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Roman Influence on Architecture and Infrastructure in North Africa

Published onDec 17, 2023
Roman Influence on Architecture and Infrastructure in North Africa

The Influence of Roman Infrastructure and Architecture in Northern Africa: A Collection of Curated Sources

  1. Introduction

North Africa is a region of the world that, for many centuries, was controlled by many different empires. Due to its proximity to Europe, many empires have been based in the Old World. One of those empires, and arguably the most famous, was the Roman Empire. Following the destruction of Carthage at the end of the Punic Wars, the Romans moved into North Africa in 146 BCE and stayed there until the 5th century CE, when most of their territory was lost to the Vandals1. The Roman Empire ruled Northern Africa for quite a long time, and because of that, they influenced much of what and how cities were constructed. Thus, this project will focus specifically on regions in what is modern-day Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria in the time period of 146 BCE to the 5th century CE. This project aims to examine just how much influence the Roman Empire had on both the architecture and infrastructure of these regions, and how much, if any of that influence remains today.

Firstly, it is important to understand just how Rome ended up in Northern Africa, which was a result of the Punic Wars. In total, there were three Punic Wars fought over 100 years. When the first Punic War broke out in 264 BCE, Carthage was clearly the superior power to Rome (this was before the foundation of the Roman Empire), however after 23 years, in 241 BCE the Romans defeated the Carthaginians despite not having a navy at the start of the war. The second Punic War began in 218 BCE and is most famous for Carthaginian general Hannibal crossing the Alps and attacking the Roman heartland. However, in 204 BCE the Romans attacked the Carthaginian homeland, causing Hannibal to retreat and the Carthaginians to eventually sue for peace in 202 BCE. Finally, the third Punic War broke out in 149 BCE, after the Romans declared war on Carthage. In 146 BCE, the Romans besieged the city of Carthage, and eventually sacked and completely destroyed it. This is what finally led to the Romans having a permanent presence in North Africa, as they completely took over the former Carthaginian territories.

As they came in, the Romans began to either rebuild cities (like Carthage) or build entirely new ones in their architectural style. The Romans typically involved heavy usage of columns and arches. This type of building allowed the Romans to construct massive stone structures, such as the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and numerous other amphitheaters (as you will see below). The Romans were also masters of planning cities, something they did in numerous different ways depending on location and terrain. They built their buildings in numerous different ways, and this flexibility is also made evident by the way they constructed new cities in Northern Africa. The sources below serve as a summary of these ideas; they serve as a way to examine the Roman way of development: incorporate the technology of others and simply make it better.

It would be easy to say that Roman architecture and infrastructure had a large impact on not only Northern Africa but the rest of the world. However, that statement would not be entirely true. What would be more accurate, especially in the context of North Africa, is that Roman city planning and infrastructure ended up being far more influential than columns, arches, and domes. While those were extremely important, and in some places still serve a key role, in North Africa the way the Romans designed their cities was far more important to the way cities are constructed today. Attached below is a map of Tripoli, the capital of Libya. Notice how in the old city, the road structure is a complete mess, whereas in the new part of the city, most of the roads form a grid pattern excluding the large main roads and highways. As you read through the Curated sources below, keep that basic principle in mind.

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  1. Methodology

My original idea for this topic originated from a deep desire to study a region of the world I had not placed much focus on in my prior classes. Through this class and others, I had studied many different parts of Africa, but never truly the northern part of it. It quickly became of interest to me not only because I had not studied it, but because it is so close to Europe and Asia, and can thus be seen as a melting pot of cultures between the southern regions of Africa, Europe, and Asia. From this point, I picked a few different topics that were of interest to me and eventually decided to settle on the influence of Roman architecture in North Africa. However, as I continued my research, and for reasons I will outline below, I eventually expanded that also to include infrastructure, as I felt that was an equally important area to examine. I would have been leaving out half of the big picture.

