Augusta Praetoria Salassorum

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Augusta Praetoria Salassorum (modern name, Aosta) is an ancient town in Italy founded by Augustus in about 24 BC on the site of the camp arena of Marcus Terentius Varro settled by 3000 Praetorian guards. The place had been occupied by the Salassi tribe, whose people perished or were sold into slavery in a great war with the Romans in 25 BC.[1] Pliny called it the last town in north-west Italy. Its position at the confluence of two rivers, at the end of the Great and the Little Saint-Bernard, gave it considerable military importance, which is vouched for by considerable remains of Roman buildings.

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[edit] Description

The ancient town walls of Augusta Praetoria Salassorum are still preserved almost in their entirety, enclosing a rectangle 793 by 624 yards. They are 21 feet high, built of concrete faced with small blocks of stone. At the bottom, the walls are nearly 9 feet thick, and at the top 6 feet.

Towers stand at angles to the enceinte and others are positioned at intervals, with two at each of the four gates, making twenty towers in total. They are roughly 32 feet square, and project 14 feet from the wall. The Torre del Pailleron on the south and the Torre del Leproso in the west are especially well preserved.

The east and south gates exist intact. The latter, a double gate with three arches flanked by two towers known as the Porta Praetoria, is especially fine.

The rectangular arrangement of the streets is modeled on a Roman plan dividing the town into 64 blocks (insulae). The main road, 32 feet wide, divides the city into two equal halves, running from east to west. This arrangement makes it clear that guarding the road was the main raison d'etre of the city.

Some arcades of the amphitheatre, the diameters of which are 282 feet and 239 feet, and the south wall of the theatre, over 70 feet high, are preserved. A marketplace some 300 feet square surrounded by storehouses on three sides with a temple in the centre with two on the open (south) side, as well as a thermae, also have been discovered.

Outside the town is a handsome triumphal arch in honour of Augustus. About 5 miles to the west is a single-arched Roman bridge, called the Pondel. It has a closed passage, lighted by windows for foot passengers in winter, and above it an open footpath, both being about 32 feet in width.

There are considerable remains of the ancient road from Eporedia (modern Ivrea) to Augusta Praetoria into the Valle d'Aosta. The modern railway follows this route, notable for the Pont Saint-Martin, which has a single arch with a span of 116 feet and a roadway 15 feet wide; the cutting of Donnaz; and the Roman bridges of Châtillon (Pont Saint-Vincent) and Aosta (Pont-de-pierre).

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ John Lemprière, Lorenzo DaPonte, & John David Ogilby (1839), Bibliotheca Classica: Or, A Dictionary of All the Principal Names and Terms, (Tenth American Edition), New York: W.E. Dean. Salassi, p. 281

[edit] References

  • C. Promis, Le antichita di Aosta, (Turin, 1862);
  • Edouard Bérard, Atti della Società di Archeologia di Torino, iii. 119 seq.; Notizie degli Scavi, passim;
  • A d'Andrade, Relazione dell' Ufficio Regionale per la conservazione dei Monumenti del Piemonte e della Liguria (Turin, 1899), 46 seq.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

[edit] External links

  • Augusta Praetoria Site plan & photos from the Aosta Valley Regional Authority, Aosta, Italy.