The Idea and Ideal of the Town Between Late Antiquity and the Early Modern Ages

This volume examines changing perceptions and ideals of town life, from the classical civitas/polis (the lynch-pin of ancient civilisation) to the medieval city (still playing many central roles, but with less of the ideological charge characteristic of Antiquity).
One central theme is the persistent 'shadow' of the ancient city - in crumbling ancient buildings, and the survival of Roman styles of urban lay-out; and in the way that cities were depicted both visually (in iconography that changed only very slowly, if at all), and verbally (in the persistence of often outmoded classical terms and descriptions).
Yet the ideal of the city was also changing and developing, especially around the idea of a new, specifically Christian city, protected by its saints and by its churches.

Gian Pietro Brogiolo teaches Medieval Archaeology at the University of Padua. His interests are in towns and countryside of early medieval Italy, and he has excavated extensively in Lombardy, particularly at Brescia and Monte Barro. He has published numerous articles on the cities of Byzantine and Lombard Italy, and is the author of Brescia altomedievale. Urbanistica ed edilizia dal IV al IX secolo (1993).Bryan Ward-Perkins is a Lecturer in Medieval History at Oxford University and a Fellow of Trinity College. He has published extensively on the towns of early medieval Italy and is the author of From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Urban Public Building in Northern and Central Italy (1984). He is an editor of the Cambridge Ancient History Volume XIV.