To develop a deeper understanding of this topic, I started looking through various books and articles both in person and online through the ZSR library at Wake Forest University. Specifically, I looked for documents or books that contained information about Roman architecture in Northern Africa. I found multiple books this way, including Susan Raven’s Rome in Africa and Gareth Sears’ The Cities of Roman Africa. Many of these sources included both pictures and text that I found to be very useful for my purposes. It was also a fascinating experience for me as it was the first time I had needed to dig around a library to find sources. Although it took me a while to navigate (ZSR is quite confusing!), once I found where one book was, the rest of them just poured in.

After looking through the library, my next step was to search through many of the online databases that were provided by Wake Forest. The one I spent the most time with was JSTOR. While I went into this with a lot of hope, I did not find as much information as I had hoped. I only found one useful piece of information, an article by V.H. Canter called “Roman Civilization in North Africa.” Despite trying multiple search terms, and even specifying architecture in Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria, I did not find anything else that was useful. I could not discern a reason for why this was, but my best guess is that most of the information I was looking for was largely located in books that covered Northern Africa in general and that there are not or have not been many research articles written on the topic of Roman architecture in North Africa.

Eventually, I went back to the ZSR database and began using some of the search terms I’d used on JSTOR there. Yet again, this led to me to success, and I found more sources like Christianity in Roman Africa: the Development of Its Practices and Beliefs by J. Patout Burns, Robin Margaret Jensen, and Graeme W. Clarke and A Companion to North Africa in Antiquity by R. Bruce Hitchner. These along with numerous other sources I found, provided me with even more useful information. However, many of these books also contained information on infrastructure as well as architecture. As I read more and more, I decided that it would be prudent to include infrastructure in my main research topic as well. The main reason I decided to do this is that I felt ignoring infrastructure when it was such an important part of Roman construction in the region would be less beneficial and informative when it came to finding my conclusion.

After this, I continued looking for more sources, although now I had also placed some focus on infrastructure as well. During this period, I also encountered a few challenges. Most of the time, these just included not being able to find sources or not being able to access sources. In the end, however, I managed to find numerous detailed sources that I felt contained enough information to answer my initial question. In the end, this collection of sources has been curated to answer the question of how much influence the Romans had on North African architecture and infrastructure. Many of these books contain extensive writing on the subject and numerous pictures that showcase both Roman ruins and diagrams of what fully constructed houses and temples may have looked like. This collection examines architecture and infrastructure from numerous different angles, including religious construction, home building, and the dismantling and destruction of Roman buildings in Northern Africa. These sources were included for their varied coverage of Roman architecture and infrastructure in North Africa.

  1. Curated Collection

Raven, Susan. Rome in Africa. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 1993

This source, in its entirety, serves as a cumulative history of the Romans in North Africa, from the time they defeated Carthage to their eventual defeat by the Vandals. While this is important, the main reason why I chose this source is because it has numerous pictures of Roman architecture and infrastructure that I found key to answering my question. The image below is a picture of the amphitheater at El Djem (ancient Thysdrus). Now, at first glance, a picture of a Roman amphitheater does not provide much in terms of answering the main question. However, this image in particular struck me not because of the building itself, but what is constructed around it. Although it is hard to see, these are modern houses and buildings (this book was originally published in 1969, so there is considerably more construction around the amphitheater now). This provides a clear indication that these modern societies did not build off of what the Romans did, they built around or on top of it. Although it is hard to make out, enough of the houses can be seen to realize that they are built in a completely different style to the giant amphitheater they surround. While this is not necessarily surprising (things change over time), from this picture at least, we can see the stark difference between the Roman architectural style and the style that is commonly used in modern Tunisia. Additionally, it demonstrates how the structure of cities changed after the Romans left. Whereas during Roman times it would have been the city center (the Colosseum in Rome was located largely near many of the other important government and public buildings), the area is now a residential one.

