City: A Story of Roman Planning and Construction

Architecture

by David Macaulay

Award-winning author-illustrator David Macaulay brings readers into a beautiful exploration of Roman buildings and construction.

With black and white illustrations and detailed explanations, this comprehensive and visual resource is perfect for young readers interested in history, architecture, and Roman civilization.

Genres: History, Architecture, Nonfiction, Picture Books, Childrens, Ancient History, Art

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

David Macaulay, born in 1946, was eleven when his parents moved from England to Bloomfield, New Jersey. He found himself having to adjust from an idyllic English childhood to life in a fast paced American city. During this time he began to draw seriously, and after graduating from high school he enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). After spending his fifth year at RISD in Rome on the European Honors Program, he received a bachelor’s degree in architecture and vowed never to practice. After working as an interior designer, a junior high school teacher, and a teacher at RISD, Macaulay began to experiment with creating books. He published his first book, Cathedral, in 1973. Following in this tradition, Macaulay created other books—including City, Castle, Pyramid, Mill, Underground, Unbuilding, and Mosque—that have provided the explanations of the how and the why in a way that is both accessible and entertaining. From the pyramids of Egypt to the skyscrapers of New York City, the human race’s great architectural and engineering accomplishments have been demystified through Macaulay's elaborate show-and-tells. Five of these titles have been made into popular PBS television programs.

Reviews

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

City is the second of David Macaulay’s very popular “children’s” books (all still in print) which he authored and illustrated in the 1970s, in which he produced large black and white drawings accompanied by interesting text, together illustrating how various things have been put together by humans over the ages. In this book his topic is a roman-era provincial city. The book informs us about the practical issues which determined such things as the required components of such a city, how various buildings would be designed and constructed, and the large number and different types of craftsman involved.

As usual with these books by Macaulay, it is both very accessible to younger readers and a satisfying (and satisfyingly short) read for adults. The many illustrations set it apart from other more cumbersome tomes that one could find on a similar topic. It’s a great book for reading to a youngster who has an interest in historical things.

[Thomas Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

City: A Story of Roman Planning and Construction, David Macaulay, 1974, 112 pages, ISBN 039519492X, Dewey 711.409

Planning and building a 92-acre (720-yard x 620-yard or .4 mile x .35 mile, about one-seventh of a square mile) city from scratch in first-century-BCE-to-first-century-CE Roman Italy. p. 13 For a population of up to about 50,000. A 9-by-8 grid of mostly 80-yard-square (1/22 mile) blocks. About 10 blocks are devoted to public areas, leaving about 8 square yards per person. The full city would have a population density of 350,000 people per square mile https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i...
Compare: the Imbaba neighborhood of Cairo https://peterfromtexas.tumblr.com/ima..." , 8 square km (3.2 sq. mi.), 1.4 million population, 460,000 people per square mile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of... https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i...

Building code: no privately-owned building could be higher than twice the width of the street on which it stood. Lets sunlight reach the street. p. 14. Sidewalks are arcades.

Shows how to build roads, walls, tunnel vaults, aqueducts, sewers, buildings; how to grind grain into flour, press olives for oil.

Well done. Good drawings.

[Abel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Illustrations were lovely. The instructions were clear. Now I want to visit one of the many snack bars in Verbonia! Thank you for the bonus gift, Krystian!

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't like being in cities, but the Effort.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

this event was sponsored by the national building museum

[Krystian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely incredible. The ingenious and discipline of the Roman building techniques is expertly conveyed with diagrams and digestible explanations. The imaginary story is a hoot (complete with the accidental collapse of a vault, and the role of various folks in the city) and perfect for tying the progress of the city building together. A joy to read especially after having just visiting Pompeii and Rome.

[Karl Gruenewald · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic exploration of Roman city planning in an easily digestible narrative with gorgeous illustrations and diagrams throughout. I can imagine this book being just as enjoyable for a child as it is a practicing architect.

