.

 

 

Excerpt  from:  Giocacchino Francesco La Torre, Sicilia e Magna Grecia, Editori Laterza, 2011, pp. 157-160

 

 

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GREEK URBAN PLANNING IN MAGNA GREECE AND SICILY – First Part

The first Greek colonies founded in Southern Italy and Sicily since the mid-8th century BC were organised according to the “polis model” that developed in the most advanced areas of Greece during the Geometric period (900-700 BC). The sites chosen by the Greek colonists for their settlements were the result of a careful knowledge of the territory derived from decades of frequentation of the Sicilian and peninsular coasts. The settlers analysed carefully the presence of hostile people, environmental conditions and the availability of resources (especially water), and normally they founded their “pòleis” (cities) on the coast. Their cities were founded on islands or islets near the coast (Ischia, Ortigia), on low promontories jutting out on the coast (Naxos, Elòro, Mylai, Taranto), on heights overlooking the sea or sloping (Cuma, Crotone, Caulona, Locri, Megara Iblea, Gela, Selinunte, Himera, Velia), near the mouth of important rivers (Sibari, Crotone, Metaponto, Naxos, Reggio, Selinunte, Gela) or near very well defined natural rivers (Taranto, Messina, Siracusa). Extremely rare were the internal foundations, only a few kilometres away from the sea (Leontini, Agrigento) or many more kilometres (for example Hipponion), and the coastal ones completely flat (Sibari, Metaponto, Poseidonia).
Once the most favorable area was identified and freed from any indigenous occupants, the first settlement could develop without any previous religious or traditional constraint. Therefore this condition allowed to implement a (REAL remove) rational planning of spaces, based on principles of substantial egalitarianism among the first settlers who received plots of land where they could build their dwellings (oikòpeda) and from which their sustenance derived . Thus the definition of the urban space appeared clear from the beginning. The “oikistes”, the guide of the colonists, highlighted the area destined to the city by tracing ritual furrows or by laying terminal stones, subsequently fortified through walls (earth walls and stones) and/or wooden palisades. Then they were replaced by massive walls made of squared and dry juxtaposed stone blocks (generally during the 6th century BC) such as to be immediately distinguishable with respect to the surrounding areas, reserved for the necropolis, all strictly external to the “pomoerium” . This word, borrowing the term from the best-known practices of the Etruscan-Italic and Roman world, came from the classical contraction of the Latin phrase “post moerium”, literally “beyond the wall”: in that religious boundary around the city, nobody could build, live and cultivate.
The settlers, when they founded a city, took into account the prospects for demographic growth and strengthening of the settlement from the outset. In fact, most cities have developed over the centuries within the limits defined at the time of the foundation. Only a few colonial “pòleis” (cities) have recorded over time such a great phenomenon of demographic growth to make necessary enlargements of the urban space: it usually started from the Classical period (480 B.C. – 323 B.C.). The cases of Taranto and Syracuse are emblematic, whose neighborhoods of more recent expansion superimposed on the necropolis of the Archaic period (600 B.C. – 480 B.C.).
Despite the very limited documentation for the first phases of life of the colonies, it is nevertheless evident that the need to immediately distinguish the spaces destined for community practices was primary:

1. Administration of the new “pòlis” (with buildings for the citizens’ assembly)
2. The “agora” (with the offices of the magistrates and where the commercial transactions took place)
3. Sacred areas (used for public cults, dedicated to the protective deities of the community, almost always the same venerated even in the motherland).

Often the “agora” – central public space – stood in the centre of the city, so to be easily accessible, and large enough to accommodate events that involved the entire community, not only of a political-administrative nature, but also religious, military, competitive and ludic.

Excerpt from: Giocacchino Francesco La Torre, Sicilia e Magna Grecia, Editori Laterza, 2011, pp. 157-160

 

 

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