Public and Private Space in Early Medieval Towns: Istrian Cases

35

Public and Private Space in Early Medieval Towns: Istrian Cases

Maurizio Levak

At the turn from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages, profound changes took place in the organization of urban life. Towns could no longer function on the same social and economic foundations as they did in the classical period, as it was precisely these foundations that underwent major structural change. A different way of living and earning one’s livelihood implied adjustment to the new circumstances, which was also reflected in the reorganization of space within the city walls.

The economic crisis of the late antique Empire reduced the volume of production and trade, and caused deterioration in the standard of living for all layers of urban society. Centralizing the state administration implied primarily a limitation of urban autonomy. Holding an office in city administration, previously considered a great honour, became a burden defined by means of a government decree. Poorly motivated municipal officials no longer cared to actively promote or preserve the previously attained level of culture in their cities. The general erosion of culture was accompanied by reductions in the service sector, which reverted to a rudimentary level. Seemingly paradoxically, however, cities blossomed demographically in this decadent period, but only because the crisis had an even more detrimental effect on rural areas, which sparked a mass migration towards urban centres.

A growing sense of endangerment, caused by barbaric incursions and plundering, led to a tendency of “enclosure”, which also meant repairing and strengthening the city walls and fortifying smaller, previously unfortified towns. New public buildings, with the exception of churches after the triumph of Christianity, were built exceedingly rarely, while the existing ones were poorly maintained. Private houses also went through a period of transformation: rooms became smaller, spacious halls were no longer built, and the domus was fragmented into smaller housing units, with a poorer construction quality. The consequences of this decadence of urban culture were clearly visible in the city’s appearance: new buildings, reconstructions, and additions were geometrically irregular and more modest in size, construction techniques became simpler, rooms were smaller, the dictate of technical perfection

36 Towns and Cities of the Croatian Middle Ages: Authority and Property

was abandoned, while building materials were increasingly of poorer quality (cheaper): builders obtained stone from neglected and derelict buildings or – as it often happened – used wood instead. In both cases, however, the materials were poorly crafted. Another phenomenon was a restructuring of the living space – on the one hand, “holes” appeared in the urban texture, which were then used to grow fruits and vegetables, and even breed domestic animals, which quietly “entered” the space within the city walls, and on the other hand, the remaining buildings were now more densely populated. The once very strict rules of Roman urban planning were less and less respected, which led, among other things, to a reduction of public space. The late antique town no longer needed large areas intended for public life as space within the city walls had become too precious. Streets became narrower, squares smaller, and in some places where private buildings had hitherto been forbidden, apartment or mixed residential-economic buildings were constructed. Some public buildings had also become obsolete for religious reasons, such as pagan temples and public baths, as these were not compatible with the Christian worldview. It could also happen that a private space became public, especially if it was a former place of Christian gatherings and sacral objects were built there after the triumph of Christianity. The central church became the new spiritual centre of the city, ignoring the ancient rule of monocentricity in Roman urban planning. The most important public buildings were now the city’s fortifications, which had been neglected in the time of the mythical Pax Romana. In the most acutely threatened places, even the hitherto strict prohibition of garrisoning troops in cities was now ignored.

From the 6th century onwards, the increasing militarization of the society was felt in the cities as well: army officers gained in significance and soon surpassed civil officials in power and influence. Moreover, an increasing importance was assigned to fortifications, at the detriment of other public buildings and facilities, and an increasing amount of money was spent on the security of cities and urban communities. Just like in the classical period, when the area on both sides of the city walls (the pomerium) had been considered sacred, the city walls were now dedicated to various saints, who were supposed to protect them and the city’s inhabitants. The gates are always a weak point in a city’s fortifications, and their celestial protectors (among whom martyrs and military saints prevailed) were assigned oratories and chapels there, while the city as a whole was entrusted to a patron saint. In larger cities, even individual quarters were sometimes fortified, and the citizens were supposed to take refuge there in case the enemy should penetrate the outer walls. The part that

37Maurizio Levak, Public and Private Space in Early Medieval Towns

was most frequently fortified was the administrative centre, which thus became a castrum (citadel) within the city, and occasionally the episcopal complex was also separately fortified.

Thus, the city began to close within itself – once open to its surroundings, now it was increasingly withdrawing within its parapets; whereas the classical symbols of the city had been its public spaces (squares, temples, streets, and various public facilities), now it was the walls. The city had turned into a refuge, a shelter for the inhabitants of its surroundings. Under these circumstances, the ancient Roman principle that a settlement with no fortifications could not be considered a city experienced a revival. The commonly held opinion was that the future of the city depended primarily on the quality of its bulwarks and the number of its defenders, while economic and political considerations were withdrawing into the background.

Private space, of which we know far less than about the public one, also suffered numerous changes caused by the decline of the living standard. One can observe a return to rural features: citizens were increasingly involved in agriculture, producing their own food – they lived in the city, but mostly did not earn their living there – which led to a dissolution of urban lifestyle. This “ruralization” of the city directly threatened its urbanity, blurring the hitherto very clear borderline between urban and rural areas. This was also mirrored in the construction of sacral objects (churches, memorial chapels) and other buildings around the city, even in close proximity to the city walls, which led to an increasing loss (even though not in legal terms) of the centuries-old feeling that the city ended with the line of its walls. The wish to bury one’s dead in the vicinity of the earthly remnants of martyrs created new funerary units around the martyria, and when those began to be built within the city walls as well, the funerals of other believers followed, which led to the abandonment of the strictly observed Roman prohibition of urban burials. This, too, was an example of ruralization.

