The typological plan of Zaragoza for the typological process of the medieval city

Abstract

Studies on the formation process of building types delineate a long term transition in the form of the city. The findings of the excavations done in Palmyra and Bet Shean have revealed that the transition from the late Roman period to the Umayyad one happened with strong continuity of the built environment (Raymond, 2008). The evolution of building types has been expounded by Caniggia (1979) in Naples as the formation of courtyard houses over the Roman Domus substrata. Meanwhile, no trace of transition from Roman Domus was found in parts of central Italy (including Rome), southern Italy (excluding Naples), and Provence (Petruccioli, 2008). This paper aims to describe the typological process subsistent in the development of medieval Zaragoza with reference to the forces shaping the building blocks and their organization. The city of Zaragoza was founded by Caesar Augustus as a colony after the victory of the Roman Empire in the Cantabrian Wars in 14 BC on the site of an Iberian city named Saldube. In the VIII century, the Roman city was included in the Umayyad caliphate. Previous theoretical reconstructions based on archeological evidence cast the urban tissue of Caesar Augusta into a grid plan with special buildings and courtyard houses as the leading residential type. This study evaluates the territory as a historically identified organism (Strappa, Carlotti, Camiz, 2017) by mounting the individual building survey plans done by Dionisio Casañal y Zapatero for the Geographic and Cadastral Institute of Zaragoza in 1911 into a typological plan in order to individuate the typological process within the medieval city.