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Insula (Roman city)

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Insula (Roman city)

An insula (Latin for island) is a city block in an ancient Roman city plan, i.e. one that is surrounded by four streets. The term was also used for apartment buildings that took up an entire city block.

A standard Roman city plan was based on a grid of orthogonal streets and was probably founded on the ancient Greek model of Hippodamus and was used when new cities were established e.g. in Roman Colonia.

The main streets of each city would be the Decumanus Maximus (east-west-oriented) and Cardo Maximus (north–south) which intersected at, or close to, the forum around which the most important public buildings would be sited.

References

Insula (Roman city) Wikipedia