Around 6 CE the emperor Augustus imposed a legal limit of seventy Roman feet on the height of new insulae, the multi-storey apartment blocks that housed much of Rome's crowded population. The measure responded to the danger of badly built speculative tenements collapsing or burning, hazards that recurred as developers stacked storeys to profit from scarce central land. A later limit of sixty feet was imposed after the great fire of 64 CE under Nero. These caps were among the earliest recorded building-height regulations.
They represent antiquity's response to the runaway tall, dense and speculative city, an early instance of the state regulating building bulk for public safety. The episode prefigures the later history of height limits and building codes in crowded metropolises.
See it on the timeline →