[Kitap · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Macaulay's Underground was a wonderful book, but his City tops it by showing the same sorts of infrastructural accomplishments (e.g., public water works, plumbing, sewers, etc.) only here set in classical antiquity! Macauley's masterful illustrations and clear text provide ample evidence of the "civilizing" (literally, "urbanizing") skills and talents of the Roman people whose arts, according to the Aeneid, "are to be these:"

To pacify, to impose the rule of law,
To spare the conquered, battle down the proud. (6.1151-1154)

For, as Macaulay notes in his introduction (p.5), "[t]he Romans knew that well planned cities did more to maintain peace and security than twice the number of military camps." Fascinating stuff here, and not just for kids!

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this series of books while I was looking for something else, and what a treasure! Macaulay is a marvelous illustrator and I liked seeing all of the planning and design that went into an ancient Roman city. Even though they are children's books, I would recommend them to adults who like history and architecture.

[Rebekah Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn’t expecting to really enjoy this book. I mean it’s about building a city after all. But I was surprised by how interesting I found it. The information was told in an fascinating way and the illustrations were very helpful in understanding how some things were built. I didn’t know Roman cities had sidewalks! Or fountains that could be turned on and off.
If you are interested in ancient times, or even if you just enjoy learning new things, check this book out.

[Sam Strickland · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely book that subtly demonstrates the importance of planning, connection to the physical world, and the interconnections of civic life in the Roman Empire. The illustrations are clear and picturesque, and the various stages of city-building often have narrative connections making it easier to recall events in the order of their presentation. It makes me regret missing out on David Macaulay's work in childhood.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fun book, and better than the other works I've read by Macaulay. His images are surprisingly detailed for their style and pair quite well with texts that tell fragments of a story while providing, overall, very textual descriptions. The two work quite effectively, and the book serves as a curious look into the physical world of Rome, an architectural study for beginners like myself, and a valuable resource for people looking to imagine, describe, or depict ancient cities.

[Amy T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An older book with black and white illustrations, but very readable and engaging. The author takes the reader through the planning and construction of a fictional Roman City, Verbonia. I would highly recommend adding this to your study of ancient Rome.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book! An overview of how the Romans planned and built a city. Simple drawings with cutaways so you can 'see' the building stages. Great information for any student of Ancient Rome.

[sch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic homeschool book.

[Desi A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Technically this is something that Frank and JP read (I checked it out from the library during my heavenly 45 min appointment). They report that it was amazing.

[Bethanyanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morning time read aloud

[Bjoern · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting little childrens book about the construction and configuration of a typical roman "colony" town from the founding legionary castle to the height of bloom with 50.000 inhabitants.

The narration is a bit curt and definitely meant for the understanding of kids or preteens, but the illustrations make much of that worth, even when the artist seems to have slight problems with humans when they're not seen from the profile.

Maybe an in depth treatment with lengthy essay style texts would have brought more information about a roman city, but as a nice picture book with basic informations this book is worth every cent!

[Frank Stein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading a couple of these David Macualay books because they're all at the DC library and they're all amazing. You can tell that each book is loaded with years of research, which he somehow manages to distill into about a dozen pages of actual text and a hundred drawings. I undoubtedly learned more about Roman cities in this book than I learned about Greek cities in the 200 page book I just read about them, as good as it was. The fact that Macaulay's books are written and accessible to kids is even cooler and more impressive.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Macaulay is at his best in constructing buildings - Macaulay was still developing his skill in drawing people, so they look too flat and squat in this book, but the star of the show is the innovation, architecture and the city planning. His angled overhead depictions of the city as it is laid out, walled in and developed is a very helpful device to give a sense of scale and place in the surrounding terrain.

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is often listed in guides as something that should be read about Italy. I finally tracked it down in the Boulder, CO library and thought it was OK. I'm apparently not as driven as some more imaginative travelers (?) by old Rome... the illustrations were helpful but they didn't really change my level of interest in archeology.

