At Naples, at Herculaneum, perhaps at Sorrento,[70] proofs survive of similar planning.

But the towns of central Italy were in great part more ancient than the era of precise town-planning, and many of them were perched in true Italian fashion on lofty crags--_praeruptis oppida saxis_--which gave no room for square or oblong house-blocks.
In the period of the dying Republic and nascent Empire fewer 'coloniae' were planted here than in the north, while in much of southern Italy towns have in all ages been comparatively rare.
[70] Beloch, _Campanien_, p.

252.
In the towns just noted we can trace many, though not all, of the original house-blocks.

Usually the blocks are square or nearly so, as at Turin, Verona, Pavia, Piacenza, Florence, Lucca.

Less often they are long and even narrow rectangles, as at Modena, and Sorrento, and above all Naples, and as usual it is not easy to understand the reason for the difference (p.