BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Vitruvius and the Built World of the New Testament

First confirmed basilica of Vitruvius uncovered

Exposed foundations of Vitruvius’s basilica at the site of ancient Fanum Fortunae along Italy’s Adriatic coast. Courtesy Italian Ministry of Culture.

When we read the New Testament, we often focus on the words spoken and the people involved—Jesus, Pilate, Paul, crowds. Yet these texts unfold within a physical world that is rarely described in full. Trials took place in public. Accusations and defenses were voiced before officials, and people gathered to hear and respond to judgments. All of this occurred within Roman built spaces—forums, basilicas, and praetoria (official residences)—that ancient readers knew well.

While parts of the early Roman built world survive in exceptional sites such as Pompeii and Herculaneum, Roman architecture is unevenly preserved across the empire. Recent excavations at Piazza Andrea Costa in the Italian city of Fano (ancient Fanum Fortunae) provide an opportunity to recover the architecture of a mid-sized Italian city, one not subjected to the constant rebuilding that took place in the capital. Archaeologists believe they have identified the remains of a Roman basilica in Fanum Fortunae built by the late first-century BCE architect Vitruvius.

In book 5 of his treatise De Architectura (“On Architecture”), Vitruvius described a basilica in Fanum Fortunae that he designed and oversaw. Although he usually spoke in general principles rather than about specific works, he broke that precedent at Fanum Fortunae. As the sources stand, the basilica there was the only building Vitruvius ever claimed as his own.

Because De Architectura is the only surviving architectural manual from antiquity and was widely influential across the Roman world, identifying one of Vitruvius’s own basilicas illuminates not only this single structure, but also the design principles behind countless others. Speaking about the discovery’s significance, Fano’s mayor Luca Serfilippi called the find “a fragment of historical and cultural identity of universal value.”

When archaeologists found imposing masonry structures and marble floors at Fano in 2022, they anticipated that the area was part of a monumental public complex. Further excavations have revealed a rectangular basilica and perimeter colonnade—eight columns on each long side and four on each short side, just as Vitruvius described in De Architectura. The team has found that the dimensions of the building match Vitruvius’s description of his Fanum Fortunae basilica to “the exact centimeter.”

Vitruvius presents the basilica at Fanum Fortunae as a model of how a basilica of “the greatest dignity and beauty” should be built. A visionary who is often called the “father of architecture,” Vitruvius argued that architecture should be modeled on the human form. For example, just as human bodies have an average height-to-width ratio, so too should a column. A column’s height should be a specific multiple of its diameter—often eight or nine times the diameter—so the column looks balanced rather than squat or slender. For Vitruvius, when architecture mirrored the proportions of the human body, it reflected natural balance. This granted the sense of a properly ordered world and encouraged a harmonious society.

Vitruvius notes other proportional relationships as well, describing what he took to be ideal human measurements: a person’s height corresponds to their arm span, and the body can be measured as roughly eight head-lengths tall. Beguiled by these ideas centuries later, Leonardo da Vinci famously drew his Vitruvian Man.

Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1490). Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The basilica in Fano therefore offers a rare bridge between text and place. It allows modern readers to imagine the civic and legal world of the New Testament more vividly, and to recognize that Roman architecture was doubly functional: It provided space for public gathering while reinforcing civic order through its design. The findings show that Vitruvius’s ideal proportions and model basilica were not just theoretical, but were realized in the spaces that shaped the public life of the early Roman Empire.

Lauren K. McCormick is an assistant editor at Biblical Archaeology Review and a specialist in ancient Near Eastern religions, visual culture, and the Bible. She holds various degrees in religion from Syracuse University, Duke University, New York University, and Rutgers University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on religion and the public conversation at Princeton University.

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