No 14 in Fig. 2) 
RECONSTRUCTION OF THE ROMAN WAREHOUSES IN ANCONA HARBOUR 
Fausto Pugnaloni and Roberto Papa 
The Roman harbour 
The history of Ancona is intimately related to that of its harbour. The town's name, from the Greek ANKON (elbow), reflects its 
geomorphologic appearance as an elbow protruding into the sea. 
At the time of the Greek colony, Ancona was almost certainly made up of the Acropolis on Guasco hill and the harbour below it; the 
harbour was sheltered from the northern winds by low reefs, the natural continuation of the Guasco into the sea. 
During the subsequent period of the Roman town the urban nucleus, which corresponded to a part of the present historical centre, 
covered Guasco hill and later spread to the valley denominated Pennocchiara; this valley has a NW-SE orientation and is now the site 
of the current “corsi” (streets), opened when the old town centre was restructured in the 19™ century. 
The early plans had to come to terms with the site’s morphology. The problem of the slide-prone soil was addressed by building a 
support structure for the hill slope, as witnessed by substruction walls anchored to the reefs and connected to them with transverse 
walls; the latter were unearthed in the area behind the apses of the early Christian basilica, identified under the Church of S. Maria 
della Piazza. 
Orography, too, surely played a role in road planning: based on metrologic studies and the orientation of the present streets, the main 
axis of the Roman town appears to have been via Pizzecolli, a road cut into the hillside which, following as much as possible the 
contour lines, joined the older town quarters on the uppermost areas of the promontory to the newer quarters erected in the Imperial 
age. 
The identification of via Pizzecolli as the main urban axis is also supported by the archaeological evidence of road paving found 
there and via degli Orefici, its natural continuation into the valley of Pennocchiara. 
The three main streets, parallel to the extent permitted by the orographic conditions and oriented in N-S direction (the current via 
Pizzecolli, via Vanvitelli and via Tribunali) must have been connected by stairs cutting into the slope. This hypothesis seems to be 
confirmed by Ancona's medieval urban plan and by other similar town plans of Roman age. 
The distribution of functions must have been fairly rigid. The terraced acropolis (of which two rectangular stone walls are extant) 
was the holy area on top of the hill; below it, the forum housed the juridical and administrative functions; the residential areas and the 
baths were below still, and finally there was the harbour, the function of its warehouses was typically commercial. 
Augustus's and Trajan's warehouses 
In the course of the excavation of a multi-storey parking 
building aimed at reducing the pressure of traffic on the harbour 
area close to the historical centre of Ancona, some “brickwork” 
was unearthed a few years ago. It certainly belongs to Roman 
buildings dating from the 1* century B.C. to the 1* A.D. and is 
similar to extant buildings lying nearby of which it is in all 
likelihood the natural extension. 
In the harbour area, in present-day Lungomare Vanvitelli, 
structures belonging to a quay and to horrea (warehouses) had 
already been discovered, the latter of the age of Augustus (1* 
century A.D.) and Trajan (2™ century A.D.). 
It is a series of walls with a comb-like arrangement placed at a 
distance of approximately 5 m and outlining buildings whose 
length cannot be gauged (all thresholds being lost) but which 
are likely to have measured 13 m on the evidence from other 
Roman harbour towns (like Aquileia and Civitavecchia). 
The recently discovered structures belong to a different phase of 
construction: indeed, whereas the other walls were 
contemporary to the foundation of the Roman town, these 
derive from the enlargement works ordered by emperor Trajan. 
Further differences are the orientation and the construction 
typology of the newer buildings: whereas the Augustan 
structures had two levels, of which the lower functioned as 
warehouses and the upper as cisterns or further warehouse 
Space, those built by Trajan had a single level, they were 
probably taller, had two storeys indicated by the presence of 
brickwork stairs, and may have had sloping pitches. 
A historical research undertaken to gain further details into the 
range of types of Roman warehouses demonstrated that all 
Roman Tyrrhenian harbours of the early imperial age had 
warehouses similar to those found in Ancona. 
The warehouses of the harbours of Claudius and Trajan at 
Portus (Fiumicino), of Trajan’s harbour at Centumcellae 
(Civitavecchia), of Antrium (Anzio), as well as along the Tiber, 
all had parallel walls, a comb-like arrangement, wooden roofs 
with sloping or vaulted brickwork pitches, a back wall and a 
front one with columns supporting beams denoting the entrance. 
In Centumcellae, a representative case, all the warehouses — still 
easily recognised — consist of a double row of parallel, 
rectangular rooms on two levels preceded by a grand arcade 
with red and black granite columns. The buildings lie parallel at 
a distance of approximately 5.70 m and measure 15 m in length 
and 5 m in height. 
The walls are opus reticulatum with brick layers, whereas the 
roof is covered with brick vaults. 
A further example of Roman warehouses can be observed in 
Aquileia; here they consist of a single, long building about 180 
m in length and an average 13.50 m in width standing 14.50 m 
from the quay. Internally, a series of parallel rooms measure 
about 4 m. 
The virtual model 
The architectural and volumetric features of Roman harbour 
structures (warehouses) thus ascertained, we went on to create a 
computer graphics model. 
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