Public and Private Space in Rome during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

In this article the relation between public and private space is approached from the perspective of urban planning. It starts off reaffirming that the ancient city of Rome was a place in which the public use of space is predominant. It then focuses on the process of transformation from public to private in the Late Empire. Contrary to the communis opinio that there was already a significant trend of privatisation in the fourth century AD, the author maintains that it is only in the course of the fifth and sixth centuries AD that such a trend sets in, induced by a demographic decrease and the collapse of the city’s delicate support system. However, even for those centuries the author deduces from the archaeological evidence that degradation and privatisation of public and monumental buildings were still limited and circumscribed. He argues that a definite process of privatization only took off from the eight century BC, a process which during the Carolingian era led to a reduction to the minimum of the public areas and space that were accessible to all inhabitants, while the network of property in the hands of ecclesiastical and aristocratic elites spread.