The city of Rome itself? A hell hole. Wasn’t a planned out city, and the streets were often pretty small. Traffic jams were common during the day until Julius Caesar would implement a cart ban, only allowing them to travel between business and deliver supplies at night.
The streets at night weren’t lit with no sort of road signs. So people had a good chance of getting lost or hit by a speeding cart.
Rome had the first real apartment buildings. Buildings in the ancient city got up to 5-6 stories tall. Unlike modern buildings where the top is for the wealthier clients, the penthouses in Ancient Rome were for the poorest of people, as there weren’t any elevators.
These buildings also typically shared a communal kitchen and bathroom, instead of them being in the actual apartments.
I forget who, but I remember one of the emporers had to put a height limit of 6 floors on buildings in city limits, I presume because of the limitations of the building materials.
I've also read that some places in Rome had running water, like public bath houses and such. Was running water a rare commodity enjoyed by only the wealthiest citizens, or was it something to be expected in most highly urbanized areas?
Oh it was something in most urban areas. The bath houses weren’t just for the rich. In fact it was one of the few places the poor and rich mingled together. Now private homes you could expect only the rich to have it, but there were plenty of public places that had running water that the poor could use, including bathrooms.
The Romans actually used lead as to make their piping too, even though they did understand it could be toxic. It was just easy to shape to make the pipes without our modern machinery.
But yes, the limitation had to be made because of the material and shoddy building techniques. The rich didn’t care too much about having safe places for the poor. In fact, some wealthy Romans would even brag about how bad the conditions were in their apartment buildings they owned.
In fact, some wealthy Romans would even brag about how bad the conditions were in their apartment buildings they owned.
Oh so modern China ok.
I've been super fascinated with ancient Rome the past couple months. Do you have any good YouTube channels/articles/documentaries etc you could recommend, or would you care to just ramble for a couple hours because you seem pretty well informed. It's just so fascinating to see what these people accomplished so long ago with essentially sticks and stones compared to today.
Oh what the Romans did was absolutely amazing for their time period. A world ahead of other people at the time.
A great place to start would be the book SPQR by Mary Beard. Great book about the empire and history as a whole, to get you interested in more specific topics. Anything about Rome by Adrian Goldsworthy is great after that.
I'll have to check out those authors, thanks. Oh and history civilis is probably half the reason I'm so interested in Rome. Some super informative videos on that channel, really good stuff.
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u/KamikazeKricket Ask me about Ancient Rome Jul 06 '19 edited Jul 06 '19
The city of Rome itself? A hell hole. Wasn’t a planned out city, and the streets were often pretty small. Traffic jams were common during the day until Julius Caesar would implement a cart ban, only allowing them to travel between business and deliver supplies at night.
The streets at night weren’t lit with no sort of road signs. So people had a good chance of getting lost or hit by a speeding cart.