Most CWA readers will have visited some ruined cities for one reason or another; the majority of us will have let ourselves be fascinated by imagining how life in the past might have been, and how much or how little it would have resembled the modern equivalent, with its venues for leisure and work; for sleep and entertainment; for labour and exploitation; for aesthetically pleasing and artistic expressions. In Europe, probably the most famous ruined ancient city is Pompeii, closely followed by Herculaneum, both situated in the region of the Bay of Naples. Today, what makes these partly excavated urban landscapes different from a lot of other ruined cities is that they were buried instantaneously during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Although nowadays we know that the ruins were revisited by people, starting as early as the Roman period, they remained entirely buried until the early modern era, and did not become reoccupied. However, in many other parts of the ancient world cities never died – or only had hiatuses in their occupation, before becoming reoccupied once more.
Rome is, of course, a prominent example of a city full of ancient ruins – if not on every corner, then almost. Recent fieldwork in the city centre has shown that there is much more to discover about life in antiquity through excavations associated with building projects or research. Parts of the underground space in a store called La Rinascente on Via del Tritone – fully equipped with a bar for sipping coffee or other beverages – have installed a digital lightshow that takes visitors through the various phases of the ancient neighbourhood that came to light when the modern building was constructed. This highly instructive installation allows us to reimagine how densely packed life in the ancient city was. But what it cannot do is inform us didactically about the transitions and the messiness between the neatly highlighted periods the lightshow displays.
While the ancient city of Rome reached its population peak in the Early Imperial Period, with estimates going as high as one million inhabitants, it contracted considerably during the subsequent centuries. Thus, by the Early Middle Ages, large parts of the urban landscape had become ruined, sometimes buried under debris, while at other times remaining visible. However, it continued to be a dynamic urban landscape, and alongside cases of simple abandonment there were many other instances in which elements of the built environment were repurposed and transformed. Similar oscillations can be observed within the lifespan of numerous other cities that have remained inhabited over long periods of time, such as Constantinople/Istanbul. Thus, by the time of the Ottoman conquest in 1453, the city was a shadow of what it had once been during the reign of Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century AD, before starting to grow again until reaching its present status of a megalopolis of more than 15 million inhabitants.