[Rebecca McKinnon · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's amazing to see how well-thought-out this city was. I especially loved how they figured the allowed building height--no more than twice as high as the width of the street it was built on so the streets weren't always in shadow.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series of books is an awesome teaching tool for history. My daughter is studying the Romans this year and we found this book to be both educational and entertaining.

[Alexander Rolfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Educational and pleasant. The older children and I read this before we all set off to see Pompeii, the Baths of Caracalla, and other Roman ruins.

[Sandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book out loud to my three boys (ages 11, 9, and 7), at the end of our school year after studying Ancient Rome all year in history. The boys and myself really enjoyed this book! It was such a refreshment after reading all year long about wars and conflicts, pride and greed of the Romans and the empire. The boys comment was, "wow, the Romans did contribute something, and not just war and pride!" ha ha...

They all gave it 5 stars. They said the drawings were great, and the details and explanations about all of the various aspects of a typical Roman City was very interesting. (A highlight were the toilets... they are boys after all.) They liked how the book was laid out, and after another part of the city was described, the author then showed the overview of the entire city and where that part of the city was located - seeing how the city grew and built up.

We are excited to read more of David Macaulay's books in this series.

[Edoardo Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are three different books but I would urge you to read them all, one after another. It won’t take long; so far as text is concerned, you can read each book in less than an hour. But you will take longer because you will want to take time looking at and lingering over the exquisite line drawings that illustrate exactly how people in the past built a Roman city, and a medieval cathedral and castle.

I don’t think they are still in print but it really is worth hunting these down in second-hand bookshops. I think I learned more about classical and medieval architecture than from any other books – certainly so far as the practical aspects of building a city, a cathedral or a castle is concerned.

Very highly recommended!

[briz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unique, involving, granular, dazzling as ever. David Macaulay! Where have you been all my life?

This follows the very template-driven construction of an imaginary Roman city in the Po valley. Aka northeastern Italy, aka my ancestral hood. I couldn't believe how accurately and deeply he captured the landscape of that area - I was touched.

As with the other David Macaulay books I've now read (and I am loving EACH. AND EVERY. ONE OF THEM.), this one is a tour de force of architectural perspective and engineering drawings. This one is also very text-heavy, and quite involving. I read it and was moved to regularly look up certain details here and there (the hand-powered drill, for example), just to learn a bit more about how they worked. I learned LOADS in this. Did you know aqueducts were built so high to prevent people tampering with the water supply? Who knew! Damn barbarian hordes (aka Germans).

I presume it would be appropriate for older kids - tweens? - with an interest in engineering, the building of things. Cannot recommend this enough, however, for anyone and everyone who wants their mind and eyeballs expanded.

[Craig Barner · Rating 3 out of 5]

City: A Story of Roman Planning and Construction walks readers through the methods of Roman building by creating the imaginary city of Verbonia. It is used to create a picture of ancient methods of construction. The book is especially successful as a guide to urban planning, techniques that could apply to the present. The Romans were brilliant at city planning.

Though some of the descriptions of building techniques could have used a bit more clarity and detail, the book is fascinating. The Romans might not have had the esthetics of the Greeks, but they deployed their considerable brain power in building and infrastructure, topics relevant to the present.

[Anna C · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used to say these illustrated Macaulay books were the only children's books that were just as good when you're 30 as when you're 10. But then I tried to introduce 6th graders to the joys of pre-modern architecture, and they were all SO bored, and would just flip through these books in 30 seconds and then swear to me they had read it all.

So now I say instead these are the only children's books that are *better* when you're 30 than when you're 10. Maybe children don't even deserve them- idk! I'm just going to keep them to myself then and reread them all, and not even be embarrassed about logging them.

[Donald Schopflocher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Macaulay has made a career of making detailed architectural drawings of larger projects annotated by simple descriptions which typically introduce specialized vocabulary. This story of the creation of a Roman city over 100 years is amazingly compact yet covers all of the major functional elements of a typical city (no brothels, this is putatively a kids book). Perfect accompaniment to stories about ancient Rome and its empire for kids of every age! It enriched my remembered experiences of Pompeii.