At the same time, life outside of the city walls was also increasingly ruralized: whereas in the classical period the culture of urban life had been limited to the area beyond the city walls in the form of rustic villas, with the deterioration of general living conditions those villas were reduced to economy estates, their residential sections abandoned or transformed into rooms for servants and agricultural workers. In the most threatened regions, such as Pannonia or Gallia, rustic villas were now surrounded by walls with towers, and their interior changed as well. Their rooms, especially the residential ones, were no longer turned towards the outside, but


rather towards the inner courtyard. Luxury and comfort were no longer of primary importance; instead, it was safety and practicality that mattered, and for that reason the residential sections diminished considerably. Rustic villas now had more and more tenants as they became refuges for the colons who had previously lived in open rural settlements. In the territory of present-day Croatia and Bosnia, one should especially mention Polače on the island of Mljet and Mogorjelo near Čapljina as examples of this new type of extraurban villas.

Imperial architects built new cities in the 6th century in the eastern part of the empire with a primary emphasis on fortification, with a considerably diminished number of public buildings as compared to the classical period (with the exception of sacral buildings and with a complete lack of entertainment facilities), clearly divided into two or more core units, of which the administrative one was situated in a dominant spot and separately fortified. More emphasis was placed on securing water reserves (wells, cisterns) and food supplies (storehouses, gardens) than on buildings that had been considered mandatory for urban lifestyle in the previous period.

Nevertheless, one should point out that, despite all this, the continuity of urban life was not interrupted in the Mediterranean, and that it did preserve its fundamental features. Its crisis lasted for centuries, but mostly did not threaten the very existence of cities, except in cases of heavy wartime damage, when the population lacked the strength to restore urban life in areas where the conditions for the survival of a city had already been erased. The greatest change can be observed in the 7th century, when the shores of the Middle East and Africa were stormed by the Arabs, and those of the Adriatic, the Ionic, and the Aegean by the Slavs. Even though the conclusion of Henri Pirenne that the Arab occupation of large sections of the Mediterranean broke the centuries-long unity of the Mediterranean world and disrupted maritime traffic (and trade and cultural exchange along with it) to such an extent that the western Christian world, isolated from the economically and culturally more developed rest of the known world,1 was challenged, reviewed and even partly negated, there is no doubt that these events had a profound effect on the life of coastal cities. Cities on the eastern Adriatic, Ionic, and Aegean coasts found themselves in a far greater trouble.

1 Henri Pirenne, Les villes du Moyen Âge, essai d’histoire économique et sociale (Brussels: Lamertin, 1927); Eng. Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade, trans. Frank D. Halsey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1925), 24-26; idem, History of Europe: From the End of the Roman World in the West to the Beginnings of the Western States, trans. Bernard Miall (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1936); idem, Mohammed and Charlemagne, trans. Bernard Miall (New York: Norton, 1939).


The Slavic invaders were halted a short distance from the sea, depriving the maritime cities of their natural hinterland.

Some settlements managed to retain their status of cities throughout the late antique and medieval periods, while others lost it, and many of the newly built, especially those that could grow and evolve quickly owing to favourable economic and political circumstances, strove to acquire it. Even the names were changed: urbs was now more frequently called civitas,2 and from the 7th century onwards, as a consequence of the militarization of administration and society, and the near permanent “siege mentality” in many cities, the term castrum was increasingly used to denote not only the newly built and smaller settlements, but also cities with ancient origins.3 In this militarized society, in which civil servants were gradually losing their influence and then disappeared altogether, there was no longer any need for the old institutions of city self-administration or for their offices; councils and assemblies were held in the open or in an adequate church. Maintaining public buildings became too expensive for the city budget, which was increasingly too small even for the maintenance of street paving or the city harbour. Neglected areas and derelict buildings were no longer cleaned, and were thus often used as garbage depots for domestic or other waste: gradual accumulation of waste material resulted in the elevation of the ground level. In cities with ancient origins, the original network of streets remained in place for centuries to come, but, under permanent “attack” by private buildings, its streets became narrower and more irregular. New “routes” were created (mostly spontaneously, across the abandoned land where private buildings once stood), which were suitable for the simplest communication with the new crucial points in the city. The belt immediately next to the inner side of the city walls, where building had been strictly forbidden in the classical period, especially constructions that would “lean” on the walls, was gradually “privatized” in the sense of becoming populated with private buildings.

2 In classical Latin, civitas primarily denoted a community of citizens and citizenship as a legal status (in the broadest sense: a group of people living to a particular law), and only secondarily the city, that is, a settlement enjoying the status of the city, with all its public and private buildings. However, in the imperial period it was increasingly used in this sense.

3 Thus, for example, for Constantine Porphirogenitus all Dalmatian cities were κάστρα, and even the ancient Salona was a κάστρον, although he states that it was “as large as half Constantinople.” This shift in Byzantine terminology most likely resulted from the changes that many once spacious Byzantine cities underwent in the period between 7th and 9th centuries, especially in Asia Minor (Ephesus, Miletus, Ancyra), reduced to small fortified cores owing to the diminishining population because of wars and natural disasters (earthquakes).