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Greenhalgh, Michael. Constantinople to Córdoba Dismantling Ancient Architecture in the East, North Africa and Islamic Spain. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

This book is a general examination of how the architecture of the ancient world was transformed or destroyed by the Byzantines and Islamic civilizations. Of particular importance is an excerpt that discusses rebuilding roads in modern times. Although this entire exception is not exclusive to North Africa, it still makes mention of rebuilding roads in North Africa in the late 19th century. This is important because it offers key evidence that Roman infrastructure, in the long run, was far more important and influential than their architecture ultimately was. The Romans, in modern times, have remained famous for their architecture; the Colosseum and the Pantheon are famous examples of Roman architecture. However, I believe what this excerpt begins to prove is that they should be better remembered for their infrastructure. In this particular case, their roads served either as foundations for new roads or the materials the Romans used were reused to construct new roads to connect Northern Africa. Additionally, the excerpt shows the French made great use of the Roman road network in Algeria to move their army around. They also rebuilt or refurbished many roads to move their artillery around. They found that rebuilding the roads was far cheaper than building new ones, and many of the roads already went where the French would have wanted them to go. In summary, this excerpt is important because it examines how Roman roads in North Africa were rebuilt and reused by modern empires like the French. It demonstrates that Roman infrastructure was key in modernizing Northern Africa.

“Travellers also observed that the only solid roads were Roman ones… The French were familiar with Roman roads and their construction, because both French and Italians had conducted excavations on stretches of such roads in France and Italy in the 18th century to try and learn how they were made, so that they could perhaps build likewise. In fact, they decided, Roman techniques were too costly in labour to be employed for anything more than the repair of existing roads in France. In Algeria, it was a different matter. In Algeria, Roman roads abounded, frequently in good or repairable condition. The French badly needed such roads, just like the Romans, for moving their troops, baggage and especially artillery. The local inhabitants used only horses, and generally kept to tracks, so weather and earthquakes were the only reason why the Roman roads should degrade. Any earlier intelligence was useful, and it is characteristic of the veritable vacuum of modern maps of the area that it was again the Tabula Peutingeriana that came to their aid; so that they were using some sources perhaps 1500 years old in origin… There is plentiful evidence in Algeria that the French army, pursuing the conquest, were helped by knowledge of the Roman road network. For them the problem was particularly acute, since the dearth of usable roads meant that access to some important settlements was only by seal – hence the pressure for the army from the 1830s to develop useable itineraries, in which they could be helped by the well-trodden routes of earlier travellers. The French did indeed refurbish Roman roads here – their first requirement being to use them to transport their artillery. If these were too narrow, gunpowder came to their aid. In the mid-19th century Ibrahim Pasha refurbished a Roman road in Lebanon for the same purpose. The crucial questions the French had to ask about Roman roads in Algeria were twofold, namely, Could such roads be repaired, and at what cost? and Would they take artillery? The answer to the first question was almost invariably affirmative: repairing Roman roads was cheaper than building new ones. Indeed, the French recognition of the “travaux gigantesques” frequently needed to build roads helps further to explain their interest in the Roman achievement. Thus in 1832, Lieut-General Pelet already knew that the Roman road between the bay of Stora (the port) and Constantine (a little over 50 miles) could be repaired. This was later confirmed, when General Berthézune remarked in a letter of 8 November 1839 that the trip between Stora and Constantine took 4 days, but that “le chemin est assez bon et paraît permettre d’y mener de l’artillerie” – thanks to the Roman road, as Captain Niel remarks.”4

Sears, Gareth. The Cities of Roman Africa. Stroud: The History Press, 2011.

This book largely covers the growth and development of Roman cities in Africa. Specifically, it focuses a great deal of its time on the period of the Roman Empire, which lasted about the first four and half centuries of the new millennium. The part of the book the excerpt below comes from focuses on the ancient city of Leptis Magna, which is located in modern-day Libya. The excerpt of the book describes the organization of the city and how the Roman emperor Septimius Severus (who was born there) strove to expand and improve it. The part in particular that I found to be important in answering my question has to do with a road and the structures surrounding it. Now known as the colonnaded street, it was a road that ran through the center of the city and was key to moving people around. The reason it was called that is that the road had two colonnades on each side of it (a colonnade is a row of columns with a roof on top of it - think of it like one long elongated bus shelter with no sides). Next to the road, there was a new forum complex that featured many shops and halls. Essentially, what the Romans had built was the equivalent of a modern-day outdoor shopping mall, as it had a central road with many shops and other buildings lining it. This is another example of the lasting influence of Roman infrastructure. They were most likely not the first to build something like this, but they did it on a scale that really wouldn’t be replicated for about 1500 years.

