Cosa
Cosa was a Roman colony on the coast of Etruria, in today's southern Tuscany, the Ansedonia district of Orbetello. It was 113 meters above sea level and about 139 km from Rome.
273 BC Cosa was founded as a colony with Latin rights to territory that had previously belonging to the nearby Etruscan town of Vulci. An Etruscan settlement predecessor, whose name was taken, was probably near the present-day Orbetello. 196 BC Cosa was reinforced with additional colonists. By 60 BC it was - perhaps by pirates - looted and it could never recover properly, although the city under Augustus was partially rebuilt and there are still buildings in the second century AD and a Christian church. Cosa was until the second half of the 3rd century; after the Forum was formed temporarily still the core of a large country estate.
This particular situation kept for research, the remains of a Roman town Republican period. The place now called Ansedonia, is considered one of the most important archaeological sites in Italy. Excavations were 1948-54 and 1965-72 at the American Academy in Rome instead, further excavations there since 1991. The surroundings of the town ( ager Cosanus ) with its villas, including the large Villa di Settefinestre, was explored.
Cosa was built according to an orthogonal plan on a small mountain. The city had a forum, a Capitol, a curia and city walls. The 150 built BC Basilica is one of the earliest known buildings of this type. Of particular importance for the research are the numerous residential properties in the city. In particular, the type of the atrium house found here differs from the houses in Pompeii and shows that the Pompeian houses far need not be as typically Roman, as previously assumed. Above all, it is striking that the residential buildings in Cosa are not arranged as symmetrically as in Pompeii. One example is the so-called SUNY - house. It has an atrium in the middle. The Impluvium not controlled here, as in Pompeii, the atrium, the fauces also not open to its center; generally lack the usual strict lines of sight throughout the house.