Crossword clues for insula
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Latin, literally "an island" (also, in ancient Rome, "a block of buildings"); see isle.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context historical English) A block of buildings in a Roman town. 2 (context anatomy English) The insular cortex, a structure of the human brain located within the lateral sulcus.
Wikipedia
Insula is the Latin word for "island" and may refer to:
- Insula (Roman city), a block in a Roman city plan surrounded by four streets
- Insula (building), a kind of apartment building in ancient Rome that provided housing for all but the elite
- Ínsula Barataria, the governorship assigned to Sancho Panza as a prank in the novel Don Quixote
- Insular cortex, a human brain structure
In Roman architecture, an insula ( Latin for "island," plural insulae) was a kind of apartment building that housed most of the urban citizen population of ancient Rome, including ordinary people of lower- or middle-class status (the plebs) and all but the wealthiest from the upper-middle class (the equites).
It was so-named almost uniquely in Rome (and e.g. Ostia) to replace the original meaning of insula for an area, or block, of the city because in this densely populated city these apartment buildings were common and often occupied the whole of an insula.
The traditional elite and the very wealthy lived in a domus, a large single-family residence, but the two kinds of housing were intermingled in the city and not segregated into separate neighborhoods. The ground-level floor of the insula was used for tabernae, shops and businesses, with the living space upstairs. Like modern apartment buildings, an insula might have a name, usually referring to the owner of the building.
An Insula ( Latin for island) is a block in an ancient Roman city plan, i.e. one that is surrounded by four streets.
A standard Roman city plan was based on a grid of orthogonal streets and was probably founded on the ancient Greek model of Hippodamus and was used when new cities were established e.g. in Roman Colonia.
The main streets of each city would be the Decumanus Maximus (east-west-oriented) and Cardo Maximus (north–south) which intersected at, or close to, the forum around which the most important public buildings would be sited.
Usage examples of "insula".
Tiber rose just enough to ensure that some of the public latrines backfilled and floated excrement out of their doors, a vegetable shortage developed when the Campus Martius and the Campus Vaticanus were covered with a few inches of water, and shoddily built high-rise insulae began to crumble into total collapse or suddenly manifested huge cracks in walls and foundations.
They thought this the Insula Beata, or Blessed Isle, when they first came here.
Augustus tried fruitlessly to limit the height of Roman city insulae to one hundred feet.
Otherwise the insulae would have been half empty and the city smothered in parks.
Clearly there had been war in the streets of Rome, and in the far distance toward the jumbled insulae of the Esquiline he could hear shouts, screams, howls.
The Subura was an area composed entirely of insulae and contained only one prominent landmark, the Tunis Mamilia, apparently some kind of tower.
Palus Ceroliae toward the mount of the Aventine, and the insulae of the Esquiline reared not two streets away.
Augustus tried fruitlessly to limit the height of Roman city insulae to 100 feet.
None of the other insulae they had inspected provided either water or sewer, even though most of them had been in better districts.
The Subura was an area composed entirely of insulae, and contained only one prominent landmark, the Turris Mamilia, apparently some kind of tower.
The streets were full of pyres, so were the light wells of every insula and the peristyles of all the houses.
There was a bare mention of the place, but the chronicler had one curious note: Insula Avium, quae est ultima Insula et proximo abysso.
Many other passages of Tertullian prove that the army was full of Christians, Hesterni sumus et vestra omnia implevimus, urbes, insulas, castella, municipia, conciliabula, castra ipsa.