La basilica vitruviana della Colonia Iulia Fanestris e la realtà archeologica di Fano

The basilica that Vitruvius claimed to have built in the Colonia Iulia Fanestris (V, 1, 6-10) is one of the best-known monuments of antiquity, even though concrete archaeological evidence has never been found in the area of the city of Fano, the modern town built upon the ruins of the ancient Fanum Fortunae. The present contribution aims at providing an overview of the studies devoted to this important building, examining the principal reconstruction hypotheses developed according to the information offered by Vitruvius' work, from the first editions of the De Architectura published in the fifteenth century until the most recent research works on the topic.

These studies will be discussed in light of the archaeological evidence provided by the area of the modern city of Fano. According to several parallels established between the dimensions of the basilica furnished by Vitruvius and archaeological evidence discovered in the historic centre of the modern city over the nineteenth century, this contribution will offer a new hypothesis regarding the localisation of this monument, based on the study of both architectural and urbanistic data. [Publisher's text]