ABSTRACT
It is traditional to focus the urban problem of the early Middle Ages almost exclusively on north-western Europe, France, the Netherlands, England, the Rhinelands and, thus focused, to contain it between two irrefutable determinants: neatly defined points of departure and of arrival. At the beginning, there was urban decay, starting with the economic crisis of the Roman Empire in the third century and marking the gradual disappearance of the ancient city, of urban institutions and of the urban way of life in the West, which was barbarised and ruralised to an increasing extent. The Roman city took the form of a monumental nucleus, relatively confined, the site of the forum, the temple and the praetorium. All the rest of the urban space, which may be called the ancient city, presented a diverse appearance: villas, shanties, gardens and cultivated land formed a poorly defined urban zone.
