ABSTRACT
While it is impossible to reconstruct the actual emotions that urban landscapes evoked in the inhabitants of Roman cities, the idea that urban environments could have certain emotional qualities offers a valuable starting point for discussing the history of Roman urban space. At Pompeii, the Via dell’Abbondanza was characterized by long sequences of shops and workshops offering a wide variety of audiovisual stimuli; the road can be shown to have changed character at multiple points, with different stretches evoking different responses by its users; the amphitheatre, conversely, offered a much more unified environment, with clearly deliniated atmospheric qualities, closely associated with the emotionally charged events taking place there. Besides these generic experiential qualities of urban spaces, the urban landscape for individuals was also imbued with emotional qualities related to their specific ties and roles within the community, for example through neighbourhood formation, religious activity, and political office. Analysing these emotional qualities of urban spaces shows how the urban spatial experience differed sharply between individuals belonging to different social groups.
