Il Quartiere occidentale di Elea-Velia. Un’analisi preliminare

The resuming of investigations in the still unpublished ‘Quartiere occidentale’ of Velia reopened the debate on this part of the city, which was organized around an east-west axe and streets intersecting it at right angles. The present essay examines the whole corpus of available documentation to arrive at a preliminary hypothesis concerning the building sequence of the north-south axes and of the sector as a whole. It is possible that the quarter was not the result of a single building program. The blocks in the west area, dating from the early second century BC, differ slightly in dimensions and alignment. This may be evidence that the east sector, which M. Napoli dated to the third century BC, was later extended westward, and this extension involved significant changes also in the street layout.