The city in the Byzantine ‘Italies’

Many cities of Roman tradition disappeared in the Mediterranean Sea in the period between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Almost a third of the urban settlements were abandoned but more generally the concept of the city itself gradually changed starting from the 4th century. Even if the number of attestations and the level of degradation or decline of these settlements take on different characteristics according to the regions and geographical characteristics, the specifics of these transformations have now been recognized by many researchers who have dealt with the phenomenon1: shrinkage of built-up areas, new centres of aggregation, private occupation of public spaces, with homes and workshops, burials in the city, ruralization of the town, birth of decentralized religious centres with various forms, and growth of deposits due to accumulations of organic debris. In northern Italy, for example, the picture is extremely different, and in Piemonte, the collapse of the urban system is almost total,3 and in Venetia, 5 of the 12 cities founded in Roman times just over half survive, other areas in the north-east territories are instead characterized by new proto-urban settlements which in some cases became real cities during the early Middle Ages.