Neighbourhoods and City Quarters in Antiquity

Studies on ancient urbanity either concerns individual buildings or the city as a whole. This volume, instead, addresses a meso-scale of urbanity: the socio-spatial organisation of ancient cities. Its temporal focus is on Late Republican and Imperial Italy, and more specifically the cities of Pompeii and Ostia. Referring to a praxeological and phenomenological perspective, it looks at neighbourhoods and city quarters as basic categories of design and experience. With the terms ‘neighbourhood and ‘city quarter’ the volume proposes two different methodological approaches: Neighbourhood here refers to the face-to-face relation between people living next to each other – thus the small-scale environment centred around a house and an individual. Neighbourhoods thus do not constitute a (collectively defined) urban territory with clear borders, but are rather constituted by individual experiences. In contrast, city quarters are understood as areas that share certain characteristics.

Annette Haug and Adrian Kröger-Hielscher, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel; Anna-Lena Krüger, HafenCity Universität Hamburg.

"Finally, this volume will undoubtedly attract attention and provide a solid background for further research, as there are still many questions to be answered about Roman urban neighbourhoods and the approach offered by this volume, which considers the perception and experience of neighbourhoods within the socio-spatial pattern of the city, seems to offer a promising future research perspective." Tomas Riklius in: BMCR 2024.08.26

"Hier wurde eine richtungsweisende Publikation vorgelegt, die viele Anregungen und Anknüpfungspunkte für die weiterführende Beschäftigung bietet: Künftige Studien könnten Fallbeispiele ergänzen und dabei die methodischen Ansätze evaluieren, den zeitlich-räumlichen Fokus ausdehnen, den literarischen Befund stärker berücksichtigen oder nachbarrechtliche Bestimmungen betrachten. So verspricht dieser Sammelband für alle Altertumswissenschaftler*innen, die sich mit der Gestaltung
und Wahrnehmung von Stadträumen und Nachbarschaftssituationen in der Antike beschäftigen, eine bereichernde Lektüre." Maximiliane Gindele in: Historische Zeitschrift 2/2024