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As sustainability becomes ever more critical to the archi-tectural proession, it is worth noting that the practice orecycling has a long history. Perhaps nowhere is this sorichly documented as in Romeboth or the abundanceo its classical ruins and the act that over many centuriesit was really two citiesone pagan, the other Christian.

As the institutions o imperial Rome gradually gave

way to the urbs sacra, their physical vestiges had to bereappropriated. At times, this process occurred with littlethought as to symbolic meaning; at others, the eect wasquite conscious.

Only by the sixteenth century, however, did some-thing approximating adaptive reuse, grounded in aset o design criteria, appear. Renaissance architects did

not look upon classical antiquities solely as models orimitation. Their objective was to critically analyze theseremains and assimilate their orms into new typologies.

Their projectssome executed, some known only romdrawingshold many lessons or contemporary design-ers seeking to reuse and recontextualize the architecturalorms o modern cities.

Trafc in Spolia during Classical TimesOne o the earliest and most celebrated instances o

recycling sits on the Akropolis, in Athens. Ater the Per-sians laid siege to the city in 470 BC, citizens salvaged thecharred column drums and metopes rom the Parthenon,then in its early stages o construction. Eventually, theblocks o that older temple became the matrix or the one

we know today. The genius o Iktinos was to retroft oldwith new into a single proportional system so refned thatit eluded the notice o archaeologists until the last century.

Restauratio and Reuse:

The Afterlife of Roman Ruins

Philip Jacks

Above: Porticus o Octavia (view o interior pediment rom Severan restoration).

Opposite:Arch o Constantine, south acade.


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In late republican Rome (123 to 23 BC), the scaveng-ing o building material was likewise a thriving business.Cicero once reproved his riend Verres or aultily restor-ing the Temple o Castor and Pollux in the Forum withstones redressed rom the original structure. New marble

was preerable, he argued, and the old blocks would havebeen better discarded, given to the contractors as com-pensation.1 One consequence was a market in recycledmaterials that made older habitations prime targets ordemolition. This became such a problem that two ar-sighted consuls, Hosidianus and Volusianus, pleadedbeore the Senate in 44 AD to outlaw the buying and

selling o property by third-party speculators.Eventually, the emperor Vespasian, who ruled rom69-79, issued an edict to regulate proteering in buildingdebris by private citizens. Alexander Severus renewed thissanction in 222, just as the imperial quarries at Luna beganto restrict the supply o white marble.2 Yet it was thissame emperor who restored the Porticus Octaviae withdismembered column shats and entablatures o Pentelicmarble. On the exterior pediment, the blocks were dressedsmooth, but on the interior ace, less exposed to public

view, they were let rough-hewn. Was this a question ohaste, or negligence? Or did the builders purposeullyleave it that way to draw attention to its otherness?

Such ambiguity is refected in the Latin term restaura-tiowhich Livy (59 BC17 AD) and Tacitus (ca. 56117)understood to mean something akin to our modern senseo restoration. Late classical authors, however, construedit more loosely. The ourth-century grammarian Serviusdrew an etymological connection between instar(likeness)and instauro (renew): instar autem est ad s imilitudinem;unde non Restaurata, sed Instaurata dicuntur aedificia adantiquam similitudinem facta (likeness in appearance alsomeans in similitude, whence buildings made similar to theold are said to be not restaurata but instaurata).3

It may be mincing words to distinguish between renew-ing or even reconstructing, and repairing or restoring; but

instauratiowould come to signiy a new orm that resembledrather than replicatedan original.4

The Gesture of AppropriationEven by antique standards the Arch o Constantine,

however, marked a wholly new way in which ragmentsrom the past could be reappropriated and recommemo-rated. Earlier emperors had taken great license in can-nibalizing the projects o their dishonored predecessors.

Vespasian, Titus, Galba and Trajan all availed themselveso Neros condemnatio memoriae by reclaiming the site o

his immense Domus Aurea or public edices.5 In the caseo the emperor Commodus, who ruled rom 180-192, thismeant reashioning the bronze Colossus o Nero with hisown likeness as the sun god Helios.

However, the triumphal arch dedicated by the emperorConstantine in 315 represented a more willul act oappropriation on several levels. Its architecture was almostentirely reconstituted rom earlier monumentsnot justthe amous relies o Marcus Aurelius on the attic, theHadrianic roundels, and the Trajanic rieze on the interiorornix, but also capitals, columns, and architraves.