In the centuries to follow, new cities emerged in accordance with the new feudal society, catering to the different needs of their inhabitants and the new economic arrangements. The old cities adapted and abandoned the very foundations of ancient urbanity in the direction of polycentricity – the medieval city has a separate centre of civil power (or military-civil, especially in those parts of Europe which did not have an ancient tradition), a separate ecclesiastical centre (the episcopal curia), and a yet separate economic centre (especially in the new cities, which mostly evolved from market towns). The next step was the fragmentation into urban districts with their own central sacral buildings, where members of the community gathered not only for spiritual services, but also to discuss problems related to the organization of life in that part of the city. Higher political power no longer resided in the cities; counts and lords preferred to reside in their extraurban estates (although they tended to have palaces inside the city walls as a symbol of their power in the city), where they felt stronger, and the cities became a natural opposition to their power and even their socio-economic arrangements, as they operated according to different principles. This was not valid for most of the newly built cities in areas that had formerly been under barbarian rule, but it certainly applied to ancient cities, especially those in the Mediterranean, where feudalism proved inacceptable and inadaptable.

At the end of the Middle Ages, the rise of cities resulted in the emergence of communal power in the most highly developed among them, which, after many centuries, resulted in a transformation of urban public spaces. The most obvious and most representative indicator of this new age was the construction of assembly halls in the main square, but the new communal authorities also used public funds to build storehouses for grains and other goods, establish fairgrounds, set up pillars of shame and other penal facilities, and so on. Even though demographic growth reduced the living space for individual citizens and led to a scarcity of space within the city walls, the general improvement of circumstances also had a positive impact on private space, including better general safety as wooden building material was gradually replaced by stone.4

4 There is a huge body of literature on the evolution of towns in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in Europe. Cf. among others: Gina Fasoli, Dalla “civitas” al comune (Bologna: Pàtron, 1961); Topografia urbana e vita cittadina nell’alto Medioevo in Occidente, Atti della XXI Settimana di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo dal 26 aprile al 1o maggio 1973 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 1974); European Towns. Their Archaeology and Early History, ed. Maurice Willmore Barley (London and New York: Academic Press, 1977); Villes et peuplement dans l’Illyricum protobyzantin, Actes du colloque de Rome (12-14 mai 1982) (Roma: École française de Rome, 1984);


Istrian towns and cities experienced most of these phenomena and processes. Even though they managed to survive this very turbulent period without occupations and devastations, the general social and economic circumstances led to changes that were visible in their structure as well. The uncertainty of life in extraurban areas, especially from the second half of the 6th century onwards, led to the rebuilding and reinforcement of fortifications, which became the most important public constructions and a symbol of the urban community. The dissolution of the antique type of urbanity was much enhanced by the ruralization of the urban community, reflected, among other things, in the relocation of manufactures for the processing of agricultural produce to spaces within the city walls, where they had previously been unwanted. The process of transformation from ancient to medieval city was also marked by a crisis of living space and a reduction of public areas. Private houses now had rooms and devices for storing and processing agricultural produce on the ground floor, while the living area moved to the first floor. Owing to this process, multi-storey houses became commonplace in the cities as buildings became taller while their ground plan shrank. Stone from demolished buildings was used to construct and reconstruct these houses, with an increasing use of

The Comparative History of Urban Origins in Non-Roman Europe: Ireland, Wales, Denmark, Germany, Poland and Russia from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Century, ed. Howard B. Clarke and Anngret Simms (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1985); The Rebirth of Towns in the West AD 700-1050, based upon papers presented to the Fourth Joint CBA/DUA International Conference on the Rebirth of Towns in the West, AD 700-1050, held at the Museum of London on 21-23 March 1986, ed. Richard Hodges and Brian Hobley (London: Council for British Archaeology, 1988); Jean Durliat, De la ville antique à la ville byzantine. Le problème des subsistances (Roma: École française de Rome, 1990); The City in Late Antiquity, ed. John Rich (London and New York: Routledge, 1992); Towns in Transition: Urban Evolution in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Neil Christie and Simon T. Loseby (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996); La fin de la cité antique et le début de la cité médiévale. De la fin du IIIe siècle à l'avènement de Charlemagne, Actes du colloque tenu à l’Université de Paris X-Nanterre 1er-3 avril 1993, ed. Claude Lepelley (Bari: Edipuglia, 1996); David Nicholas, The Growth of the Medieval City. From Late Antiquity to the Early Fourteenth Century (A History of Urban Society in Europe) (London: Longman, 1997); The Idea and Ideal of the Town between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Gian Pietro Briogiolo and Bryan Ward-Perkins (Leiden, Boston, and Köln: Brill, 1999); Towns and Their Territories between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Gian Pietro Brogiolo, Nancy Gauthier, and Neil Christie (Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 2000); Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity, ed. Thomas S. Burns and John W. Eadie (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2001); Recent Research in Late-Antique Urbanism, ed. Luke Lavan, Journal of Roman Archaeology supplement 42 (2001); Le città italiane tra la tarda antichità e l’alto medioevo, Atti del Convegno (Ravenna, 26-28 febbraio 2004), ed. Andrea Augenti (Firenze: All’Insegna del Giglio, 2006); Post-Roman Towns, Trade and Settlement in Europe and Byzantium, 2 vols. (vol. 1: The Heirs of the Roman West; vol. 2: Byzantium, Pliska, and the Balkans), ed. Joachim Henning (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007); Jiří Macháček, The Rise of Medieval Towns and States in East Central Europe: Early Medieval Centres as Social and Economic Systems, trans. Miloš Bartoň (Leiden: Brill, 2010).


