VERCELLAE
(Vercelli) Piedmont, Italy.
About 6 km NE of Turin and in antiquity a city in the
Augustan Regio IX. It became a Roman municipium
after A.D. 49 and was enrolled in the tribus Aniense. It
developed on the site of an oppidum of the Libici, whose
name it preserved. The city had a regular urban plan
within a fortified circuit wall, which presumably was
rectangular. A section of the N side of the wall has been
identified among the houses on Via Gattinara. At the
intersection of the axis streets recognizable in the modern Via Gioberti and Via Ferraris, the forum rose in the
area of present-day Piazza Cavour. (Via Gioberti is
built over the road from Augusta Taurinorum to Mediolanum, while Via Ferraris joins to the S the direct route
for Dertona - Placentia and to the N the road for Eporedia.) Beneath the pavement of Piazza Cavour, imposing structures emerged in the course of excavations in the last century and more recently porticos with tabernae
and a bath building. Remains of baths have also been
located in Via del Duomo. A shrine with a dedicatory
inscription to the Matronae was discovered in Via Verdi
and ruins of unidentified buildings in Via Gioberti.
In Via Simone di Colloviano, outside the walls, occasional discoveries have unearthed the structure of an imposing building whose function is uncertain and in Via Monte di Pietà, in the area of the civic theater, a building with an external ambulacrum, probably a cistern, a
castellum for the distribution of water according to the
structure of the aqueduct whose remains have been
found in Corso della Libertà. The aqueduct had lead
piping, some of which carried 22 liters per second. Still
extra moenia was the theater, mentioned in a document
of 1142, the amphitheater, and the cemeteries. The latest
burial ground is in the area of Piazza Duomo and the
most extensive is on the road to Piacenza and along the
road to Milan.
In the Early Empire, the city was the headquarters of
a garrison of the Sarmati and the temporary quarters
for a contingent of Armenian equites. In the 4th-5th c.,
it was among the major cities of the region. It became an
active center for the spread of Christianity and for its
organization in Piemonte. Statues, architectural fragments, amphorae, and sepulchral articles have been
brought to light in the city and in its territory and have
been preserved in the local Museo Leone.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cic.
Fam. 11.19;
Strab. 5.1.12; Sil.
Pun.
8.597;
Plin. 3.21; Tac.
Hist. 1.70; Ptol. 3.1.36; Amm.
Marc. 22.3.4;
Not. Dig. 121;
Ant. It. 341, 344, 347, 351;
Tab. Peut.;
Rav. Cosm. 4.30.252.
CIL V, 6652; L. Bruzza,
Iscrizioni vercellesi (1874)
G. C. Faccio et al.
Vecchia Vercelli (1926); P. Barocelli,
“Ritrovamenti di sepolcreti di età romana,”
BSPABA (1926) 87f; V. Viale, “Scoperta di un edificio romano a
Bercelli,”
BSPABA (1931) 69ff; G. Faccio,
Le successive
cinte fortificate di Vercelli (1963); V. Viale, Vercelli e il
Vercellese nell'antichità (1971).
S. FINOCCHI