The appropriation o these elements all ormed part o

a larger ideological program aimed at legitimizing Con-stantines sovereign authority over Rome.6 As part o thiseort, the heads o Marcus Aurelius were replaced withthose o Constantine and the tetrarch Licinius. However,the sculptors involved with this project also depicted hon-oric statues o Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius in the relieo Constantines oration. On the one hand, Constantine

was projecting his victory over Maxentius by co-optingthe memory o these benecent rulers. On the other, he

was physically appropriating the orms o an earlier epochto orge a new aesthetic.


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Seen in this light, the intermixing o spolia was hardlyhaphazard or spurious. It articulated a new taste or vari-etas. Put another way, the disparity in styles had an appealo its own. This practice pervaded much o Constan-tines building spurt in Rome, most notably the Lateranbasilica, where despoiled capitals along the nave alternated

between Ionic and Corinthian.

Resanctifying the RuinsOne o the last interventions on behal o the ancient

city was the repair o the Augustan Temple o Saturn in theRoman Forum, which had been ravaged by re sometimebetween 360 and 380.7 Ater this, the emperor TheodosiusI, who spent little time in Rome, issued various ordinancesagainst the transporting o marbles outside the city limits.But these all were to little avail. And the plundering opagan cult sites became de acto policy when, in 382, hisco-emperor, Gratian stripped the preects o Rome o theirresponsibility or the upkeep o the citys ancient temples,

which no longer held the status o public buildings.Under Theodosius, Christianity became the ocial

state religion. However, the new attitude toward ancientsites was probably driven as much by an urgent need orbuilding material as any ideological divide. Thus, an injunc-

tion in the year 458 obliged Roman citizens to remove theornament (ornatum) rom ruined buildings so it couldbe reused or new public projects. Such legislation stoppedshort o the destruction en masse o ancient sancta, however,leaving open the possibility that their vestiges could bereutilized or Christian worship. Ultimately, this was what

spared large stores o antiquities rom the nearious lime-kilns, where marbles were incinerated to produce lime.In early Christianity, clerics saw the need to exorcize

pagan cult sites o their demonsa kind o spiritual white-washing. Upon arriving in Agrigento, in Sicily, in 597,Gregory the Great (540604), then a bishop, set as hisrst ocial act the reconsecration o the Temple o Con-cordia, to the saints Peter and Paul. And in the ollowingcentury, the citizens o Siracusa erected a new roo overthe archaic Temple o Athena, and rededicated it to the

Virgin (Duomo o S. Maria delle Colonne).8

In Rome, the popes took a dierent tack. Rather thanlook to places o cult devotion, they set their sights on the

Roman Forum, sti ll rich in imperial aura, and specicallyproane buildings. The church o Santi Cosma e Damiano,consecrated in 527 by Felix IV, occupied the ormer audi-ence hall o the city preects oce (Templum UrbisRomae) and an adjoining library rom the Templum Pacis.

The old Curia Senatus required only minor modicationsto be rededicated to SantAdriano by Honorius I (62538).

And, ater being donated to Boniace IV by the Byzantineemperor Phocas in 609, the Pantheon became the rst in along line o Roman temples to undergo ocial conversion,

when it was dedicated to S. Maria ad Omnes Martyres.

Left to right: San Nicola in Carcere, south fank and east acade; south fank

(incorporating Doric temple o Spes); north fank (incorporating Ionic temple

o Juno Sospes).

Opposite:Casa de Crescenzi, east acade.

Jacks / Restauratio and Reuse


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In the case o San Nicola in Carcere, at the heart othe Ripa district, the basilica arose over the ruins o threecontiguous temples in the old Forum Holitorium. Fish,produce, and cattle markets carried on rom ancient daysgave vitality to this neighborhood, which had come to bedominated by powerul clans, and one o these magnati,Cardinal Pietro Pierleoni, was likely responsible or therenovations to the basil ica, which was rededicated in 1128.