wood. Public buildings were neglected and new centres of urban life arose around the cathedral and the episcopal curia.5

Before the 7th century, these changes were slow and gradual, as there were no major political or demographic upheavals, nor were the cities or extraurban areas exposed to significant material damage. However, from the late 560s, when the neighbouring Friuli was occupied by the Lombards, the militarization of administration and society in Istria accelerated greatly. It had begun during the late imperial period, but in this new situation on the peninsula it suddenly intensified just like in the rest of Byzantine Italy, which was also threatened by the Lombards. Istria turned into a border region, which undoubtedly affected its social order and lifestyle in general. In short, after the establishment of the Exarchate of Ravenna, the military administrative structures obtained more power and began to play a leading role in the administration, and with time (before the mid-7th century) civil officials, together with urban curias, vanished almost imperceptibly, having been made obsolete. The entire territory of Istria was militarized, towers and observation posts were built, and limitanei were installed in border areas. The 7th and 8th centuries are usually considered as the “dark ages” owing to the scarcity of written sources, and even archaeological findings are far more meagre than in the previous or following centuries.

The new era came with the establishment of Frankish power in the area. The Franks abolished the old social, legal, and economic system and introduced a new one, which did not favour the development of cities or the autonomy of city administrations. The new masters preferred extraurban constructions, building their seats in rural estates and promoting the building of monasteries. In the cities, bishops were their only allies, which is why the new era became first manifest in the renovation of churches and their adaptation to the new liturgical needs and tastes. No major interventions in fortifications or urban texture can be established for this period. The city suffered further decadence in this “period of vegetation and struggle for self-preservation,”6 new constructions were of increasingly poorer quality and built with more modest materials (with a prevalence of wood), no new public facilities were built, and the considerably reduced public areas were poorly maintained. The bishop featured as the representative of the urban community in communication with landlords and

5 On the Eastern Adriatic cities in that period, the seminal work is still the chapter on the “Innovations in Late Antiquity” in: Mate Suić, Antički grad na istočnom Jadranu [The antique city on the Eastern Adriatic], 2nd revised ed. (Zagreb: Golden marketing, 2003), 341-375.

6 Ibid., 384.


other cities, and persons called primates gained prominence among the citizens in the written sources. It is only from the second half of the 10th century that a revival of trade and many other activities set on, which became a crucial precondition for the revival of cities and their further evolution towards the communal order.

1: Pula – 1 = Forum; cathedral with the adjoining episcopal palace and baptistery was built in the centre of the northern waterfront (Source: Bruno Milić, Razvoj grada kroz stoljeća, I, Prapovi-jest-antika, Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 1994, 254, according to M. Mirabella Roberti and Š. Mlakar)


2: Pula, Forum – an excavation in 2006 revealed the medieval foundations of an edifice built in the centre of the Roman Forum (Source: Archive of the Archaeological Museum of Istria, Pula)

The city of Pula (Pola) was built on a specific terrain and therefore did not observe the strict rules of Roman urban planning. Instead, it had two circular streets intersected by ascents to the hilltop,7 which led to a spatial organization reminiscent of the pre-Roman situation. This rich and populated city abounded in public buildings, many of which (the triumphal arch of the Sergii, the aqueduct, the renovated and enlarged public bath) had been sponsored by wealthy citizens. In Late Antiquity, the city walls were reinforced and buildings leaning upon them on the inside were constructed.

7 Romuald Zlatunić, “Zaštitno arheološko istraživanje na području Uspona Frana Glavinića i istraženost mreže rimskih ulica Pule” [Conservatory archaeological research in the area of Uspon Frana Glavinića and the state of research concerning the Roman streets of Pula], Histria archaeologica 41/2010 (2011), 154-160, with bibliography on the street raster of ancient Pula.


In as many as three places along the city walls, wine and olive presses have been found,8 which attests to the relocation of devices for processing agricultural produce into the city, i.e. the ruralization of urban life, as well as abandonment of the strict prohibition of building in the pomerium and its transformation into private space. The time when the walls of Pula were renewed and strengthened has not been established with certainty, but archaeologists believe that it happened sometime between the 4th and 6th centuries.9 Whenever it happened, it was over a short period of time, as the construction methods show that it was done in haste, with recycled stone material taken from other (probably derelict) buildings, as well as from tombstones in the necropolises next to the city walls and along the roads leading from the city. It is believed that the top of the hill, once the location of a Histrian gradina, was fortified during that same period as the city’s dominant point,10 similarly to examples from other cities at that time. The amphitheatre and the large theatre, which were located outside of the city, no longer fulfilled their traditional function. After the great fire in the late 5th century, the (recently discovered) public thermal bath in the district of St Theodore was not repaired, but demolished instead11 as a public facility inappropriate for the Christian community and its sense of morality, but also because the city administration no longer had the finances to maintain such buildings. Pagan temples were replaced by churches and the new spiritual centre emerged further away from the Forum, next to the cathedral. It has not yet been established why it was precisely that spot in the city that was chosen to become the centre of Christian life (the cathedral and St Thomas’ church as twin churches, which was a very popular type in the Eastern Adriatic at the

8 Robert Matijašić, Gospodarstvo antičke Istre [Economy of ancient Istria] (Pula: Zavičajna naklada “Žakan Juri”, 1998), 212-213; idem, “Impianti antichi per olio e vino in contesto urbano in Istria,” Histria antiqua 15 (2007), 14-16; and the lecture held by Željko Ujčić on “Pula – Flaciusova ulica – zaštitno arheološko istraživanje (jesen – zima 2007./08. godine)” [Pula – Flacius’ Street – as a site of conservationist archaeological research in Fall/Winter 2007/2008] at the 2nd Archaeologist Convention held in Poreč on September 26, 2008 (unpublished).

