This book showcases the unique shape of urban development that took hold during the Roman Empire, beginning in the Mediterranean basin before spreading out across Europe, and offers a fresh perspective on the cities and territories of the Roman West.
With the expansion of Rome came a particular form of social organisation: the Roman city. This book provides a basic introduction to Roman cities, not through the lens of architecture and urbanism, but from a social, legal, cultural, spatial, and functional perspective. It focuses on the Roman
civitas
– the city and its territory – as the spatial model
par excellence
of Roman colonialism and expansion. Exploring primarily the cities and territories of the Western Empire, such as the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul, and Britain, González-Villaescusa revives from their ruins those central places that facilitated the circulation of people, goods, and information, forming the large urban network of a unified imperial territory.
Cities and Territories of the Western Roman Empire: 4
th
Century
BC
to the 3
rd
Century AD
is suitable for school and university students, as well as the general reader interested in the subject of Roman cities in the Western Empire.