Πολεοδομικά των μεσοβυζαντινών και υστεροβυζαντινών πόλεων
Part of : Δελτίον της Χριστιανικής Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας ; Vol.38, 1999, pages 89-98
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Pages:
89-98
Parallel Title:
Urban Planning in Middle and Late Byzantine Cities
Section Title:
Articles
Abstract:
There appears to be a complete lack of urban planning in Byzantine cities built after Iconoclasm, or, more generally, the great age of crisis extending from the late 6th until the 9th centuries. Studies supporting this view have appeared from time to time by such scholars as C. Mango, W. MüllerWiener, A. Guillou, N. Moutsopoulos, A. Karpozelos, C. Foss, and A. Kazhdan. The purpose of the present article is to defend this thesis by contributing several additional arguments in its favor. The objectives of urban planning are first discussed, together with the impact these have on the overall appearance of a city in general. The picture comes to us from archaeology, and as far as Byzantine cities are concerned, it can never be complete, given the fact that large parts of the excavated levels dating to the period between the 9th and 15th centuries have been destroyed. Furthermore, the excavations themselves are usually fragmentary and inadequately published. Nevertheless, almost all the sites reveal a rather confused mass of remains, with few free spaces, blind alleys, streets of variable width but usually very narrow, and houses that are arranged either in a densely crowded network or are irregularly distributed with workshops for handicraft production scattered in between the houses. All of this has been documented in two previous articles of the author on provincial Byzantine cities in Asia Minor and Greece. Some kind of urban planning in Byzantine cities has only been established in the case of buildings whose purpose was to defend the city. Provision was always made for a separate acropolis, defensive walls, and a supply of drinking water. The special ordinance we have in the Strategika stipulating that houses were not to be built in contact with the city's defensive walls appears only rarely to have been enforced. The absence of demarcated cemeteries and the existence of graves scattered within the city walls demonstrate total indifference to public health. There is no information to show that the selection of particular sites for church monuments in Byzantine cities involved any kind of city planning, and the layout of monasteries that were located in cities was internally directed. On the wider scale of the city plan, the symbolic significance is encountered only in early Christian and early Byzantine towns and cities. At any rate, the cities that have been studied did not even possess a state office or authority that might have been responsible for formulating a city plan or for enforcing it, since only Constantinople had an eparchos. Moreover, the concept of appropriating lands for public use did not exist in Byzantium. Some scholars believe that urban planning existed in Byzantium, and they cite the Hexabiblos of Constantine Armenopoulos, a 1345 collection of texts which includes the Eparchika of the architect Julian of Ascalon in Palestine. Catherine Saliou's analysis of this text (1996) demonstrates that it contains city ordinances that were in effect in Palestine during the 6th century, many of which were completely obsolete anachronisms for cities in the period between the 9th and 15th centuries. This work also includes civil statutes as well as a variety of prohibitions designed to regulate city life. It does not put forward principles of urban planning. Archaeological evidence shows that the ordinances of Julian of Ascalon (to the effect, for example, that noisy or otherwise objectionable workshops should be located outside residential districts) were not observed. Other equally old ordinances, such as the prohibition of graves within the city walls, were also violated. Other texts dealing with the manner in which medieval cities functioned do not change the above conclusions regarding the lack of urban planning in Middle and Late Byzantium.
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