9 Bruna Forlati Tamaro, “Cenni preliminari sulle recenti scoperte archeologiche a Pola e Trieste,” Atti e memorie della Società istriana di archeologia e storia patria 44 (1932) (published 1933), 326; Štefan Mlakar, Antička Pula [Ancient Pula], 3rd revised ed. (Pula: Archaeological Museum of Istria, 1978), 12 and 27-28; Alka Starac, “Neke spoznaje o bedemima Pule” [Insights on Pula’s bulwark], Histria antiqua 7 (2001), 67; Klara Buršić-Matijašić, “Luka Pula u prapovijesno i rimsko doba” [The port of Pula in prehistoric and Roman times], in Iz povijesti Pulske luke, ed. Mladen Černi (Pula: Lučka uprava Pula, 2006), 32.

10 Suić, Antički grad (as in n. 5), 354.11 Alka Starac, “Salus, Herkul i izvor vode. Primjer Pule” [Salus, Hercules, and a water source: The case

of Pula], Archaeologia adriatica 2 (2008) (published 2009), 308.


time, as well as the baptistery and the episcopal curia).12 It may have previously been the site of a pagan temple or (an)other public building(s) that were demolished, as it is not very likely that private houses would be removed, although this hypothesis cannot be excluded either. Unlike in Poreč, we have no information regarding the location where the early Christians of Pula gathered during the persecution period. The legend of St Germanus states that he was executed outside of the city, which means that this site could neither have been the place of his martyrdom nor a location connected to his deeds in life (as that would have remained documented in church tradition).13 It was by all means a quiet part of the city, away from the Forum and the city harbour (which was in the southern part of the city, and not in its present-day location). Since the Temple of Augustus (similarly to Diocletian’s Mausoleum in Split) symbolized state power rather than the Roman religion, it was probably transformed into a church as late as the 6th or 7th century.14 The following centuries witnessed a further reduction of public space and the demolition or privatization of public buildings, although individual cases are difficult to date. The militarization of administration and society in the 6th century imposed army duty on all property owners, while the marginalization of civil officials had a negative impact on public institutions. Members of wealthier families (potentiores) appropriated administrative offices and made them hereditary in practice, associating their economic power with the political one, whereby their family houses became symbols of power as well. Nevertheless, the most distinguished and influential

12 Marija Obad-Vučina, Katedrala Uznesenja Marijina u Puli [The cathedral of Mary’s Assumption in Pula] (Pula: Zavičajna naklada “Žakan Juri”, 2007).

13 Perhaps there were some other public buildings; it is known that the earliest Christian oratories were created by adapting either a private space or a public one, such as taverns, as it may have happened in Zadar, cf. Pavuša Vežić, Zadar na pragu kršćanstva: arhitektura ranoga kršćanstva u Zadru i na zadarskome području [Zadar on the threshold of Christianity: Architecture of early Christianity in Zadar and its surroundings] (Zadar: Archaeological Museum, 2005) (published 2007), 9; Vedrana Jović Gazić, “Razvoj grada od kasne antike prema srednjem vijeku: Dubrovnik, Split, Trogir, Zadar – stanje istraženosti” [Evolution of the city from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Dubrovnik, Split, Trogir, and Zadar – the state of research], Archaeologia adriatica 5 (2011) (published 2012), 183. Suić assumed that the Christian complex “may have emerged by adapting certain elements of the public bath, which would not have been an isolated case” (but at that time he did not know about the position of the public bath somewhat more to the east). Suić, Antički grad (as in n. 5), 366 (in his drawing on page 346, the Christian cultic site is erroneously positioned instead of St Maria Formosa). In Krk, however, the cathedral was built on the site of the thermal bath, as well as the early Christian complex in Salona.

14 It did not happen too often before the 6th-7th centuries that a pagan temple was repurposed as a church. In that period, however, it happened often with those temples that survived the 4th and 5th centuries. The recently uncovered Temple of Hercules in Pula was not transformed into a church, but completely demolished instead in the 5th century. Cf. Starac, “Salus, Herkul i izvor vode” (as in n. 11), 310.


members of the urban community were the bishops, who from the 6th century onwards also officially participated in urban administration. With time they began to think of the spiritual community as indistinguishable from the urban one, thereby extending their authority over the latter. The Forum still functioned as the main city square, where one of the many ancient public buildings (“Temple of Diana”)15 was used as the seat of the city administration throughout the centuries in which Pula was part of the Byzantine Empire, and perhaps also during the Frankish period. It is believed that the square was reduced to almost a half of its original surface area by the early Middle Ages16 as there was no need to maintain such a spacious unbuilt area within the city.

