Archaeological Park of Urbs Salvia: Roman City and Monumental Remains
Site at a Glance
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- Italy
- Primary era
- Classical
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Classical
- Civilizations
- Roman
- Site type
- City
On this page23 sections
History
The Archaeological Park of Urbs Salvia in Italy preserves the remains of a Roman city near modern Urbisaglia, whose development began in the late third or early second century BC. The settlement grew along the Via Salaria Gallica, and its urban section became the cardo maximus, the principal north-south street of a Roman town. Its terraces, public buildings, and sanctuary later gave the city a pronounced Hellenistic character.
From settlement to colony
The first settlement arose through the spontaneous arrival of colonists from the Etruscan-Latium region. During this early phase, a conciliabulum, a local settlement or meeting centre that could precede a formally organized town, developed beside the road. In the second half of the second century BC, during the period associated with the Gracchan reforms, further colonists reorganized the settlement according to an urban plan. It then took the name Pollentia.
Pliny the Elder referred to its inhabitants as the “Urbe Salvia Pollentini.” The colony later adopted the name Urbs Salvia, probably to stress its connection with the construction of the sanctuary dedicated to Salus Augusta. This was the imperial form of the Roman goddess Salus, whose associations with safety and well-being became part of the religious and political language of the Roman imperial system.
Imperial monumentalization
During the Augustan period, and through later interventions under Tiberius and Claudius, veterans and discharged soldiers associated with Octavian, the name used by Augustus before he became emperor, and Antony transformed the city. Late Republican structures were destroyed, levelled, or reused as the urban centre acquired monumental buildings, including the theatre and the Temple-Cryptoportico of Salus Augusta.
Gaius Fufius Geminus, a Roman senator and consul connected with Urbs Salvia, was responsible for the theatre’s construction before AD 23 and probably also promoted the sanctuary complex. In AD 22, the serious illness of Livia Drusilla, the wife of Augustus and mother of Tiberius, provided the political occasion for building the sanctuary as a national centre of Salus. The cult consequently took the more explicitly political form of Salus Augusta.
Urbs Salvia reached its greatest monumental development under the Flavian emperors, especially through the benefactions of local notables who had enriched themselves through service to the emperors. Around AD 81, Lucius Flavius Silva Nonius Bassus, a native of the city and a lieutenant of Emperor Titus, commissioned the amphitheatre after leading the Roman force involved in the capture of Masada, a fortified settlement in Judaea. He presented the building to his home city.
Crisis and decline
Signs of crisis appeared during the fourth century AD. Public and private buildings, including the cryptoportico, suffered serious damage, partly from seismic events, while the city became increasingly unable to carry out reconstruction. The passage of the Visigoths under King Alaric in AD 408–409 accelerated the decline. Urbs Salvia was plundered and partly destroyed, although settlement continued for some time.
In the sixth century, the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea described Urbs Salvia after travelling with the general Belisarius. He presented it as a city that was probably still inhabited but had not recovered from its ruins. The population gradually left the lowland Roman city and established a settlement on the summit of the Colle di San Biagio, creating the first nucleus of modern Urbisaglia. Dante Alighieri later evoked the decline of Urbs Salvia in the sixteenth canto of the Paradiso, using it as an example of the inevitable decay of cities and lineages.
Excavation and protection
Regular archaeological excavations have been carried out since 1995 by the University of Macerata’s Department of Archaeology under a concession from the Ministry of Culture. Work has examined the forum, the southern sector of the Temple-Cryptoportico, and the northern sector, where an ironworking forge from the Roman Republican period, dating to the third or second century BC, was uncovered. Excavations south of the sanctuary exposed paved roads and two building complexes, while further investigations identified substantial parts of the forum porticoes and a probable bath building.
The park is administered within the Marche regional museum system and has the status of a national archaeological park. Its associated archaeological museum in modern Urbisaglia preserves material from the ancient city, including sculpture and inscriptions recovered from the excavations.
Remains
The archaeological park covers approximately 40 hectares, corresponding to the principal urban area of Urbs Salvia. The city was laid out on a sequence of artificial terraces descending from the Colle di San Biagio toward the valley. The surviving remains include the high-level water system, theatre, sanctuary, amphitheatre, streets, walls, forum areas, and buildings still under investigation. A route through the ancient city links the reservoir, theatre, building with niches, Temple-Cryptoportico, and amphitheatre across approximately one kilometre.
Water system and upper terraces
Aqueduct reservoir
The Roman aqueduct reservoir occupies the highest point of the ancient city, on the summit of the Colle di San Biagio. It collected and settled spring water before gravity-fed distribution through Urbs Salvia. Two communicating barrel-vaulted galleries, built in Roman concrete and lined with waterproof cocciopesto, held approximately 1,000 cubic metres of water. A narrow corridor gives access to the structure, while the water inlets and outlets, inspection shafts, and ventilation openings remain visible.
The reservoir’s lumina, or openings, served several practical purposes. They allowed the water level and quality to be monitored, ventilated the galleries, and permitted maintenance. The aqueduct that supplied the reservoir extended for approximately 1.5 kilometres, following a gentle and constant gradient from a spring on the opposite side of modern Urbisaglia.
Building with niches and cryptoportico
An intermediate terrace between the theatre plateau and the forum contains a building whose wall has six broad niches. The niches helped counteract the pressure of the ground behind the wall and created a scenographic connection between different urban levels. A cryptoportico, meaning a covered gallery used for circulation and structural support, probably consisted of three galleries arranged in two aisles. It concealed the building with niches and enclosed the terrace in front of it.
