14 regions of Medieval Rome

During the Middle Ages, Rome was divided into a number of administrative regions (Latin, regiones), usually numbering between twelve and fourteen, which changed over time.

Originally the city of Rome had been divided by Augustus into 14 regions in 7 BC. Then sometime during the 4th century, Christian authorities instituted seven ecclesiastical regions, which ran parallel to the civil regions. With the collapse of Imperial authority in the Western Roman Empire, after the death of Julius Nepos in 480, much of the old imperial administrative structures began to fall into abeyance.

After the destructive Gothic Wars of the 6th century, the city of Rome had become virtually depopulated. When the city began to recover it was inhabited in new parts and whole districts were in ruins. Consequently, the Augustan regions now had no relationship to the administration of the city, but they continued to be used as a means for identifying property. But as Rome slowly recovered from the disasters of the Gothic wars it became necessary to organize the city for the purpose of defence, and one theory contends that this was the origin of the twelve medieval regions. In particular, it is suggested that it was connected with the Byzantine military system (the scholae militiae) and was introduced into Rome in the 7th century, along with its implementation at Ravenna. This saw the creation of a new series of regions based upon a different principle from either of the older ones. However, this revision did not last much longer than two centuries after the fall of the Exarchate of Ravenna in 751.

Certainly, the division of the city according to the revised civil and ecclesiastical regions appears to have fallen out of use in the confusion of the 10th century. Local variations seem to have sprung up that were adopted, used and then discarded as the years progressed. It has been conjectured that the sack of Rome by Robert Guiscard in 1084 caused a displacement of the population which probably made a revision of the regions necessary. The district from the Lateran Palace to the Colosseum was engulfed and ruined by fire, and the Caelian and Aventine hills were gradually abandoned. The number of regions needed for the south and south-east of the city became smaller, while there emerged a greater need for the organization of the rapidly growing districts to the north-west and along the Tiber.

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