Ansedonia
The ancient Roman city of "Thing"

Thing, city of Roman foundation, Byzantine fortitude and medieval castle with the name of Ansedonia, rise then on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, on a rocky promontory (114 ms s.l.m.) what the Tombolo of Feniglia had tied to the primitive one "island" of the Argentario.

The colony of Thing was founded in 273 to.C., seven years after the conquest of the city etrusca of Vulci (280 to.C.), capital of the territory that extended him from the valley of the Albegna to that of the Fiora and over. The name derived from that more ancient than Cusi or Cusia, a small center etrusco that rose to the place of the actual Orbetello. The colonies founded from Rome had, especially in that period, is the function "to hold under control" the living precedents of the zone, that to reject the attacks of the enemies. Thing, in strategic position and provided of imposing boundaries, it seems to perfectly answer to this description: it was, in fact, surrounded by hostile Etruschi, not yet definitely subdued, and it leaned out on the Tyrrhenian sea, from which the attack of the Carthaginian ones was preannounced; the first war punica bursted later only nine years, in 264 to.C.

The urban center introduced, since the foundation, the typical plant of the Roman cities, constituted by a sharp pain grate of roads that you/they were crossed to straight angle. The urban area was built in various decades, giving the precedence to the works of fortification and the public buildings. The tallest point in the city is the arx, religious center with the Capitolium, the temple devoted to the triad Jupiter-Giunone-Minerva and symbol of the religion of state. In low it is instead the plaza of the hole with the centers of the political (comitium, curia and the same plaza, a temple devoted to the Harmony and the civil basilica) activity. The farmers' houses, longitudinally prepared in the long isolated rectangular, they were modular and you standardize. Every house, of lengthened proportions, it was separated in two parts: residence and garden, and you/he/she could have an underground cistern. The managing class lived in the ampler and luxurious houses instead, prepared along the principal roads of the city.

The Roman colonization didn't limit him to the creation of a new urban center. To Thing it is evident that the whole territory was restructured in base to an unitary and coherent project; the landscape changed radically: bridges and roads were built, and the agricultural grounds were separated according to the principles of the centuriazione. The territory of Thing preserves ample traces of this typical Roman division of the fields. In this zone, where the idrografia has always been problematic and the impaludamento always in trap, the Roman centuriazione resolved the difficulties of drain of the plain coastlines through a sharp pain net of perpendicular channels among theirs that reproduced, perhaps not by chance, the inclination of the terminal line of the river Albegna. The centuriazione also served however for the delimitation of the lotteries of earth that you/they were distributed to the farmers. To Thing every farmer seems has had a farm of 8 o16s iugeri, equal to one or two hectares around. The representatives of the managing class could count instead on wider lotteries.

To the feet of the promontory on which the city the rose you/he/she was built "Portus Cosanus", that had the greatest development to the beginning of the The century to.C., when the docks and the breakwaters of the preceding period were wide, while the wide lagoon retrostante (of which today a residue remains only: the Lake of Burano near Capalbio) you/he/she was used for raising fishes. The whole surrounding area the I bring you/he/she was equipped with imposing infrastructures cut in the rock of the promontory. To allow the drain and to avoid the insabbiamento of the I bring and of the lagoon, the strength of the tides of an emissary of the lagoon and a great natural fissure of the rock was exploited, today denominated: Cleft of the Regina, replaced, subsequently from a channel, today known as "Cuts her/it." The channel was equipped with mobile paratie in wood, that you/they flowed in special grooves, and they was open, according to the season, so that the forced tide it swept the deposits accumulated in the I bring and it allowed the connection with the open sea, necessary to avoid the stagnation of the water.

The city, had perhaps another landing in symmetrical position, on the other side of the promontory, to the origin of the tombolo of Feniglia. A Portus Fenilie, documented in slow-ancient and medieval sources, you/he/she could already have existed in age I delay - republican, as they would make to think the great unloadings of amphoras recovered in the pineta.

During the The century to.C. deep economic and social changes were verified that had the effect to separate the history of the city from that of the territory. In the city groups of houses of the farmers were restructured, with the purpose to get of the "domus" of the traditional Roman type, with atrium and peristilio, notching the picture of the native urbanism of the colony. Contemporarily the city lost the role of garrison to serve in the military of the zone (in the 89 to.C., with the Lex Iulia, Etruschi and Latin farmers they had the Roman citizen) and the valley of the Albegna from Saturnia to Talamone was run over in full from the war between Mario and Silla. Around 70 to.C. What devastated was, probably during the wars between Romans and pirates and it nearly stayed abandoned up to 20 to.C., when you/he/she was reconstructed, but only partially (the hole and the acropolis).

The changes that interested the territory were also them influenced by the war events. The sign of the downfall of the farmers as small owners, are nearly the total disappearance of their installations in the country, for new very greater agricultural firms, you manage making petition to enslaved. It deals with the villas that rise between II and The century to.C., probably overlapping himself/herself/itself to the fields centuriati of the colony and riutilizzandone the delimitations and the fundamental drains. The phenomenon is not limited to this territory, but it invests vast zones of Italy, particularly the areas bells, laziali and etrusche. In the zone the villa of Settefinestre has integrally been dug, a complex of buildings more of two hectares of surface, to the center of an ownership of the presumable dimension of 125 hectares of cultivated earth and as many of wood and pasture. The villa had a luxurious housing part endowed with porticos and gardens, adjacent to the fittingses for the production of the oil and the wine. The ovens of amphoras found in the territory and the wreckages found in the Mediterranean, testify as the wine of these zones it was largely exported. In the period from 100 to the 200 d.C. the villa was reconverted to the cultivation of the cereals integrated by the breeding of pigs.

Contemporarily they develop him on the coast luxurious villas, often of imperial ownership, you provides of deprived (as in the case of the villa in the place Saint Francesca of Talamone) landing, or that riutilizzavano preceding port structures, as in the case of the great villa in the Cuts place her that it overlaps to the rests of the Portus Cosanus. The villa of Settefinestre, was subsequently perhaps abandoned to an epidemic at the end of the II century. In the following centuries, between the IV and the You century, the ruins of the villa were used as shelter of nomadic shepherds. Probably, following the decrease of the population in the countries (they stay inhabited only few villas), the maintenance of the ditches was abandoned, still tied up to the functional network of the centuriazione, and it had beginning the impaludamento, irreversible for centuries.

The city, depopulated entirely by now almost, in the III century was object of a government intervention that founded you a community, perhaps an administrative center, defined in the registrations survivors (among which that bulwark in the town building of Orbetello), Res Publica Cosanorum. In the following century they seem frequented only few buildings, among which a small pagan sanctuary. A restructuring goes up again instead at the end of the V century, when a military garrison was installed in the buildings on purpose transformed of the arx, then strengthened in the You century. The inhabited area of that period was situated in the area of the hole, where a small church was built, above the ruins of the basilica. In this phase Thing could have been a Byzantine fortitude, sets to oppose the advanced longobarda. And' is made the hypothesis that the change of Thing name in Ansedonia, of clear Greek root, goes up again to this period. Beginning from the X century Ansedonia is busy from a new installation that has his/her center in the high ground to the east extremity of the Roman city. It deals with the castle that appears among the possessions of the abbey of the Three Fountains in Rome. Beginning from halves the XII century Ansedonia appears in the documents as civitas, title that competed to the Episcopalian centers or, as in this case, to the cities of ancient prestige; subsequently it passed through the alternate dominations of the Aldobrandeschis (1274) and the Republic of Orvieto. You/he/she was besieged and destroyed by the senesis in 1329.