3: Poreč – 6 = Forum (Marafor), 7 = medieval square, 9 = The Euphrasian basilica with the adjoining episcopal palace and baptistery, 10 = St Francis’ church built on the foundation of St Thomas’ church (Source: Prelog, Poreč, as in n. 17).

In Poreč (Parentium), the spiritual centre of the city emerged further away from the ancient Forum (the Marafor square), on the site where the early Christian com-munity used to gather and where its first bishop and martyr St Maurus had been

15 Attilio Krizmanić, Komunalna palača Pula. Razvitak gradskog središta kroz dvadeset jedno stoljeće [Pula’s communal palace: Evolution of the city centre through twenty-one centuries] (Pula: Istarska naklada, 1988), 108.

16 Ibid., 117.


active.17 In the 5th century, a three-nave basilica was built on that place (the so-called Pre-Euphrasiana), demolished in the 6th century by Bishop Euphrasius in order to erect a luxurious new church with an episcopal palace next to it. This attitude towards public space is also manifested in linking the church and the episcopium into a single unit, even though the cardo leading to the city gate towards the northern seafront (St Nicholas’ Gate in the Middle Ages), which during the reconstruction “remained” be-tween the basilica on the one side and the baptistery with the atrium and the episco-pal complex on the other side, remained open for the public for a while. The builders of the Pre-Euphrasiana transformed a part of the cardo in front of the church into the narthex of the basilica (whereby it continued functioning as a street), but a far great-er intervention in the previously public communication space was its construction (and perhaps that of St Thomas’ church as well) on the (other) northern decumanus, whereby it cut the street into two (three) cul-de-sacs and completely disrupted the traffic lines in the northern part of the city.

Euphrasius built his new basilica during the period of Justinian’s restoration, when it was necessary to demonstrate the power and glory of the new Empire, on the site of the previous church, the demolition of which he justified by claiming that it had been old and derelict, which is difficult to believe.18 In Pula, the construction of the large basilica of St Maria Formosa in the same historical and socio-political context did not lead to the destruction of the old church as the bishop of Pula was not the initiator of the construction, which is why it was built in a different part of the city. In Poreč (perhaps because Pula was the seat of the military governor and thus of the provincial authorities), the ecclesiastical centre completely overshadowed the secular one. The ancient Forum was abandoned and the centre of urban life moved into the episcopal complex. This is manifest in the luxurious audience hall of the bishop of Poreč, with the clearly emphasized importance of the host, whose seat was placed in an elevated part of the room, in an apse bridged by a triumphal arch.19 It was only

17 This is attested in a late antique inscription in a fragment of the stone plaque mentioning the translation of the relics of St Maurus, which says that his body was transferred to the place where he “became bishop and martyr” (ubi episcopus et confessor est factus). Marina Vicelja Matijašić, Istra i Bizant [Istria and Byzantium] (Rijeka: Matica hrvatska – Rijeka Department, 2007), 31-32. However, even there remnants of older architecture have been found, which suggests that the oratory and the church may have been built on the site of the Roman bath. Cf. Milan Prelog, Poreč, grad i spomenici [Poreč: The city and its monuments] (Zagreb: Institute of Art History, 2007 (1st ed. 1957), 194, n. 24.

18 Matijašić, Istra i Bizant (as in n. 17), 45-46.19 Prelog was here of the opinion that the hall “must have been a sacral space” (Prelog, Poreč [as in

n. 17], 276, n. 18). However, Ivan Matejčić, who has been researching and restoring the episcopal


with the economic restoration of the city in the late Middle Ages and the evolution of the commune that the need for a city square emerged. However, it was not restored on the site of the Forum, but created anew in the vicinity of the harbour.20 Marafor could, although most certainly significantly reduced, serve as the main square of a medieval city, but its position at the western edge of the settlement was not adequate to become the centre of a revived city.21

It is believed that the earthly remains of St Maurus were transferred to the city in the 4th or 5th century at the latest,22 which started the burial practice of Poreč’s citizens within the city walls. In 2010, a child’s grave was discovered in the late antique archaeological layer next to the remnants of an ancient temple on Marafor. It was found without grave goods and could not be dated without an osteological analysis, but the fact that it belongs to the late antique layer suggests that it dates to the 4th or 5th century.23

The orderly ancient street network was maintained for a long time, without major disruptions in the early Middle Ages, as research has shown that even during the romanesque period houses were still built in observance of the old street lines.24 Moreover, the pattern of ancient Roman streets (and insulae) has mostly remained preserved in the centre until the present day, with noticeable disruptions only on the edges. That means that the continuity of building in the centre is not to be

complex in Poreč for many years, argued in a series of conversations with the author of this article, especially after the latest restoration of the audience hall, which was returned to its pristine form, that it was planned as an audience hall from the very beginning.

20 The new urban centre was eventually completed “in the 13th century, by building the potestas’ palace in the southern part of the city, with a small square surrounded by public buildings (a loggia, a courthouse, a fonticus, etc.” Prelog, Poreč [as in n. 17], 131.

21 This part of the city remained peripheral throughout the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, even though it was central in Antiquity, and the small and modest houses show that it was inhabited by poorer citizens. In the 18th century, Bishop Negri wrote that Marafor would be visited only by people living nearby. Gasparo Negri, “Memorie storiche della diocesi e città di Parenzo (1764.),” Atti e memorie della Società istriana di archeologia e storia patria 2 (1886), 165.