“From the new port facilities the traveller could have turned aside to visit the forum vetus but the most obvious direction of travel would have been down the new, wide, colonnaded boulevard created under the Severans, which led southwards from the port. The road itself was vast, 400 m long, with a central paved area around 21 m wide with 10 m-wide colonnades on either side of the road to provide shelter from rain, and more frequently, sun (Ward-Perkins 1993 : 67 ). The width of the road was clearly a statement of the power of the dynasty and the importance of the city rather than a necessity, and it is probably no coincidence that the road was considerably wider than the old triumphal way that led through the city to the forum vetus . The Severan road was unable to run straight to the main east– west coast road on its deviation through the city due to the presence of the Hadrianic Baths and instead terminated at a piazza that was framed on one side by a new monumental exedra, on another by the wall of the Hadrianic Baths’ palaestra and on another with a new monumental nymphaeum (fountain with statue niches) (Plates 17 and 23 ).This piazza replaced an Antonine era, 40 m-diameter circular space from which another colonnaded street ran southwards to meet the coast road (MacDonald 1986 : 57 ; Ward-Perkins 1993 : 79 ). This redesign of the space monumentalised a crossroads that sat awkwardly behind the palaestra but the two new monuments also distracted the traveller from the change of direction between the two colonnaded streets… The heart of Severan Lepcis was the new forum complex that lay on the western side of the colonnaded street (Plate 24 ). Like the street, the buildings were conceived of on a massive scale. The complex comprised of a large quadrilateral forum with a new basilica on the north-eastern side separated from the forum by a range of shops and halls; more shops were on the south-eastern flank and a temple lay within the forum on the south-western side (Ward-Perkins 1993 : 7 ; Fig. 5 . 2 ).To the north of the basilica a covered passage linked the colonnaded street with roads to the west of the complex; presumably this was necessary to prevent the forum from limiting movement across the city by its sheer bulk. Because the space into which the complex was placed was not a rectangle, the forum and the basilica were not regular themselves. The basilica did not sit perpendicularly across the end of the forum or about the colonnaded street at right angles. Internally the forum was arranged around an open rectangular space of around 100 m x 60 m surrounded by colonnaded porticoes on its four sides. The ingenuity of the architects was to vary the size of the porticos, shops and annexes to create an illusion of regularity for the visitor in the complex (WardPerkins 1993 : 9 – 30 ). Of course the shops were not just an architectural device to project a false sense of symmetricality; they were part of one of the intrinsic functions of the complex: commerce. Lining the forum and the colonnaded street, they would have been in a prime locality to capture passing trade. Unfortunately there is no evidence for those trades within the shops (Ward-Perkins 1993 : 25 – 7 ).”5

Yegül, Fikret, and Diane Favro. Roman Architecture and Urbanism: From the Origins to Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. doi:10.1017/9780511979743.

This book covers the history of Roman architecture and how they built their cities. Additionally, “they explore the dynamic evolution and dissemination of architectural ideas, showing how local influences and technologies were incorporated across the vast Roman territory.”6 Specifically, the area of the book I looked at was the chapter titled Architecture and Planning in North Africa. This was of great interest to me because it goes into extensive detail about both how cities were planned and how Roman architecture was incorporated into Africa. In particular, I focused on the part of the chapter that discusses the ancient city of Timgad, located in what is now Algeria. The reason I did this is that not only does it contain the excerpt below, which is extremely useful for seeing how these cities were set up, but it also contains the picture below, which is a diagram of the city itself. What you will notice about the city is just how organized it was, especially for a city constructed during ancient times. When you look at an overhead map of London or Rome, and you look close to where the original part of those cities is, it is a disorganized mess. Most of the streets are a mess and nothing is straight. Timgrad, however, is much more reminiscent of Manhattan in New York City, with nice, clean lines organizing the city into a square shape. We also see that there is some urban sprawl outside the city, something that is yet again reminiscent of New York City. While I am not saying that the city planners for New York got their ideas from a small Roman city in Algeria, I think it is important to note that the Romans were able to construct a road-based city featuring blocks and arrow-straight streets two thousand years ago. It demonstrates that the Roman style of city-building has clearly left a lasting influence on modern city planners.

