Related papers: Geometrie und Astronomie im Stadtplan des hethitis…
The study of the spatial layout of Christian churches has been of great interest since late Antiquity and the beginning of the Early Middle Ages, and has received a new impetus in recent literature when it was recognized that the…
The issue of the orientation of Greek Temples has been the subject of several debates since the end of the 19 century. In fact, although a general tendency to orientation within the arc of the rising sun is undeniable, specific patterns and…
In the eighth century BC something peculiar seems to happen on Sicily. The archaeological record starts to show the arrival of Greek material culture. By the fifth century BC the island is effectively 'Hellenised' and ancient historians…
We present the results of an analysis of the precise spatial orientation of colonial Christian churches located in the Canary Island of Fuerteventura (Spain). Our sample consists of 48 churches, most built during the period between the…
Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in 331 BC. The newly founded town was conceived as an orthogonal grid based on a main longitudinal axis, later called Canopic Road. We analyse here the astronomical orientation of the project and…
As is well known, several Roman sources report on the existence of a town foundation ritual, inherited from the Etruscans, which allegedly included astronomical references. However, the possible existence of astronomical orientations in the…
It seems that the ancient Roman towns were oriented with the sunrise. Here I propose a discussion on the orientation of Torino, the Julia Augusta Taurinorum, which has the ancient Roman structure perfectly preserved. According to this…
Here the orientation of the Gothic cathedrals in France is discussed and investigated using the satellite maps. Except a few of them, these buildings have the apse facing the rising sun, according to a practice adopted during the middle…
We present an archaeoastronomical study of the orientations of the colonial Christian churches on the island of Fuerteventura, in the Canary Islands, Spain, mostly built from the period of the Norman conquest in the 15th century to the 19th…
Ever since Flinders Petrie undertook a theodolite survey on the Giza plateau in 1881 and drew attention to the extraordinary degree of precision with which the three colossal pyramids are oriented upon the four cardinal directions, there…
The orientation of Christian churches is a well-known distinctive feature of their architecture. There is a general tendency to align their apses in the solar range, favoring orientations close to the east (astronomical equinox), although…
We discuss the peculiar planning of the city of San Cristobal de La Laguna, in the Canary Island of Tenerife (Spain), when compared to the nearby and essentially contemporary Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which served as a maritime port of the…
The Caral civilization developed on the north-central coast of Peru and had an occupation period between 2870 and 1970 years BC. The first studies carried out in the field of archaeoastronomy showed evidence of possible astronomical…
Augusta Praetoria Salassorum, modern Aosta, was founded around 25 BC to celebrate the victory of Augustus army on the Salassi. Aosta is a city of the founder under many respects; for instance, one of the two twin temples of the forum was…
During the first few centuries CE, the centre of the known world gradually shifted from Alexandria to Constantinople. Combined with a societal shift from pagan beliefs to Christian doctrines, Antiquity gave way to the Byzantine era. While…
We present a study of the relationship between astronomy and landscape centered on the orientation of Christian churches of the island of La Gomera, located in the Canary Archipelago. The fieldwork consisted of measuring the precise…
The essay presents the results of a joint study of astronomy and archeology that has allowed to define the foundation date of the city of Turin as a Roman colony, called Iulia Augusta Taurinorum. This multidisciplinary research represents a…
In this paper we present the results of an archaeoastronomical survey of three proto-historical sites located in the high Friulian plain (Galleriano, Gradisca and Savalons), dating from the end of the Early Bronze Age (1900 B.C.) to the end…
The Nabateans built several monuments in Petra and elsewhere displaying a decoration with a preference for astronomical motifs, possibly as a reflection of their religion. However, due to the lack of direct written accounts and the scarcity…
We present the analysis of the measured orientations of 30 churches of the island of Lanzarote, in the Canarian archipelago, built prior to 1810, as well as a few buildings of later times, which represent a nearly complete sample of all the…