Suburra
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Suburra is the modern Italian name for a neighborhood of Rome; in Antiquity, the word was usually spelled Subura, and was a red-light district. It is a proletarian area in the dip between the southern end of the Viminal and the western end of the Esquiline hills.
The famous Roman dictator Julius Caesar grew up in a home in the Subura district, even though he came of the most aristocratic origins.
[edit] References in popular culture
Colleen McCullough in her fictional series Masters of Rome depicts Caesar's mother (like her son) as sympathetic with the lower classes, and that she purchased a tenement building in the Subura as a residence.
The Subura, plays a role in Steven Saylor's historical fiction, Roman Blood.
[edit] External links
- Subura (article in Platner's Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome)