The churchs ortied tower was erected partly overthe podium o the north temple (Janus) and partiallyimmuring the ront columns o the middle temple (JunoSospesJuno the Savior). Its prominent orm and posi-

tion, acing directly toward the Capitoline, declaredthe amilys patronage o the church and the architec-tural relics it enshrined. Rather than obscure the ruins,however, the masons solidied the Ionic colonnade o themiddle temple on the north exterior wall o the basilica. Itsbroken architraves were shored with eldstone and rubble,and pier buttresses were added around the ancient cella.9In the ourteenth century, as today, six Doric columns othe south temple (SpesHope) also supported trabeat-ion embedded in the south fank o the church.10

To medieval visitors, this heterogeneous appearancemust have added to the basilicas curiosity. Renaissancearchitects, by contrast, recognized these temples as key to

interpreting the writings o Vitruvius rom the rst centuryBC, and surveyed its ruins in isolation rom the Christianaccretions. Giacomo della Portas surgical restoration othe acade at the behest o Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini in1599 was o a kindred spirit. He retained two o the Ioniccolumns rom the ancient pronaos fanking a central aedic-ula, while the colossal order and attic gave the eect o atriumphal arch all but detached rom the structure behind.

During this time, amilies competed in the appropria-tion o antiquities, not just to vaunt their Roman lineage,but also to attain strategic and territorial advantage. TheCrescenzi, neighbors o the Pierleoni (and their ormi-dable rivals), constructed a tower over their mansion to

control trac along the Tiber, as well as passage acrossthe dilapidated Ponte Fabrizio.

The Casa dei Crescenzi is generally dated between1040 and 1065. Its resplendent south acade is composedo brick hal-columns between recessed piers. Overhead,antique corbels recarved with putti and sphinxes supporta rieze composted rom two dierent spolia (their prov-enance has recently been traced to the Baths o Caracalla).Recessed arches support the projecting wall (sporti) or the

piano nobile, with a dado stitched together rom coers tosimulate a rinceaux motive.

The pastiche reveals the rudimentary quality o thesemasons knowledge o ancient building technology. Yet, orall its deciencies, the owner proudly attested in an inscrip-tion over the entrance that he was moved not by vaindesire, but to restore the city to its ormer beauty (QUAM

ROME VETEREM RENOVARE DECOREM).

Translatio: Place, Re-Place, and ContextHere it is air to speak otranslatio in both the literal

sense, o a liting rom one physical context and re-place-ment in another, and the gurative sense, o a recontextu-alizing. But when does the architectural grammar becomeso altered as to invest new meaning or unct ion in theoriginal? This could occur only with historical perspec-tive. A rich literature o medieval guides allows us to seehow visitors came to distinguish between contemporary


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Rome, the living city, and the memory o classical antiq-uity as conjured rom the spectacle o its ruins.

One example may illustrate how these two worldscame to intersect. There are ew sights more impressivethan the massive rewall constructed o volcanicpeperinoblocks skirting the back side o the Forum o Augus-

tus. At one end, a voussoir arch, known as the Arco dePantani, leads into the south exedra fanking the Templeo Mars Ultor. Travertine ledges divide the rusticatedstone blocks into three courses. During medieval timesthis would have called to mind the new ashion or rus-ticated palaces, most notably the Palazzo Vecchio inFlorence. Indeed, a popular twelth-century guide, the

Mirabilia Urbis Romae , erroneously identied the ruinso this wall as those o an imperial palace attached to theora o Augustus and Nerva.11

It was probably not by coincidence then that, not longater, this so-called Palatium Nervae was turned into aresidence by Pope Innocent III, as a priory or the Order o

Knights o St. John (Cavalieri di Rodi). And in 1466 Paul IIentrusted its administration to his nephew, Cardinal MarcoBarbo, who added a series o chambers rising to an elegantloggia with a magnicent view across the markets o Trajan

to his uncles Palazzo Venezia, then close to completion.Al Giovannolis engraving o 1615 shows the two

biforewindows on thepiano nobile and the modest ground-foor portal rom the street. Today, viewed rom the Viadei Fori Imperiali, traces o medieval arches can st ill bedetected around the newer Ghibelline windows, above

what remained o the ancient walling in opus quadratumbelowa veritable architectural palimpsest.

Restoration, Adaptation, ReinventionIn an ot-quoted letter addressed to Leo X around

1519, Raphael and his collaborator, the erudite BaldassareCastiglione, laid out a comprehensive account o Romanarchitecture leading up to their own day. For the rsttime, antiquity was not seen as monolithic, but as havingevolved in distinct stylistic stagesrom Augustan toFlavian to Severan. Ater deploring the incursions o theGoths, Raphael and Castiglione noted that in imperialtimes monuments oten would be restored (ristaurati), yet

always in the same manner and method (con la medesimamaniera e ragione).12 As examples, they pointed to theDomus Aurea, on whose oundations Titus later erectedhis thermae (baths), and to the Flavian amphitheater,which rose on the site o Neros articial lake.

