The closed ring
Continuous houses enclosing the whole oval void.
Kasa Fue โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Myrabella โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท Holger Uwe Schmitt โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Mantovaniraffaella โ CC BY-SA 4.0
**A completely enclosed oval square whose shape is a Roman amphitheatre, with houses built over its tiers** โ in the heart of Lucca. โ **The story is in the shape**: a **Roman amphitheatre** of the 2nd century AD stood here. **Then the building vanished** โ its stone quarried for churches and palaces โ โ **but people built their houses on its foundations and in its openings**, **so the urban fabric preserved the amphitheatre's form after the amphitheatre itself was gone**. โ **The present square was opened in 1830**: the buildings in the middle of the oval were cleared **and the original void reappeared**, ringed by a continuous band of houses. โ **You enter only through four low gateways** in the ring โ **it is entirely closed off from the streets**, and you arrive through a short, sudden tunnel. โ **You can see surviving Roman stone** in the outer walls from the surrounding lanes.
Continuous houses enclosing the whole oval void.
Low tunnels that are the square's only entrances.
Remains of the original amphitheatre in the outer walls.
Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, 55100 Lucca, Italy
**Because ownership and rights in land outlast stone โ and it is a common phenomenon in Italy.** โ **The mechanism**: when a great building like an amphitheatre is abandoned, **it does not disappear at once**. **Its stone is quarried** gradually for churches and palaces (which is what happened here), โ **but its foundations stay in the ground** โ **and they are the cheapest thing to build on**: a ready-made, solid, free footing. โ **So people build their houses over the arches and in the gaps between the piers** โ **and each house inherits the shape of the part it stands on**. โ **Then the shapes are fixed by ownership**: **a plot's boundary becomes a legal right, inherited and sold** โ **so houses are rebuilt for centuries within the same lines**, long after the reason for those lines is forgotten. โ **The form migrates from stone into law.** โ **Italy has many examples**: **Piazza Navona in Rome** is an oval because it was **Domitian's stadium**; **Florence, Arles and others** carry Roman amphitheatre fabric. โ **What distinguishes Lucca**: **the void itself was reopened in 1830** โ **so you see the shape whole, not inferred from a map**.
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