ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a series of contrasting perceptions, varied in chronology (from the sixth to the twelfth century), geography (a number of places in northern and central Italy), and type of evidence (archaeological and written), of a set of early medieval urban landscapes. This choice depends on historiography: in Italy, much more intensively than in other countries, the issue of urban continuity or discontinuity has been a longstanding subject of research, because it was connected to nineteenth-century discourses about national identity. Still-living and long-dead historians share a favourable attitude towards the age of Theoderic, interpreting it as a short parenthesis of peace and prosperity, evincing at once nostalgia for a happy time, and regret for the inescapable fact that it was as transitory and illusory as an Indian summer. The shifting terminology has to be compared to the different uses of early medieval urban spaces within and outside the city walls.
