Old streets and older streets

A street in ancient Pompei

I've been thinking of some of the streets I have walked recently. The street in front of our house is quite old, I think that it was relaid in the 1930's. It is made of large, heavy red bricks. I found out that it is cheaper to use the brickpavers than to have a concrete street. The bricks are more expensive to install, but cheaper to maintain and longer lasting.

In Europe, our street would be an infant street. There I walked on ancient streets, medieval streets and modern streets. Florence originally was a Roman town, something that I didn't know. I think that most its Roman aspects were covered over by renaissance buildings. Pompei, of course, is what is left of a Roman town. Dubrovnik is a medieval town, which is pretty much intact. Toarmina, in Sicily, was originally a Greek town, then a Roman town, then a medieval town.
Roman towns were build on a grid system. All of them followed the same plan. The two main streets were called the cardo and the decumanus. The forum and market place were located where these streets intersected. In Florence, the site of the forum is now the Piazza della Republica.


Dubrovnik, Croatia, appears to use a grid system, but they have stair streets, up a few dozen steps, then an intersecting street, up more stairs, then another street, until you get to the city walls.







In Monaco, the old section, which is near the palais royal, has narrow, stone paved streets.












In Taormina, Sicily, this narrow street has stairs and also functions as a furniture showroom.