Two galleries remain visible and retain poorly legible wall paintings. Roman remains from the area were reused in modern farm buildings, which now serve as offices, laboratories, and storage for museum services.
Theatre and performance complex
Theatre seating and structure
The theatre stands on one of the highest terraces in a commanding position and is among the largest Roman theatres in Italy. Built before AD 23 in a Greek-derived design adapted to the hillside, it used brick-faced concrete. Ancient landslides caused structural disturbances in the building.
The cavea, or curved seating area, was divided into three levels and six wedges. An annular corridor distributed spectators, supported the pressure of the hillside behind the theatre, and drained water infiltration. A small temple or sacellum once stood above the seating area.
Stage building and rear portico
The foundations of the stage building survive. Its central semicircular exedra, a rounded recess, framed the Porta regia, the entrance intended for the principal actors. The side Portae hospitales provided additional stage entrances. Service channels and fittings for stage machinery are also visible.
Behind the stage, a broad terrace was supported on three sides by a substantial retaining wall. It contained the quadrangular Porticus post scaenam, a portico behind the stage. Recent excavations exposed its brick column bases, which have since been covered.
Sculptural decoration
Eighteenth-century excavations and later campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s recovered numerous sculptural elements associated particularly with the theatre’s stage façade. The finds included a head of Dionysus, the Greco-Roman god associated with wine, performance, and theatre; a portrait head of Emperor Tiberius; two figures in togas; and a finely made draped female statue. These works are preserved in the State Archaeological Museum of Urbisaglia.
Temple of Salus Augusta
Temple and terrace
The Temple-Cryptoportico complex of Salus Augusta stood at the foot of the hill beside the Via Salaria Gallica, facing toward the forum. The temple was a six-column, front-facing building. Part of its podium and traces of the internal dividing walls survive, indicating a front porch and a central chamber ending in a semicircular rear wall, where the cult image probably stood.
The temple rose on an artificial terrace created by a U-shaped, partly subterranean cryptoportico. Four galleries surrounded it. Three were divided into two aisles by central pillars, while the fourth functioned as an access corridor. Two symmetrical side stairways led to a platform, followed by a central stairway to the temple’s front porch.
Painted galleries
The cryptoportico contains one of the most extensive and best-preserved Roman pictorial complexes in central Italy. Its frescoes follow the Third Pompeian Style and are arranged in three horizontal zones. A dark lower zone supports a central zone of panels with military trophies, while the upper zone presents hunting scenes, exotic animals, and lunar masks. The imagery relates to Augustan and imperial propaganda.
City walls and funerary monuments
Urban walls and gates
The city walls formed a circuit of approximately 2,500 metres around about 40 hectares. Built of concrete faced with brick, the walls were punctuated by polygonal-plan guard towers. Their construction expressed civic prestige and self-assertion as well as defining the urban boundary.
The northern side survives almost completely, and substantial sections also remain on the southern and eastern sides. Two original gates are identifiable. The northern gate stood on the Via Salaria Gallica and was also called the mesopirgo gate because of the trapezoidal space in front of it. The eastern gate on the road to Firmum was known as the Porta Gemina and had two passageways. Its remains are incorporated into a nineteenth-century farm building.
Funerary towers
A short distance outside the northern gate stand two tower-shaped funerary monuments. Their internal concrete cores survive. The monuments originally contained cremation urns, were faced with white limestone slabs, and carried commemorative inscriptions.
Amphitheatre
Structure and seating
The amphitheatre was built outside the city walls, a position that facilitated the movement of spectators and avoided using extensive urban space. It is among the best-preserved Roman amphitheatres in the Marche. The elliptical building could accommodate approximately 5,150 spectators, and its arena measured 59 by 35 metres.
Constructed in concrete faced with brick and alternating panels of opus reticulatum mixtum, a combination of net-like facing units and brickwork, the amphitheatre survives around its full perimeter to the level of the first seating tier. The first level of vomitoria, passageways giving access to and from the seating, also remains. Broad niches in the outer wall probably held statues in some cases and stairways to the upper level in others. The foundations of pillars supporting the upper storeys and a broad external portico are visible.
Entrances and arena drainage
Two vaulted entrances for gladiators lie on the amphitheatre’s north-south major axis. Beside the southern entrance is a narrow passage identified as the Porta Libitinensis. This doorway was associated with Libitina, a Roman goddess connected with death and funerary rites, and was used to remove the dead from the arena after combat.
The outer wall has lost much of its stone or brick facing, exposing the concrete core. Many bricks were removed during the Middle Ages for construction in Urbisaglia and at the nearby Abbey of Chiaravalle di Fiastra. The arena retains channels for the inflow and drainage of water, which were used to clean the fighting surface of blood. Two inscriptions preserved in the museum record the amphitheatre’s construction.
Forum, roads, and working areas
Archaeological work south of the Temple-Cryptoportico has exposed sections of two paved Roman roads and two building complexes. In the northern sector, excavators uncovered a Republican-period forge for working iron, dating to the third or second century BC. The forum area includes a Republican-period temple or small temple and remains of the porticoes that surrounded the central civic and commercial space.
The wider territory associated with Urbs Salvia also includes the Roman villa of Villamagna near the Abbey of Fiastra. Excavation there has revealed monumental structures and a brewery, with evidence for beer production described as unique among discoveries so far made in central Italy.
