The article addresses the relationship between long-standing settlement dynamics—rooted in the interpretation of topography—and the infrastructural logic underpinning urban development in the modern and contemporary eras, focusing on the outcomes of modern alterations to the original topographic structure.This theme is explored through a critical interpretation of the relationship between the city of Rome and its former southern suburban area, beginning with the initial infrastructural developments in the mid-nineteenth century and continuing through the urban expansion of the twentieth, as exemplified by the area surrounding Porta Ostiense. The significance of this urban junction—as a gateway to Rome from the direction of the sea and situated along the railway belt laid in the second half of the nineteenth century—has led to the superimposition of new road and railway infrastructures, as well as related urban arrangements, including monumental interventions reflecting critical moments in the modern history of the city, layered over an already rich archaeological, historical, and landscape palimpsest. Drawing on historical cartography and topographical and archaeological sources, the article reconstructs the anthropogenic modifications to the area’s original ground landscape, recomposing, in negative, a contemporary urban landscape that appears as a juxtaposition of built forms associated with divergent conceptions of the city. he study thus proposes the notion of topographic alteration as a unifying analytical category for architectural design, capable of linking individual architectural episodes to broader territorial transformation processes, and representative of the diachronic development of the city and its relationship with the environment.
Keywords: Cultural landscapes, Territorial palimpsest, Urban form and archeology