34

In Rome, many houses have large numbers. For example, 3187 as on photo. It is obviously not the post address of the house but something else.

Roman Number

What do they mean? Is it a number in some catalogue?

user56reinstatemonica8
  • 12,659
  • 6
  • 61
  • 89
Neusser
  • 6,976
  • 4
  • 32
  • 46
  • 1
    Do you remember the road name? – motoDrizzt Jun 12 '17 at 09:11
  • @JoeErNano: I have some suspects that you know the answer quite well ;-) – motoDrizzt Jun 12 '17 at 09:15
  • 1
    @motoDrizzt This one is on Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere. But I've seen such large numbers also in other city districts. Following the link you will look right at this corner - https://goo.gl/maps/Wf8ZvGZHKXD2 – Neusser Jun 12 '17 at 09:18
  • It should be a post address (as denoted in the answer). However while 23b is realistically a post address, 3187 seems too large for a small place like that plaza. The question IMO should focus on that. No such Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere, 3187, Roma, RM seems to exist, though Google Maps allows me to autocomplete 3185 street number. In general, there are very long roads with street numbers > 1500 – usr-local-ΕΨΗΕΛΩΝ Jun 12 '17 at 10:35
  • 1
    A similar system is still used in Prague - every house has a street number and a district number. The street number designates the sequence of the house within a particular street, while the district number is a unique identifier of that house within the entire subdivision of the city and is completely independent of the street. – JonathanReez Jun 12 '17 at 11:02
  • There's some irony in Roman numbers that turn out not to be Roman numbers at all... –  Jun 12 '17 at 13:23
  • 1
    I've no idea what the exact answer is, but old houses may have historical signs that have "protected" status and can't be removed. For example in my village in the UK, there are old several houses with numbered plates relating to their former owners being members of a private fire insurance scheme - nothing to do with postal addresses at all. – alephzero Jun 13 '17 at 00:59

1 Answers1

12

Those are plates that in the 19th century identified individual gaslights, which were installed in Rome from 1854, starting with 44 streetlamps, and then proceeding to install thousands of them. On the nearest building wall the corresponding number on a maiolica plate was affixed, to uniquely identify that particular streetlamp.

Later the gaslights were progressively substituted with electrical ones, possibly in a different location, but the numbers remained.

The story is told in a blog devoted to Rome (in Italian).

DaG
  • 432
  • 3
  • 13
  • 2
    I stand corrected. Well done for tracking this down! I spent hours looking for this and even asked in a few places in Trastevere where they had these numbers on the building and they didn't know what they were! Ah, I see that the blog page was put up this month. – Berwyn Jul 18 '17 at 11:31