Attività produttive, igiene pubblica, problematiche ambientali a Roma e in Italia nel Medioevo

In the last decades, research on late medieval and Renaissance Rome has experienced genuinely remarkable development, which has affected the most diverse aspects of the city’s history: the issues concerning agro-pastoral activity, economic-financial activity, artisan production and commercial flows, political-institutional affairs, social and cultural life and urban development have drawn the most significant benefit from the climate of renewed and active attention, thanks to the systematic investigation of the archival funds and the valorization of testimonies of different nature (legislative, literary, archaeological, artistic-architectural, etc.).

The proposed study day identifies a circumscribed problem but indeed of no secondary interest for the city and its life dynamics: one linked to the environment, public hygiene, the distribution and use of water, the organization of public spaces and productive activities always in relation to environmental problems, topics on which scholars have already partly experimented but which require in-depth investigations and the development of an organic and thoughtful framework of knowledge acquired. This may be all the more interesting as it is projected onto a period in which we are witnessing a profound renewal of the city’s urban planning, the intensification of artisanal and manufacturing activities, a significant increase in the population after the decline which occurred in the late fourteenth century and early fifteenth century.