Cloaca maxima. Tra archeologia, topografia e storia

Te Cloaca Maxima is the most impressive and enduring infrastructure of Rome’s urban history: due to its topographical extension (which involves the districts of the Subura, the Argiletum, the Forum Romanum, the Velabrum and the Forum Boarium) and for its multiple phases of life (from the archaic age to the full Imperial period), it accompanies all the main architectural and topographical transformations of the center of the ancient city. This paper aims to illustrate the complexity of the issues – chronological (as can be deduced from written sources), archaeological (as documented by the recent collector’s analysis) and topographical (in relation to the many public and private structures that interact with the sewer collector) – which condition the reconstruction of the historical phases of this “excellent witness” of the urban development of ancient Rome.