“Timgad, strategically located on mountain passes separating the coastal plains from the wild country to the south, is a near-perfect example of a Roman city realized along the lines of regularized, orthogonal layout (Figure 8.12). It is in a sense a reflection of its putative military prototype in Lambaesis. The city plan is a perfect square, 1,200 RF to a side, some 30–31 acres in area, thus only one-half the size of the castrum and even smaller than some of the Imperial thermae of Rome. Although its stiff geometry has been described as “a town without soul” (Finley Reference Finley1977, 73), as many a Greek city with strict orthogonal plan has so been described, the truth about the planning of Timgad is more variegated and the experience of the city more nuanced. Furthermore, it is a textbook example less for its blueprint model appearance, but more for showing how such an ideal, regulation model could change in real life over time. The city is divided, in military fashion (and like the nearby castrum at Lambaesis), into four quadrants by a pair of colonnades, crossing major streets, the decumanus maximus and the cardo maximus. At their junction is the rectangular forum. The north-south street, the cardo, terminates against the forum main gate and does not continue southwards because the medium-sized, Roman-type theater, taking advantage of the hilly terrain of the south quarter, blocks the way (Figure 8.13). The southern extension of the cardo jogs westward and connects with the south gate. The ideal plan of the four-quadrant scheme accommodates 36 square blocks (insulae) to each quadrant (6 × 6, but actually western quadrants are 6 × 5), hence 144 blocks total, each circa 21 × 21 meters (c. 440 sq m). Each block contains one fairly spacious peristyle courtyard house, though some have two; those; those with frontages on the main streets also have shops. This mechanical order is broken on the ground by the intentional inclusion inside the city of a hill that mainly supports the theater, a functional arrangement that also creates interesting vistas. Also on the ground, this ideal number and order of the insulae changed because many city blocks were taken up by public buildings; a total of only circa 115–120 available house lots remained. The blueprint order was further compromised because some of the public buildings – baths, markets, and the theater – in order to maximize their footprint, projected out into the street, or even took up the street itself entirely, thus obliterating straight-shot vistas and continuity of the streets. But the most striking irregularity that marred Timgad’s four-square perfection was the spontaneous urban growth that developed through the second to the fourth centuries just outside the city’s long abolished walls, especially next to the main gates. This was an urban sprawl of no apparent order at all, its winding streets and haphazard neighborhoods a planner’s nightmare, an artist’s dream, but definitely an economist’s confirmation that things were going well for Timgad.”7

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Burns, J. Patout, Robin Margaret Jensen, and Graeme W. Clarke. Christianity in Roman Africa : The Development of Its Practices and Beliefs. Grand Rapids, Michigan ; William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014.

This book is a comprehensive overview of the development of Christian practices in Africa from the time of Roman North Africa to the Arab conquest in the 7th century CE. What is of particular interest in this book is an excerpt from chapter 4 (titled Survey of the Archeological Evidence for Christian Practice) which is titled Baptismal Architecture. The reason why this is of major importance to this question is that it covers how almost none of the buildings that were used to perform baptisms in Northern Africa have survived. I found this intriguing, as normally religious buildings, especially those related to Christianity, are quite well preserved, even if the area had been taken over by people who followed a different religion like Islam. In particular, what was interesting is that there are plenty of ruins or evidence to be found for the baptismal buildings after the fourth century, but before that period there is essentially no remaining physical evidence of baptisms occurring. I believe the reason for this is that the Roman style of building, especially once they were kicked out of the region by the Vandals and the Muslims, was simply too complicated and expensive to take the time to preserve and uphold. Additionally, many of these spaces were simply abandoned and replaced elsewhere when they got old instead of being repaired, hence why there is so little remaining evidence of baptism buildings from before the fourth century. Thus, a key reason why Roman architecture has not left much of an influence, at least to this point, is that for most places in North Africa, it was too difficult to repurpose, even for religious buildings.

