«In contrata de Campo Carleo». Storia urbana ed edilizia di un isolato della Roma medievale

This paper aims to analyze the historical and constructional developments of a unique Roman city block, which took shape over the eastern portico of Trajan’s Forum, closing off the exedra of the Markets behind it. This complex of buildings was completely demolished by Corrado Ricci in 1929 in an effort to uncover parts of the underlying imperial structures. Despite the modern impression conveyed by the few surviving contemporary images, this group of buildings – set along the irregular paths of medieval origin – still preserved, in their morphological consistency, recognizable traces of their past history. Thanks to historical documentation and archaeological data from recent excavations, it has been possible to study the diachron- ic transformations of this block, leading to a reasonable reconstruction of its medieval configuration. This period was crucial for the architectural development of the entire settlement: after the abandonment of the early medieval post-ancient dwellings, the area was restructured into a sequence of compact residential fabrics, albeit with heterogeneous characteristics. The analysis has provided a detailed picture of the constructions within the block: an assemblage of buildings of different sizes and qualities, integrated with the ancient pre-existing structures – now repurposed for new uses – and perfectly corresponding to the settlement model of the lesser urban aristocracy, as defined by contemporary notarial sources.