Graticolato Romano

The ancient Romans present in Veneto with the Roman grid layout.

The area known as “Graticolato Romano” currently extends between the provinces of Padua and Venice but, at the time of the Romans, it was part of a larger area. 

Padua was the center, but the affected area reached to the north up to the foothills of Asolo, to the east as far as Quarto d’Altino and the Venetian lagoon, to the south up to the bed of the Adige and Adria, and to the west to the current borders of the province of Verona.

With Graticolato Romano, we mean an area, generally flat, divided into square plots measuring 710 meters on each side, established in the 1st century BC by the Romans and intended for agriculture, traced in the manner of the Centuriazioni with a Cardo and a Decumano and usually governed by retired legionaries.

The Graticolato Romano stretched between the present provinces of Padua and Venice, which is still characterized by the remarkable regularity with which the streets are arranged. It represented the cis centuriazione Musonem, that is "on this side of the river Muson" that marked the border with the municipality of Altinum. Although for many similar systems the geometric center of the agricultural subdivision (umbilicus agrii) coincided with the geometric center of town planning (umbilicus urbi), in this case the hinge and the maximum decumanus crossed north of Padua.