22 Vicelja Matijašić, Istra i Bizant (as in n. 17), 36. Nenad Cambi is of the opinion that the translation could not take place before the 410s (Nenad Cambi, “Ideo in honore duplicatus est locus,” Radovi Filozofskog fakulteta u Zadru 36 [23] (1997), 86); in any case, it did not take place before the construction of the Pre-Euphrasiana.

23 Unpublished. I would like to thank the head of conservationist research at the locality of Poreč – Temple, archaeologist from the Archaeological Museum of Istria, Teodora Šalov, for the information regarding the importance of the findings and the supposed datation (a conversation on November 5, 2010).

24 “The analysis of individual buildings, their architectural details, and the structure of the walls has shown that it was precisely the earliest preserved housing architecture, which may be described as Romanesque in the broader sense of the word, that adhered most closely to the basic communication system and the form of the former Roman insulae.” Prelog, Poreč [as in n. 17], 98.


doubted, while the margins (especially the southwestern and the northeastern ones) went through a period in which they remained without buildings, which may be dated to Late Antiquity.25

In Istria, the process of castrization resulted in a number of new fortified settlement in this period. Their emergence was not a result of some planned policy adopted on a higher level, but a spontaneous reaction of the local population to the deteriorating circumstances in terms of security. These settlements were built on hilltops, mostly in places of prehistoric settlements of the gradina type, often using the remnants of their fortifications to build the foundations for their own walls. A minor number of small towns emerged on the coast, on smaller islands or peninsulas, deemed the most defensible locations. These settlements had no ancient roots, except that in the foundations of some of them remnants of antique rural villas may be found, yet without positive evidence of the continuity of settlement between them.

These small towns have a typically dense and irregular arrangement of buildings. They were not based on the Roman tradition of urban planning, but rather built according to the current needs of their inhabitants, in accordance with a manifestly defensive planimetrics. For this reason, their public areas were minimal from the very beginning – single, not too spacious a square, and narrow streets, with the houses on the edge leaning against the city walls. However, less public area did not mean more private space: on the contrary, the latter was reduced as well in order to allow for greater population density, which was crucial for the defensive capabilities of a fortified settlement. Condensation of buildings within the settlement walls created during the period of castrization should not be seen as a consequence of a lack of physical space in general, as it is known that these settlements were intentionally densely structured from the very beginning. Examples of settlements built on islands and peninsulas show that they were densely built even when there was room to expand safely. Thus, the medieval towns of Izola and Rovinj remained crammed on one part of the island although they could have spread to cover its entire surface. The late antique and early medieval town was aware of the fact that it mostly had to rely on its own strength for defence and therefore the ratio between defensive needs and demographic power was one of the most important factors. A smaller total surface of a town meant less walls and better “coverage” with defenders. One should

25 Ibid., 130.


keep in mind that the discrepancy between defensive needs and the available number of defenders became a serious problem of the surviving ancient cities experiencing demographic decline and a decrease in population density.

The evolution of these fortified settlements was not chaotic, as there undoubtedly existed some unwritten rules that the members of a particular community had to observe. However, one cannot observe traces of any activity of the public authorities regarding the planning and arrangement of settlements. One may wonder whether these new towns had any public buildings during the early medieval period, except for the city walls and towers, and the sacral objects (mostly one per settlement). The town of this type had a single centre that could be reached directly by the main traffic route and was situated on the highest point of the hill, which was not necessarily also its geometrical centre. Thus, some settlements, such as Motovun or Dvigrad, had their main square at the very entrance, owing to terrain configuration. The square always included a church and it can be presumed that it was, in fact, defined by it rather than vice versa, i.e. that the centre of the settlement was located on the highest point precisely in order to have the church in this dominant and protective position.

We know very little of the residential houses in these new fortified settlements. They were relatively small in size owing to the density of buildings, square in their ground plan, and mostly consisted of a single room with a floor made of compacted soil and a roof covered with stone slabs, straw, or shingle, depending on the availability of the materials. In these features, they did not significantly differ from the prehistoric buildings in settlements of the gradina type, for which it has been established that they were small, built in the dry wall technique combined with wooden structures, mostly square, and consisted of a single room with a floor made of compacted soil or gravel.26 This is hardly odd, since in settlements of the gradina type that preserved the continuity of habitation houses did not significantly change in the period of antiquity, and there is no reason to believe that they would do so with the early Middle Ages. Innovation mostly consisted in adopting the technique of building with mortar, while the drywall technique was preserved for the construction of the surrounding walls.27

26 Marija Škiljan, “L’Istria nella protostoria e nell’età protoantica,” Atti del Centro di ricerche storiche 10 (1979/1980), 14; Suić, Antički grad (as in n. 5), 127-129; Klara Buršić-Matijašić, Gradine Istre: povijest prije povijesti [The Istrian gradina settlements: History before history] (Pula: Zavičajna naklada “Žakan Juri,” 2007), 526-533.

