Building the route over time: memory and identity of a processional road in Kos

Research over the last few years in Kos, conducted by the Polytechnic of Bari in collaboration with the Prehistoric-classical and Byzantine Ephorates of Dodecanese and the Archaeological Institute for Aegean Studies of Rhodes, made it possible to specify in more detail the topography and monumental architecture of the city of Kos since its founding, dated to 366 BC, to the transformation of the Imperial and Late Antique ages. Besides, the deeper knowledge of its different phases has highlighted a remarkable persistence over time of the road network, whose traces is possible to follow until the Turkish period of Kos, witnessed by the cartography of 19th and 20th centuries, and even in the modern city designed by the Italians after the earthquake of 1933. As part of this phenomenon, the contribution aims to follow during time the genesis and transformation of the Processional Way of Kos, a large plateia crossing the city from east to west and connecting the civic center, represented by the agora and the gymnasia, with the important suburban sanctuary of Asklepios. Analyzed in its architectural transformations - from the first definition of late-Classical and Hellenistic age to the monumentalisation of the Imperial Age - the plateia and its persistence over time is a paradigm of the civic memory of a city through the very history of its most important route.