Grid-based design in Roman villas: a method of analysis

Abstract

The perceivable regularity of some Roman villas can be understood in the context of a grid-based design. In this paper we try to clarify the requirements under which we may consider that a villa has an outline based on a grid and we quantify the accuracy of the correspondence between a villa's plan and a given grid. We follow this approach with some Roman villas in Portugal and use the grids as a tool for the analysis and the reconstruction of their plans.