Archaeological Museum of Bologna

Museo Civico Archeologico
Via dell'Archiginnasio 2 - 40124 Bologna
Tel. 051.27.57.211

Direzione e Uffici
Via de' Musei 8 – 40124 Bologna
Tel. 051.27.57.211 - Fax 051.26.65.16
mca@comune.bologna.it

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Collections / Itineraries / Roman Bologna: the territory

Introduction

Romans, after occupying Emilia Romagna, planned the complete reorganization of the territory with the founding of great cities, the tracing of an effective road system and the creation of a new agriculture system, the centuriation, placing particular attention to control of the waters. The plain soils were separated with geometric regularity in square meshes of 710 m to the side (centurion) and plots of 50 hectares, which in Bologna were divided among the 3,000 colonial families arrived from central Italy to populate the new conquered area. This division, which was formed in Republican period, was consolidated in the Augustan age and is still partly visible in the countryside. Hamlets and villages were built in strategic locations, but the populating was mainly characterized by a scattered settlement with individual buildings located throughout the country, rustic villas that included a main part and one dedicated to work activities while near the city were built suburban villas, inhabited by wealthy people, who enriched their residences with mosaic floors, painting walls and provided it with services but also small private baths.
To these settlements corresponded even small areas of necropolis or isolated sepulchres.
At the Museum's collections are reported materials that come from the San Pietro in Casale and Claterna areas.
Claterna, a Roman municipality, developed at the sides of Emilia street which constituted the decumano. The city became a flourishing agricultural center and developed commercial traffic between Imola and Bologna reaching a significant welfare in the Augustan age to decay, until the abandonment, between the third and fourth centuries AD.

Exhibition rooms | Atrium - Lapidarium

Exhibition rooms | Courtyard – Lapidarium

Exhibition rooms | Room IX - Roman Collection