“Baptism was the ritual means of becoming a full member of the African Christian community. The unbaptized were believed to be barred from salvation. African theologians frequently spoke of the church as mother and, like other early Christian writers, elaborated this metaphor to speak of the font as the mother’s womb, the place where new Christians were conceived and born. Candidates for baptism entered the font naked and were immersed in water to symbolize their death to an old life and rebirth to a new one. They emerged from the watery womb like newborn children, were redressed (in white robes), anointed, and confirmed by the bishop’s imposition of hands, and entered the church to join their new Christian brothers and sisters. The spaces in which their stripping, immersion, anointing, and confirmation all took place formed an architectural icon that reflected the symbolism of this sacrament as well as providing simple shelter and appropriate facilities for the ritual actions themselves. No purpose-built spaces that housed the African baptismal ritual in the third and early fourth centuries have survived. The Dura-Europos house church excavated in modern Syria is a unique example of an early baptismal chamber (ca. 240s); without any comparable evidence, it is impossible to surmise how representative such a space was in general, or how like it a contemporary African baptismal chamber might have been. Despite the dearth of physical remains for baptism prior to the late fourth century, however, the African provinces are rich in evidence from the late fourth through the sixth century. More than fifty early Christian baptisteries have been identified in the modern country of Tunisia, and at least twenty-five survive in Algeria, many of them constructed in more than one phase… Because most of the archeological evidence associated with baptism in Roman Africa dates to the fifth through the seventh centuries, it is not easily coordinated with the greatest proportion of theological writings on the ritual. A singular case in which both literary evidence and physical remains potentially overlap in both time and space is the baptistery excavated at the site of Hippo Regius (fig. 54), annexed to what has been identified as Augustine’s Basilica Pacis (cf. figs. 48, 50, 51). Other examples of baptismal fonts dated to the pre-Vandal period include those found in Thamugadi (fig. 94), Tipasa (fig. 107), Cuicul (figs. 41-42), as well as the earliest fonts at Belalis Maior (figs. 5, 7) and Sidi Jdidi (Asadi) (fig. 63). Although documentary material pertaining to baptism is scarce after the mid-fifth century, the rite was unchanged in any major way that would have been reflected in the architecture or design of fonts or baptisteries.”9

Ching, Francis D. K., Mark. Jarzombek, and Vikramaditya. Prakash. A Global History of Architecture. Second edition. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley, 2011.

This final source is a book that covers over five thousand years of architectural development. What is of particular interest from here comes from the section titled 200 CE, and more special the subsection that covers the Roman Empire. In particular, there is a section here that covers Roman urban development in North Africa. Specifically, it discusses the cities of Timgad (which has been discussed previously) and Djemila, a city located in modern-day Algeria. I found this important because it once again discusses Roman city planning in North Africa. Once again, it discusses Timgad as a prime example of grid planning, although it also makes sure to note that the Romans were flexible with this. Djemila is also interesting because it shows how the Romans were flexible with the landscape; they built where they could and typically expanded by following existing roads they had already built. This flexibility is something that would be carried beyond the times of the Romans and is a factor still used in city planning today. The idea of grid planning is something that has been used extensively in designing modern cities over the last few hundred years, whereas constructing a town in accordance with the terrain is a common practice in mountain towns all around the world. While the Romans were likely not the first to use these practices, they were one of the first to truly popularize them and use them on a large scale for building multiple cities and towns.