Clearly, they were not reerring to restoration in ourmodern sense, because neither o these later monumentsbore the slightest resemblance to their precursors, butrather to a continuity in the technical art o building. Thisattitude toward the past came to an abrupt halt with the

Arch o Constantine, which they deemed nothing short o

Left: Forum o Augustus, exterior rewall along Salita del Grillo (Arco de Pantani

in oreground; Temple o Mars Ultor in background). For a view o the north exedra

inside the Forum o Augustus, see p.4.

Right:Al Giovannoli, view o atrium to Forum o Augustus and Casa de Cavalieri

di Rodi (above). Engraving, 1615.



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an aberration rom the canon o Classical architectureoolish, without art or any good design. Interestinglyenough, this conclusion was made not without careulobservation o the monument itsel, rom which Raphaeland Castiglione were able to discern its hybridizing oHadrianic, Trajanic, and Antonine elements.

Theater of MarcellusPalazzo SavelliIn the same way that Raphael understood the act oris-

torare as a process o adaptation by successive emperors, sotoo Renaissance architects saw a continuum between thephysical abric o ancient Rome, such as it had survived,and the emerging building style known as allantica. It

would not have occurred to them to preserve these ruinsin archaeological isolation, only to modiy their orms asappropriate to contemporary needs.

An early example o this practice can be seen in theTheater o Marcellus.13 Begun by Caesar and dedicated byAugustus, it had allen into disuse by 525, when a Roman

preect hauled away portions o the travertine revetmentto restore the nearby Ponte Cestio (Fabrizio). In the our-teenth century, the ruins, by then heavily ortied, passedrom the Fabii to the Savelli amily.14 At that time, however,the exterior was so obscured by ramparts that Petrarchmistook it or an amphitheater (quliseo de Saveli).

In 1523, when Cardinal Giulio Savell i commissionedBaldassare Peruzzi to redesign the attic story or a moresumptuous palace, butchers stalls occupied the ground-foor tabernae,and a warren o medieval houses had lledin around the interior caveae.15 According to his pupil

Sebastiano Serlio, Peruzzi relished the opportunity toundertake his own excavations and to analyze its struc-tural system rom the oundations. It is unlikely any tracesurvived o the third order on the exterior, which Peruzzilet as an astylar attic. Given that the Ghibelline windowsdo not align with the arcades below, he likely had no

choice but to ollow the preexisting wall partitions.

Baths of AgrippaPalazzo OrsiniAround 1525, a count o the Orsini rom the Pitigliano

line charged Peruzzi with developing a plan to convertthe Baths o Agrippa into a grandiose palace. The projectis known only rom a large drawing in the Uzi, labeledtherme agrippine. Technically, the drawing is quiteunusual, because Peruzzi rendered the proposed construc-tion in sepia wash to distinguish it rom the ancient ruinsin situ, which he superimposed in a precise red line.16

Peruzzi anchored his plan around the open rotunda,originally the laconicum (dry sweat bath)popularly

known as the Arco della Ciambella rom the extensiveportion o its dome still standing. The sheet is orientedeast at the top, cut o where it would have connected bya wide hall to the caldarium (hot bath). Recognizing the

Left:View o Theater o Marcellus with Savelli apartments on attic story. From

Giovanni Antonio Dosio, Urbis Romae Aedifciorum Reliquiae (1569), pl. 31.

Right: Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Plan or the palace o asignore. From

Trattato darchitettura, II. Codice Magliabechiano II. I. 141, ol. 20 recto. Biblioteca

Nazionale, Florence.


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asymmetry o the ancient oundations, Peruzzi used it as aspur or invention: on one side o the rotunda he drew thebinary columns as ree-standing, on the opposite side ashal-columns engaged to piers.

Below, the red outline shows partial walls constrictingthe axis rom east to west. But he used the suggestion othree solitary columns running on a transverse axis here

to create a spacious garden/courtyard (cortiletto ovverogiardino). This, in turn, egresses through a barrel-vaultedvestibule to the western entrance o the palace acing ontoVia di Torre Argentina.

