The

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

word (; : ) was used in

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

cities to mean either a

city block A city block, residential block, urban block, or simply block is a central element of urban planning and urban design. In a city with a grid system, the block is the smallest group of buildings that is surrounded by streets. City blocks are th ...

in a city plan (i.e. a building area surrounded by four streets) or later a type of

apartment building An apartment (American English, Canadian English), flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), tenement ( Scots English), or unit (Australian English) is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) ...

that occupied such a city block specifically in Rome and nearby Ostia. The latter type of ''Insulae'' were known to be prone to fire and rife with disease. A standard Roman city plan was based on a

grid Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to: Space partitioning * Regular grid, a tessellation of space with translational symmetry, typically formed from parallelograms or higher-dimensional analogs ** Grid graph, a graph structure with nodes connec ...

of orthogonal (laid out on right angles) streets. It was founded on ancient Greek city models, described by

Hippodamus Hippodamus of Miletus (; Greek: Ἱππόδαμος ὁ Μιλήσιος, ''Hippodamos ho Milesios''; c.480 BCE, 480–408 BC) was an ancient Greece, ancient Greek architect, urban planner, physician, mathematician, meteorologist and philosophe ...

. It was used especially when new cities were established, e.g. in Roman . The streets of each city were designated the '' decumani'' (east–west-oriented) and ''

cardines A ''cardo'' (: ''cardines'') was a north–south street in ancient Roman cities and military camps as an integral component of city planning. The ''cardo maximus'', or most often the ''cardo'', was the main or central north–south-oriented stre ...

'' (north–south). The principal streets, the ''decumanus maximus'' and ''cardo maximus'', intersected at or close to the

forum Forum or The Forum may refer to: Common uses *Forum (legal), designated space for public expression in the United States *Forum (Roman), open public space within a Roman city **Roman Forum, most famous example * Internet forum, discussion board ...

, around which the most important public buildings were sited.

References

Sources and further reading

*The Insula IX Excavation: http://www.reading.ac.uk/silchester/town-life/insula_ix.php *Pompeii Insula 9: http://donovanimages.co.nz/proxima-veritati/insula-9/index.html History of urban planning Ancient Roman city planning {{Ancient-Rome-stub