Origine ed evoluzione del paesaggio urbano. L’agorà, il foro, le mura: un’ipotesi geografica sulla Cuma antica/ The origin and the development of the urban landscape. Agorà, Foro, Walls: a geographical hypothesis about the ancient Cuma

The combination of data elaborated through 3D scanners, historical cartography (especially the plan by De Iorio) and the geo-archaeological studies about the ancient topography, suggest a ‘geographical’ hypothesis concerning the foundation of the urban space of Cuma and its development which provides several explanations about the overlap of discordant layers: emerged from the excavation sites. 1. The original Hellenic Cuma and the archaic Agorà. Through archaeological surveys, has been proved that Cuma had been enclosed by walls. According to the proposed thesis, the original Greek Cuma has not only institutionalized the Acropolis as the heart of the city, but has also considered as ‘porta geografica’ of the polis: the natural archetypical structure of the site as ‘bifrontal amphitheater’ , shaped by volcanism. As well as Calcide, Cuma controls the ‘istmo di pochi stadi’ shaped by the Averno which, according to Strabone, ‘forma quasi un’isola di quella terra che si stende dalle sue plaghe e da Cuma fino a Miseno’. Its urban space is the representative and defensive outpost of the polis. The saddle-shaped area between Monte dell’Acropoli and Monte Grillo configured the natural northern access gate that met what formerly was the sacred street of the Acropolis and originated from Miseno. We might then suppose that in this area of meeting point and territorial control, still named ‘Croce di Cuma’, should have stand the Agorà, centre of the lower part of the city, and the market, close to the ports and crossed by the sacred street. The fact that the place from which rises the Agorà doesn’t match with the place in which stands the Roman Foro, partially occupied by the original necropolis during the archaic age, would confirm the thesis which states a progressive substitution of Greek features and components to the indigenous ones, perfectly matching the latest backdating of the foundation of Cuma and the unconformity of layers in the area of the Foro. 2. The walling and the new centrality of the Foro. The meaning of the northern high- archaic walls ( the end of the VII/ the beginning of the VI century b.C.) which preceded of a century the southern walls ( the end of the VI ) crosses the urban space of the single Cuma. Embattled Cuma is a defensive place of a vaste and articulated chora, but also of the whole Magna Graecia. This study assumes a straightforward course of the walls as a prosecution of the relics, already attested in the valley. We must operate a distinction between the course of the walls and the placement of the gulches which seem to have a man-made origin as infrastructural cuts operated on the top of the mountain Grillo which could be dated back to the phase of construction of the Roman streets. Before the Samnite we do not have any information about large modifications of the area of the foro but we could imagine that,within a new wall fence, this flat area could gain a new central meaning. New buildings, disposed as oriented by the layers of the terracing of the behind slope, raise but walls and gates suggest other layers. 3. The changing of Cuma to the hinterland. The radical changing of the urban structure happens during the Roman Age. The structure itself is based on its monumental Foro. The majority of the space is take up by the massive Capitolinum and surrounded, on the other three sides, by a two orders courtyard made of grey tuff. The construction of Arco Felice crossed by the new Via Domiziana ( I a.C.), the last infrastructural cut in the top of Mountain Grillo, is the conclusive act of the transformation of the city into a noble ‘ city of passage’ in the itinerary from Rome to the close Puteoli.