“North Africa is an excellent place to study Roman urban concepts; it supplied the capital with staple crops and luxury goods. Hadrian was eager to develop this area and offered free tenancy and a period of tax exemption to anyone who would agree to reside permanently on marginal land and put it under cultivation. It was a successful policy that encouraged the establishment of rural trading centers, many of which developed into urban environments. In some places a new town was founded, like Timgad, a gridded city roughly the size of Florence; in others, such as at Lepcis Magna, an existing Phoenician city (east of Tripoli), the planners adopted a flexible and additive approach. Roman cities were more differentiated than Greek cities, which were defined by a central agora and temple precincts. A Roman city had streets, squares, fountains, gates, memorial columns, and public buildings that formed a type of armature around which the rest of the city grew. At Palmyra and Ostia we can see the attempt to graft this armature onto places that had been founded at an earlier date, when they were more towns than cities. Djemila, in Algeria (96 CE ), is typical; its elongated shape is a result of the terrain. The first part of the city to the north shows a relatively systematized layout, with the forum at the center of the town along the main road. But when that proved inadequate, a new forum, temple, and theater were built in a southward extension that followed the curves of an existing road. Though Timgad (100 BCE ) is often given as a typical example of the rigorous application of the grid, the original town soon outgrew its borders. In fact, the elements of the armature that were originally left out of the design— the baths, the gates, even a capitolium —were grafted onto the fabric of the city. A new arch, the Lambaesis Gate, demarcated the limits of the development. These urban extensions show a willingness to negotiate with the landscape and existing features such as roads. In some places, the Romans were even willing to work within the Hellenistic design mold; the most spectacular examples of this are at Ephesus and Miletus.”10

  1. Conclusion

The Romans controlled much of North Africa for a very long time. This led to numerous examples of buildings, cities, and roads that can be examined. This project specifically focused on the regions of Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya to figure out just how much influence Roman architecture and infrastructure had on North African buildings and cities. In the end, the only probable conclusion is that, at the base level, they did not have much influence. However, looking at it through a shallow lens like that not only ignores the other half of the story but also an even wider picture. Essentially, the Roman style of city building as a whole is what has been influential, not just their architecture or infrastructure. In the modern world, an aqueduct, amphitheater, or column on its own is not strictly relevant anymore. How you build a city certainly is.

You may remember in the introduction I showed this picture of Tripoli in Libya:

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After reading through the curated collection, I hope it is now clear just how much influence the Romans have had on city building in Northern Africa. While the old part of Tripoli is a complete mess, the newer parts of the city fit in quite well with the Roman style. We see most of the streets are set up in a grid-like fashion, with only the main roads not being entirely straight. We can also see some of that Roman flexibility. With mountains at its back, the space the builders of Tripoli had was relatively limited. Maybe they took inspiration from Djelima, a city built in the mountains, yes, but one that was also constructed with a relatively confined space in mind. To me, it looks like Djelima's building combined to fit the terrain with Timgad’s grid planning. So, we can definitively say that the Romans had a massive influence on the way cities were and are built in Northern Africa. However, that is not the only place this holds true, and it demonstrates why this collection is even more important than you may have thought.

We have examples from not just North Africa, but all over the world of cities taking inspiration from the Roman style. Manhattan in New York City makes extensive use of the grid planning the Romans used in Timgad. In Bolivia, La Paz, the capital city, was built in a valley almost twelve thousand feet in the air, so as the city grew they almost certainly had to consider how to build in a relatively confined area, much like Djelima. In California, Los Angeles makes use of both. With the Pacific Ocean to the west and numerous mountain ranges to the east, city planners made extensive use of the grid planning system, while also having to be intelligent about what buildings went where because they could not expand east forever. All of these cities, and many, many more all around the world, make extensive use of the systems the Romans made famous. So no, Roman architecture and infrastructure, on their own, did not have much influence in North Africa. However, the Roman way of actually building a city, especially with streets in mind, has not just stuck around in North Africa, it has become the standard of building a city just about anywhere on the planet.

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