Identification Rows of tabernae are ubiquitous on the Plan, and the type depicted here are of the most common type seen on the FUR. Each shop consisted of a single room with a wide opening towards the street that could be screened off at night. The owners may have resided with their families on a wooden platform in the back of the shop, although the small size of these particular tabernae may indicate they were strictly for commercial use. There were many blank areas on the Marble Plan. These included the spaces occupied by the Tiber River, by gardens, arenas, temple precincts, courtyards, or from the edges of the Map, basically any space devoid of architecture or human construction. This fragment could have belonged to any of those areas, with the row of shops defining a structure that imposes upon the open space. The thickness and smooth back of the fragment, however, place it with a group of fragments which E. Rodríguez-Almeida has shown belonged to the Tiber (for example 621abcd, e, and f, 625, and 630). The blank area of this fragment, removed in modern times, may then represent a part of the river.

Significance This fragment is typical of non-identified fragments of the Plan. No monumental buildings are represented, and the fragment instead provides a view of the lesser known residential and commercial buildings. It also provides an intersting view of how Roman surveys worked: The fact that the bottom shops are skewed in relationship to the ones at top may represent the surveyors' difficulty in matching up information from two different survey areas (PM 1960, p. 69, n. 3; Reynolds 1996, pp. 98-99).

Text by Tina Najbjerg