An avid scholar o Vitruvius, Peruzzi would have looked

to the ancient writers description o the patriciate domusas a model or the Orsini project. In De Architectura (VI,3), Vitruvius used the term cavum aedium to denote thecentral courtyardurther noting that the ancients calledone specic type, covered by vaults, testudinate. Althoughno oundations o Roman houses had yet been unearthed,Renaissance architects would have ound a number o

ruins vaguely corresponding to Vitruviuss description.Leon Battista Alberti had identied just such a room in theimperial baths (ostensibly the caldarium in the Thermae oCaracalla): In the middle, as in the center o a house, thereis an atrium, rooed, spacious, and majestic; o this arerooms, their lineaments taken rom the Etruscan temple,as we have described it. The entrance to this atrium isthrough the main vestibule, whose acade aces south.17

O course, the centriugal disposition o chambers in athermae made little sense when compared to the way Vit-ruvius described the progression rom vestibule to atrium

Above: Baldassare Peruzzi, Survey o Baths o Agrippa (red) with ground plan or

palace o Count Orsini di Pitigliano superimposed. Uzi, Gabinetto dei Disegni,

Arch. 456 recto. For the site o this project within the ruins o the ancient city, see the

inside ront cover.



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to peristyle in a domus. But, in his translation o Vitruviusinto Italian, the architect Francesco di Giorgio Martinihad been the frst to tackle this problem systematically.

And in several diagrams or houses osignoriwhich heworked on in the 1490s, he laid out three variations o theatrium (ridutto), the third called theforma rotonda .

Given Francescos limited knowledge o classical prec-edent, the afnity o this symmetrical arrangement to the

palaestrae in the ancient thermae is probably accidental. In

Peruzzis case, however, there is good reason to believeit inormed the design process. Not ar away, just to theeast o Piazza Navona, the architect Antonio da Sangallothe Younger had been engaged since 1512 in enlargingthe small Medici palace occupying a portion o the Bathso Nero (Thermae Alexandrinae). Here portions o oneancientpalaestraeven some ancient statuarywereound in situ.18 The grandiose Palazzo Madama, as even-tually completed later in the century, retained the disposi-tion o twin courtyards, but rotated at 90 degrees, parallelto the Piazza Lombarda.

Markets of TrajanTheatrum Paulli

Arguably the most radical project to transorm an ancientsitethe complex today known as the Markets o Trajannever saw realization. The picturesque Torre delle Milizie,erected in 1232, rises to the north o the Aula Magna as theroad ascends along the promontory up to the Quirinal hill.

Medieval guides denoted this piazza as Balnea Neapolis,then Bagnanapoli, and eventually Magnanapoli.

Renaissance architects interpreted the cluster oancient tabernae as a grand palace, the so-called Palatium

Militiarum, replete with a semicircular atrium acingonto the imperial orum. The antiquarian Pomponio

Leto traced the medieval toponomastic to the Romanaedile L. Aemilius Paullus, noting that Balneapolis was a

vulgarized orm o Balneum Paulli. This alse etymol-ogy steered Renaissance antiquarians, who saw a urtherafnity o the sweeping hemicycle to an ancient theateror, alternately, to the exedra o the ancient thermae, as inthe Baths o Diocletian.

The grandest o the schemes or the transormationo the market ruins was that o Sallustio Peruzzi, who

extensively studied the site in 1563, when Porzia Massimiounded the convent o S. Caterina da Siena. This newstructure would comprise the ormer Conti palace, to which

were annexed the Torre delle Milizie and ancient markets.The shops along the Via Biberatica were to be redisposedor a choir, cistern, reectory, and poultry arm. In onesketch, Peruzzi contemplated transorming the hemicyleinto afrons scaenae, inverting the plan o the Roman theaterby placing the spectators on the site o Trajans Forum.Shortly ater 1574, Ottavio Mascarino proposed a moreconservative reutilization to accommodate the nuns.19

Baroque Rome and the Church Triumphant

As the popes engaged in ever more ambitious attemptsto leave their imprint on the city, antiquities becameincreasingly vulnerable to despoiling. No site engenderedmore controversy than the Colosseum, which lay aban-doned by the sixth century.

Left:The Markets o Trajan as they appear today.

Right: So-called Bagni di Paolo (hemicycle o Markets o Trajan). From Bernardo

Gamucci,Libri Quattro delle Antichit della Citt di Roma (1565). Woodcut based on

drawing by Giovanni Antonio Dosio.


