Confini di proprietà ai confini di Roma: il caso dell’Esquilino sud-orientale

We can try to imagine what an ancient traveller could have seen on reaching the city of Rome while walking along the via Tiburtina or the via Labicana-Praenestina. He would have appreciated the multifunctional landscape of the south-eastern Esquiline, where giant aqueducts, extended necropolis and monumental tombs shared borders with lavish gardens. This paper focuses especially on the highly debated issues concerning the topography, archaeology and history of the horti Tauriani, Pallantiani and Epaphroditiani, which embellished this area between the beginning of the Empire and the 1st century AD. It is crucial to analyse the coexistence here between public infrastructures, tombs and private estates owned by emperors’ trusted men and freedmen, in order to define their boundaries and interrogate their topographical interactions. It is also important to investigate the spatial and functional relationships between the limits of the urban space of Rome and the development of this area of transition between the city and the countryside. The ultimate goal is to emphasize the economic, political and ideological significance of this strategic area, thus investigating the importance of the urban sprawl of the ancient city for the development of this landscape located at the periphery of Rome.