The curia at Cosa
The curia of Cosa is situated in the middle of one of the long sides of the forum, adjacent to the basilica which we treated in another section.
The colony of Cosa in southern Etruria was founded in 273 B.C. and it is one of the oldest known examples of a city with a systematic layout and a planned forum around which the public buildings were built.
In the first place it is interesting to see how the comitium and curia were built as the end of an axis that led from the arx and capitolium through the city to the forum. This axis formed a link between the sacred space of the capitolium and the human space of the forum.
Further it is also interesting to see how the example of the round comitium of Rome was adopted in this colony. The round comitium was entered by a narrow passage. Like the Roman forefather it was a stepped structure. On the eastern side we see a three aisled building placed on the axis of the court, dominating the site. It is the result of the rebuilding of an original one aisled rectangular structure which can easily be identified as the old curia. In the interior there are steps along three sides for the benches or chairs of the assembly.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A.Boëthius - J.B.Ward-Perkins, Etruscan and Roman Architecture, Harmondsworth, 1970
F.E.Brown, Cosa III: The Buildings of the Forum: Colony,Municipium,and Village (Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome,Vol 37)
P.Gros, L'architecture Romaine, 1. Les monuments publics, Paris, 1996
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