ITALIAN TOWN-PLANNING.

THE ORIGINS If Greek and Macedonian town-planning are fairly well known, the Roman Empire offers a yet larger mass of certain facts, both in Italy and in the provinces.

The beginnings, naturally, are veiled in obscurity.

We can trace the system in full work at the outset of the Empire; we cannot trace the steps by which it grew.

Evidences of something that resembles town-planning on a rectangular scheme can be noted in two or three corners of early Italian history--first in the prehistoric Bronze Age, then in a very much later Etruscan town, and thirdly on one or two sites of middle Italy connected with the third or fourth century B.C.These evidences are scanty and in part uncertain, and their bearing on our problem is not always clear, but they claim a place in an account of Italian town-planning.