Roman urban epistemologies: global space and universal time in the rebuilding of a 16th-century city

International audienceThis chapter aims at discussing the epistemological added value of knowledge when produced in/by the city. It does it in relation with a period where the urban question is part of the economic, cultural as well as political European debate, and when urbanization becomes a major global process. It elaborates on one case, Rome, and investigates the articulations between multi-scalar hubs, variegated social groups, and distinct sites: it aims at showing that such articulation constitutes a specific “dispositif” which shape the epistemological foundations of urban knowledge. In the case of Rome, as the result such urban epistemology is characterized by a relationship to time nourished by an ability to encompass all parts of the known world. The empirical material of the study is provided by the displacement of an obelisk in the period of SIxtus V, in 1585