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Aurelian Walls
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historic line of walls built around the city of Rome, Italy
Key facts
- Type
- Defensive wall
- Owner
- Italian Government
- Open to the public
- Open to public
- Condition
- Remaining sections: Either semi-ruinous or, partly restored
- Height
- Up to 10 metres (33 ft)
- Built
- 271–275 AD
- Built by
- Roman citizens
- Materials
- Concrete Brick Mortar
- Demolished
- Some parts in the Medieval Period
- Events
- Sack of Rome (410) Sack of Rome (455) Capture of Rome
- Garrison
- Praetorian Guard
- Occupants
- Romans
via Wikipedia infobox
~13 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Aurelian Walls (Italian: Mura aureliane) are a line of city walls built between 271 AD and 275 AD in Rome, Italy, during the reign of the Roman Emperor Aurelian. They superseded the earlier Servian Wall built during the 4th century BC.
The walls enclosed all the seven hills of Rome plus the Campus Martius and, on the right bank of the Tiber, the Trastevere district. The river banks within the city limits appear to have been left unfortified, although they were fortified along the Campus Martius. The size of the entire enclosed area is 1,400 hectares (3,500 acres). The wall cut through populated areas: in reality the city at the time embraced 2,400 hectares (5,900 acres). Pliny the Elder in the first century AD suggested that the densely populated areas, extrema tectorum ("the limits of the roofed areas") extended 2.8 kilometres (1.7 mi) from the Golden Milestone in the Forum (Natural History 3.67).
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Aurelian Walls” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.