Urban Spaces

The polis of Athens undergoes extensive changes in its political and social structure as well as in its appearance in the late Hellenistic age and during the Roman Imperial Age. The present study focuses on the portrait statues erected in these periods on the Athenian Agora and considers them as representative monuments which provide evidences of the historical aspects of the Athenian society. 

The study is devoted to the urban development of Mediterranean port cities. Focusing on the Eastern Mediterranean region between the early Hellenistic era and the late Roman Empire, it addresses how the coastal location of cities impacted their form and appearance. The monograph makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of ancient urban development in coastal areas.

The Peloponnese urban landscape underwent a transformation during the advent of the Roman Empire. The ancient Greek poleis were confronted by the changed sociocultural world of the Imperium Romanum after the founding of the Roman coloniae Corinth and Patrai. This study seeks to examine how material conditions in cities and urban ways of life adapted to these new realities.

This volume for the first time systematically compiles the archaeological evidence of Athens from the late 8^th century to the early 6^th century BCE. It aims to classify the material within the context of the urban topography and to offer a religious, social, and political interpretation. It provides the story of birth of the Athenian polis with a new archaeological and historical basis.

This study addresses the key questions of where, when, and why statuary images were erected to honor female citizens in the imperial urban spaces of Italy and North Africa. Besides the primary archeological questions, the investigation focuses on issues of social history and urbanism. The volume includes a catalogue of all preserved honorific images of female Roman citizens from Italy and the Western provinces.

Evolving from a patrician domus, the emperor's residence on the Palatine became the centre of the state administration. Elaborate ceremonial regulated access to the imperial family, creating a system of privilege which strengthened the centralised power. Constantine followed the same model in his new capital, under a Christian veneer. The divine attributes of the imperial office were refashioned, with the emperor as God's representative. The palace was an imitation of heaven.
Following the loss of the empire in the West and the Near East, the Palace in Constantinople was preserved – subject to the transition from Late Antique to Mediaeval conditions – until the Fourth Crusade, attracting the attention of Visgothic, Lombard, Merovingian, Carolingian, Norman and Muslim rulers. Renaissance princes later drew inspiration for their residences directly from ancient ruins and Roman literature, but there was also contact with the Late Byzantine court. Finally, in the age of Absolutism the palace became again an instrument of power in vast centralised states, with renewed interest in Roman and Byzantine ceremonial.
Spanning the broadest chronological and geographical limits of the Roman imperial tradition, from the Principate to the Ottoman empire, the papers in the volume treat various aspects of palace architecture, art and ceremonial.

As the social, political, and economic center of public life in a polis, the agora underwent profound changes during the Hellenistic period. This study examines agorai as symbolically charged spaces; analyzing them sheds light on the societies they helped to shape. The findings show that during the Hellenistic period agorai had a crucial role in generating a polis-specific identity.

Shaping, measuring and perceiving time has become crucial within the social fabric of most cultures. The book explores from the fifth century B. C. to late antiquity what types of chronometers came into use and how they measured time; when, where and why they became part of the societies of Greece and Rome; and by and for whom they were commissioned, designed and set up. For this purpose for the first time, some 500 chronometric instruments and their inscriptions from all over the classical world have been brought together to scrutinise questions such as form, typology, chronology, setting, function and context. Sundials constitute the majority of the material (c. 80%), followed by various types of chronometers, mainly water clocks. The particular contextual approach made it possible to define individuals and groups of people linked to time measurement; and, in consequence, to determine at least some of the primary functions of the chronometers set up in the societies of ancient Greece and Rome.

Peristyle buildings fulfilled a range of public functions in Greek cities, serving as religious sites, banquet halls, gymnasiums, government offices, and markets. Yet all peristyle buildings are united in their spatial organization around a central courtyard. As a result, they are open toward the center but closed off to the outside. This observation forms the basis for the author's thesis that peristyle structures served in general to generate closed off spaces only accessible to exclusive groups. The investigation of this thesis is founded on a number of individual studies. These studies present us with the picture of a carefully planned system that allowed for the structures to appear hermetically closed from the outside while at the same time open to multiple rooms from a central courtyard on the inside. The author locates this design scheme within the broader scope of Classical architectural and social history. He shows that the development and rapid spread of the peristyle structures in the 4th century B.C. was closely related to a simultaneous process in which urban structures in Greek cities became more monumental and diverse. The work thus addresses a phenomenon of wide-reaching significance with detailed investigations of specific structures.