CENTUMCELLAE
(Civitavecchia) Italy.
A
city on the Via Aurelia 4 miles N of Cape Linaro, the first
real promontory on the Tyrrhenian shore N of the Tiber.
It was founded to support a port Trajan built there ca.
A.D. 106 and has owed its continuing prosperity to the
excellence of its harbor. When Rutilius Namatianus sailed
up the coast in A.D. 416, it was the only city of the
Antonine Itinerary still flourishing; and it continued to
flourish for four centuries. It was taken by the Saracens
in 828 and the inhabitants were expelled, but 60 years
later they returned. The city's name was then changed
to Civitas Vetula, which became Civitavecchia; it is still
the port of Rome.
The younger Pliny (
Epist. 6.31) is the first author to
mention Centumcellae. He was summoned to the emperor's council in the “beautiful villa overlooking the
sea and surrounded by the greenest of fields” where
Trajan lived during the harbor's construction. The site of
this is supposed to be the Belvedere, 1 km E of the
present city. The foundations of the two moles of the
harbor and the artificial island that lay between them,
which Pliny saw under construction, form part of the
substructures of the present harbor; and until the bombardments of 1943-44, one of the Roman towers at
the harbor mouth was still standing. A gateway to Tmjan's inner harbor, the Vecchia Darsena, with a paved
road leading through it, can still be seen, as well as
stretches of fine reticulate walls of the Roman warehouses built into later constructions behind the present
docks. The grid of modern streets behind the harbor is
based on that of Trajan's time.
A detachment of the imperial fleet was based at Centumcellae through the 2d and 3d c. The gravestones
recovered regularly record the deceased's name, age,
years of service, ship, and fleet (the Ravennas or the
Misenensis), and often his birthplace. The Ravenna
sailors were largely Dalmatians and Pannonians; the
Misenense were Egyptians and Thracians. The ships were
mostly triremes, but quadriremes and biremes also appear.
Little clusters of hut foundations going back to the
Bronze Age have been found scattered over the territory
of Centumcellae. The metal in the Tolfa mountains, of
which Cape Linaro is a spur, must have been a prime
reason for this early habitation, as well as the superior
fishing off its rocky coast; a string of hot springs paralleling the coast a few kilometers inland may also have
been an attraction. Under the Empire these supplied bathing establishments, the best preserved of which, the
Terme Taurine or Baths of Trajan, lie ca. 3 km NE of
Civitavecchia. The imperial buildings, dated by brick-stamps to the time of Hadrian, incorporate the circular
laconicum and calidarium of an earlier bath, perhaps of
Sullan date. The great imperial calidarium, into which
the hot spring still flows, and its adjacent rooms are in
opus reticulatum and brickwork; the vaulted ceilings were
constructed with ribs of brick, possibly the earliest example of such construction; walls and floors were covered with marble, and ceilings with stucchi. Adjacent to
the baths are a library and a series of small rooms of
uniform size arranged around a courtyard. These baths
were long famous; Rutilius visited and admired them
(
De reditu 249-76).
The Museo Nazionale at Civitavecchia displays excellent plans of Trajan's harbor and the Terme Taurine,
as well as epigraphical material and marbles from the
neighborhood.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
S. Bastianelli,
Centumcellae, Italia Romana: Municipi e Colonie I 14 (1954) 7-92; G. Lugli,
La Tecnica Edilizia Romana (1957) 625.
E. RICHARDSON