27 For additional details on the features of settlements that emerged in the process of castrization in Istria, see Maurizio Levak, Kastrizacija u Istri. Preobrazba načina života i privređivanja u Istri na prijelazu iz kasne antike u rani srednji vijek [Castrization in Istria: Transformation of the way of life


4: Byzantine Castrum on the Brijuni islands: the floor plan shows the remnants of a Roman rustic villa (highlighted), which served as the foundations of a fortified settlement in Late Antiquity (Source: Robert Matijašić, “Impianti antichi per olio e vino in contesto urbano in Istria”, Histria antiqua 15 (2007), 23)

A particularly rare and interesting case concerning Istria is that of Brijunski Kastrum, a settlement that evolved in Late Antiquity at the site of an abandoned rural villa in Valmadona (“The Bay of Madonna”) on the western coast of the island of Veli Brijun. The villa was probably abandoned in the second half of the 2nd century and the settlement (the name has remained unknown) was built in the 4th century. In the late 4th or the early 5th century, it was surrounded by walls on three sides, and in the second half of the 5th century there was already no place for a church within the walls, which is why it was built in the immediate vicinity.28 The ground plan of the settlement shows differences between the part built on the remnants of the Roman

and livelihood in Istria at the turn from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages], PhD dissertation (Zagreb: University of Zagreb, 2009).

28 Štefan Mlakar, “Fortifikacijska arhitektura na otoku Brioni, ‘bizantski kastrum’” [Fortification architecture on the island of Brioni: the ‘Byzantine castrum’], Histria archaeologica 6-7 (1975/1976) (published 1986), 5-49; Vlasta Begović Dvoržak, “Fortifikacioni sklop Kastrum-Petrovac na Brijunima” [The fortification complex of Kastrum-Petrovac on the islands of Brijuni], Histria antiqua 7 (2001), 177-190.


villa and the more recent part, which was irregular, with uneven communication lines that went around most of the houses, which means that the arrangement of houses defined the streets rather than the opposite. The line of the fortification walls was irregular despite the lack of natural obstacles, which may be explained by the fact that the existing houses were used to the maximum. The best example is the southeastern corner, where the wall obviously curved in order to surround an existing building (already abandoned by the time, but apparently in a solid state), a representative structure that was outside of the former villa complex, so that its apse became the corner tower of the bulwark.29 Within the walls no public buildings can be identified, except for a water cistern (assuming that it was for common use). The settlement died out by the end of the medieval period.

5: Dvigrad, map of the settlement with highlighted urban units (Source: Gian Pietro Brogiolo – Chiara Malaguti – Pietro Riavez, “Nuovi dati archeologici dallo scavo della chiesa di Santa Sofia e dell’insediamento di Dvigrad/Duecastelli”, Antichità altoadriatiche 55 (2003), 119)

Another peculiar case is Dvigrad, which was abandoned in the 17th century and therefore offers more information about the older phases than those settlements which have preserved the continuity of habitation to the present day. As early as the second half of the 5th century, it was a complete urban entity, as St Sophia’s church was

29 Vlasta Begović-Dvoržak and Ivančica Schrunk, “Brijuni – primjer uspješnog antičkog gospodarstva” [Brijuni as an example of successful antique economy], Histria antiqua 12 (2004), 69-70.


built at that time.30 The oldest part of the settlement evolved on the hilltop, around the church, wherefrom it extended gradually, including the newer parts within its city walls. The city square was located in front of the church, next to the very entrance to the town. That core was surrounded by a bulwark that followed the line of the steepest part of the hill, probably along the line of the prehistoric walls. This early completion of the settlement is also attested by the cemetery church at Kacavanac, likewise dated to the second half of the 5th century.31 Owing to its favourable position, the settlement developed and grew successfully, reaching a considerable number of inhabitants by the late Middle Ages and expanding on two occasions by building a new bulwark that included the suburbium. It had a city palace with a loggia and a fonticus on the main square. However, wars and epidemics forced the inhabitants to leave the town.

When comparing the features of ancient cities and new fortified settlements of the castrum or castellum type, one can observe certain similarities as a result of the ruralization of the ancient cities and the urbanization of rural settlements in their former agri. This process of bringing them closer to each other was a consequence of their inhabitants coming into closer contact due to the new way of life and livelihood. Whereas one can reach certain conclusions about the changes in public space based on comparison with the preceding period, private space is in its nature more hidden and less preserved architecturally and archeologically, which is why this segment of life in the settlements has remained largely obscured.

Generally speaking, the early medieval period was a time of decadence for the cities of antique origin owing to a prolonged crisis, which ended only with the economic recovery of Europe from the 10th century onwards. This then gradually led to an overarching enthusiasm for renovation that caused the emergence and development of comunal societies. Nevertheless, the Istrian cities created at the time of castrization mostly retained their rural character throughout the Middle Ages, with few notable exceptions such as Koper and Rovinj.

30 Branko Marušić, “Kompleks bazilike sv. Sofije u Dvogradu” [The complex of St Sophia’s basilica in Dvograd], Histria archaeologica 2/2 (1971) (published 1976), 49; Gian Pietro Brogiolo, Chiara Malaguti, and Pietro Riavez, “Nuovi dati archeologici dallo scavo della chiesa di Santa Sofia e dell’insediamento di Dvigrad/Duecastelli,” Antichità altoadriatiche 55 (2003), 133-134.

31 Branko Marušić, “Kasnoantičko i ranosrednjovjekovno groblje kaštela Dvograd” [Late antique and early medieval cemetery of the Dvograd castellum], Histria archaeologica 1/1 (1970) (published 1972), 8-9 and 17.

Public and Private Space in Early Medieval Towns: Istrian Cases

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