Note sulla Forma Urbis di Pompei

In the course of more of 150 years of excavations at Pompeii, the most essential features of the urban landscape have indeed been brought to light. They include the most part of the walls surrounding Pompeii, its entire streets system, the network of its fabrications and the identification of the areas of the city which were reserved for public or religious purposes at the time of its destruction. However a closer reading of such constitutive elements suggests that the Pompeii’s forma Urbis of 79 d.C. is indeed the outcome of a long and troubled urban history. Since Pompeii was discovered, many different investigations have been carried out aimed to precisely identify both the form and the timeline of the mutations in the urban fabric that have been undergone in Pompeii. We are today still waiting for more decisive evidences that will have to come from new specific research on the subject and, in this paper, we will survey of the most important accounts that have been advanced so far in the urban history of Pompeii.