Rome “Urbs Pensilis”: A Hanging City And Its Hanging Gardens

Rome “Urbs Pensilis”: A Hanging City And Its Hanging Gardens

AIA Society: Ottawa
Lecturer: Lynne Lancaster

Pliny the Elder, writing in the mid 1st century AD, called Rome an urbs pensilis, a “hanging city”. What does this even mean – a hanging city? It clearly has something to do with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. In this lecture we examine the hold that one city, Babylon, had on the imagination of Greco-Roman culture, and how it affected both the physical and conceptual image of another city, Rome, as it became the center of a new empire during the first century AD. During the course of the talk we also examine the evidence behind the proposal that Babylon was not, in fact, the location of this wonder of ancient world.

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