The ideal city. Between utopia and reality
What’s the ideal city?
Philosophers, historians, urban planners, archaeologists and other specialists will attempt to answer this question at a forthcoming symposium, La Ville idéale, Entre utopie et réalité, at the University of Lausanne.
What did the ideal city look like in ancient times? A short journey from utopia to reality.
For Plato,Atlantis undoubtedly represented the ideal city, and a beautiful one at that:
“The entire temple, on the outside, was clad in silver, except for the acroteria, which were clad in gold; inside, the vault was all ivory enameled with gold, silver and orichalcum; everything else, walls, columns and pavements, was trimmed with orichalcum. ”(Critias, 116d)
According to legend, Athens’ magnificent rival was swallowed up by Zeus because of its excessiveness.
Other ancient cities with exceptional destinies, not to mention the Greek cities and Rome, are well worth a visit.
Babylon, the Gateway of God, is known not only for its Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, but also for its famous Tower of Babel. Mentioned in the Bible(Genesis, XI, 1-9), this astonishing construction is described by Herodotus(Enquiry, I, 181-183):
” It’s a regular square with a hundred stadia in every direction. In the middle is a massive tower, one stage long and one stage wide; on top of this tower rises another, and on top of this second another, and so on: so that there are up to eight of them. On the outside, there are revolving steps by which you can climb up to each tower.
Carthage was considered by Aristotle to be the city with the best governance. A sworn enemy of Rome, it was razed to the ground, burned and annihilated by Scipio’s legions in 146 BC. Taking advantage of its exceptional geographical location, the city was rebuilt by the Romans, who did not hesitate to make it the capital of proconsular Africa. And this despite the advice of Cato the Elder: “Delenda est Carthago!”, “Carthage must be destroyed!”
Pompeii, meanwhile, has been frozen in time since 79 AD. In 62, the city had already suffered a fearsome earthquake, from which it recovered, before its beautiful image of a happy and prosperous city was definitively buried under a blackish layer several meters thick. Pliny the Younger recounts the eruption of Vesuvius and the death of his uncle, Pliny the Elder:
” He (Pliny the Elder) was in Misene, commanding the fleet in person. On the 9th before the calends of September, around the seventh hour, my mother told him that an extraordinary cloud had been seen, both in size and appearance. […] My uncle found all this curious and good to know more closely, knowing as he did. […] Frequent, widespread earthquakes shook the houses, which seemed to be torn from their foundations, swaying one way and then the other. Fragments of pumice, light and porous it’s true, but feared, fell into the open air. “(Letter to Tacitus, excerpts)
Petra, carved out of the rock and nestling at the bottom of a rocky gorge, was abandoned in the 7thcentury AD and then forgotten until the first archaeological excavations in 1812. To reach it, you have to follow a very narrow gorge (only 3 to 11 metres wide) for almost three kilometers. Strabo describes it as follows:
” The capital of the Nabataeans, Petra, derives its name from the peculiar circumstance that, built on a generally flat and level terrain, it is surrounded by a rampart of rock, which, steep and abrupt on the outer side, contains on its inner slope abundant springs, precious for feeding the city and watering the gardens.(Geography, XVI, 4 – Arabia, 21)
Troy, immortalized by Homer and later by Schliemann, was destroyed and rebuilt 9 times between the 3rd millennium and the 6th century AD.
“I, Poseidon, built a wall for the Trojans, wide and beautiful, so that the city would be indestructible. ”(Iliad, XXI, 446-447)
Alesia is famous for its siege by Julius Caesar during the Gallic War:
“This place was situated on the top of a mountain, in such an elevated position that it seemed that it could only be taken by a full-scale siege.”(La Guerre des Gaules, 7)
The city that witnessed Vercingetorix’s defeat has long been the subject of debate as to its location. Its final fall in 52 BC officially brought Gaul into the Roman Empire.
Knossos, with its labyrinthine palace, was the capital of Minoan civilization. This monumental complex combines various activities: administrative center, workshops and warehouses, sanctuaries and royal residence. This complex of over 1,000 interlocking rooms gave rise to the legend of the Labyrinth:
“Minos wants to rob the world of the shame of his marriage: he imprisons the Minotaur in the deepest recesses of the palace. Daedalus, the most famous of architects, has laid the foundations. The eye wanders through the infinite paths, with no end and no way out, which intersect, mingle and merge with each other.” (Ovid, MetamorphosesVIII, 157-161)
To conclude our journey, let’s return to our fantasized Atlantis, through another of Plato’ s descriptions of this utopian land:
“With all the riches they drew from the land, the inhabitants built the temples, the kings’ palaces, the harbors, the shipyards, and embellished the rest of the country in the order I’m about to describe. They began by building bridges over the seawater ditches that surrounded the ancient metropolis, to provide a passageway to the outside world and to the royal palace. From the outset, they had built this palace in the place inhabited by the god and their ancestors. Each king, on receiving it from his predecessor, added to its embellishments and put all his care into surpassing it, so that they made their dwelling an object of admiration by the grandeur and beauty of their work.” (Critias, 115b, c and d)
To continue this exploration, our Renouvaud selection includes books on ancient cities, urban planning and contemporary thinking.
Evelyne Barman Crotti
