Le fasi delle fortificazioni di Pompei. Stato della conoscenza

Abstract

Although Pompeii preserves one of the most intact defensive devices of antiquity, in use for over 600 years, the city
walls are today one of the less known and documented monuments of the archaeological area. The various segments of
preexisting walls, highlighted by infrequent archaeological excavations, revealed six primary architectural construction
phases based primarily, even today, on surveys conducted between May 1926 and October 1927 by Amedeo Maiuri.
This research, conducted within the project of “Tor Vergata”, gathered and analyzed all the bibliographical, literary,
cartographic and iconographical information about the city walls of Pompeii from their discovery to the most recent
investigations, and it provided the analysis of the stratigraphy of the materials and building techniques of significant
sample sections of the structure. This process enabled the acquisition of new data which were useful for developing the
reconstruction, in higher detail, of the constructive and destructive activities that characterized the long history of the
defense system of the ancient city. What emerges is a much more articulated and calculated series of architectural activities
that mark differently, in different sections, the construction history of the fortifications of Pompeii.