I'm reading "A Day In The Life Of Ancient Rome" by Alberto Angela. In it he states that according to a document discovered by archaeologists, the second century city of ancient Rome had 46,602 insulae (an insulae being an ancient apartment complex) in an area of roughly 5000 acres (the estimated area of the second century city of Rome). How is this possible? This means at the very best an insulae would be only one-tenth of an acre in size. Someone is missing something somewhere. Is it me?
I'm not sure I see the problem here. A tenth of an acre is rather a lot of space. Moreover, insulae were notoriously cramped and quite small, building up to considerable height rather than out.
If the entire city of Rome was nothing but insulae, each would have an average footprint of just 4200 square feet (+-). Supposing the insulae took up half the total area of Rome, the other half being taken up by municipal parks, private domuses (over 1700 of them), public buildings such as the colosseum, amphitheater, Circus Maximus and the like. That leaves the average insulae a footprint of only about 1200 square feet. I guess that's possible. I just thought the insulae were much larger - being the forerunners of modern day city blocks. Thank you for your reply.