Knowledge and preservation of ancient Rhodes. From a typological analysis of urban fabric to a practical project for urban heritage

The Romans inherited by the Greeks a large planned city, but Rhodes went through a phase of decline and urban contraction because of new political conditions. After an earthquake it was rebuilt with a smaller perimeter and developed through successive expansions. The typomorphological analysis of the urban ‘organism’, depicting the formative urban phases of Rhodes, shows that Roman interventions had important effects on the urban growing until Middle Age. The Romans didn’t simply reuse streets and buildings. They created a first urban hierarchy, overlapping a new ‘grid’ structured on cardo and decumanus (Greek ancient roads). The first, that was one of the main streets in the Greek city, was re-designed as a colonnaded street and became an urban axis, also by the placement of a tetrapylon, a gate leading from the arsenal to the town center. The surviving Roman ruins of tetrapylon, the street and public buildings survive today in conditions of low visibility or abandonment. The policy management of these sites should be revised in order to make accessible this heritage and to make clear the role of these elements within the Roman settlement: the purpose is to fill a ‘void’ in historical knowledge of ancient Rhodes