The resilience of the late antique city in southern Gaul during the Romanesque period

Abstract

Cities are never finished or perfect; they are always in constant transformation. Nowadays, it is not just busy cities like London and Paris that are under perpetual renovation: even quiet Cambridge (even during the current lockdown) appears to be a never-ending construction site ('Cranebridge'). Already Libanius complained about his dear Antioch in the fourth century: 'There is always building going on in the city: some buildings are up to rooftop height, and some half built, or with foundations just laid, or being excavated'. 1 The phases of construction and reconstruction of buildings are part of the usual rhythm of the city. Despite this, it is difficult to change the perceived image of a city within living memory. 2 Some elements of the communal mental image of the city that are physically gone can remain in the collective memory in many different ways, such as place names (e.g., the King's Cross at King's Cross has not been there since 1845). In this sense, the survival of memories and rituals associated with certain spaces highlights the resilience of the city as an imagined space beyond the construction, reconstruction and substitution of its physical counterparts.The moments of 'urban renewal' that periodically hit cities as part of political changes are a good example of this development, when new regimes or interested parties try to modify the urban layout to promote a new set of urban ideals through new buildings. The adaptation of western European local communities to Roman urban culture in the first century AD, 3 or the establishment of the Umayyad caliphate over previously Christian territories are just two examples of such politically motivated redevelopment. 4 At the turn of the first millennium, a similar transformation of 1 Libanius, Orationes, 11.227. 2 'But the pithead baths is a supermarket now', sang Max Boyce.