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The structure had already been appropriated in variousways. By the twelth century the Frangipane amily hadclaimed two levels o arcades on its eastern side or their

palatium. In 1332, on the occasion o King Ludwig oBavarias visit to Rome, the arena was outtted or bull-ghts. In 1366, the Compagnia dei Nobili Romani SanctaSanctorum began purchasing houses clustered aroundthe arena. A ter 1490, the Compagnia del Gonalone per-ormed passion plays there and erected a modest chapel,

dedicated to S. Maria della Piet.In 1585, however, Sixtus V earmarked the Colosseum aspart o his grand scheme to recongure Rome on a stellarplan. The amphitheater would be converted into a monu-mental church with an esplanade all around to link withthe road under construction rom S. Giovanni in Laterano(Via Merulana). Only two years later, however, he changedhis mind and directed the architect Domenico Fontanato revamp the ruins as a wool actory, with covered shopson the ground foor and artisans lodgings on the secondstory. The ancient Meta Sudans (a monumental conicalountain)and newly dug ountains extending as ar as the

Tor de Conti would supply water or washing and dying

abrics. According to Fontana, the project was one yearrom realization when Sixtuss death put an end to it.20

Bernini, when approached by Clement X to erect a

Tempio de Martiri on the site or the Jubilee o 1675,advocated leaving the Colosseum unaltered as a testimonyboth to Christian martyrdom and the grandeur o impe-rial Rome. But his pupil Carlo Fontana was more easilyswayed. Around 1705, he undertook a round peripteralchurch at one end o the long axis by commission o Inno-cent XI Odescalchi. His design, published posthumouslyinLAnfteatro Flavio o 1725, never saw realization.21

Roma FascistaIt is appropriate to end with the Mausoleum o Augus-tus, a monument which, more than any other, has embod-ied the sense o historical destiny or modern-day Romansrom 1934, when Mussolini commenced work on the Piaz-zale Augusto Imperatore, right up to the present.

Ironically, this tomb o Romes second ounder, whohad transormed a city o brick into one o gleamingmarble, remained devoid o symbolic importance or mosto its aterlie. The Colonna amily used it or their orti-ed enclave in the twelth century. In 1519, Leo X had itsexterior stripped o travertine blocks or the laying o the

Via Ripetta (at which time the obelisk rom the ancient

horologium was unearthed). Then, in 1546, FrancescoSoderini bought the ruinous mound and undertook exca-

vations that resulted in the discovery o numerous ancientstatues.22 At this time the interior was rearranged with cir-cular hedges orming a labyrinth garden. And in the eigh-teenth century, its Portuguese owner, Vincenzo Correa,sold the property to the Marchese Francesco Saverio

Vivaldi-Armentieri, who retted its grounds as a bullring.The Master Plan o 1909 cal led or reurbishing the

mausoleum as a concert hall, renamed the Augusteo,and disencumbering it rom annexed buildings. Mus-

Left: Sallustio Peruzzi, Design or renovation o the hemicyle o the Markets o

Trajan as a Vitruvian theater. Uzi, Gabinetto dei Disegni, Arch. 682 recto.

Right: Mausoleum o Augustus as labyrinth garden o Palazzo Soderini. From

Etienne Du Prac,I Vestigi delle Antichit di Roma (1575).

Opposite:Richard Meiers reuse o the Ara Pacis. Photo by Gianpietro Ziro rom

Flickr.com.



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solini expanded the scope o this project to clear a newroad (Via Vittoria) link ing eastward to the Corso. By1938, the architect Vittorio Ballo Mopurgos new designcalled or reintegrating the mausoleum with the twoRenaissance churches along the Via di RipettaSanGirolamo and San Roccoto create a grander aspect onthe west. Two new buildings or the Fascist administra-tion, their low-rising porticoes deerring to the apseso SantAmbrogio and San Carlo, would then dene the

piazza on the north and east.23

It was a oregone conclusion that the ragments o theAra Pacis, which Augustus had erected in 9 BC near theVia Flaminia, and which, since their discovery in thesixteenth century had remained orphaned in the PalazzoFiano, would nd a more tting home around the Piaz-zale. Mopurgos enshrining o the altar was uninspired,but it amply ullled the propagandistic aims o I l Duce.

When in 1995 the mayor o Rome, Francesco Rutelli,commissioned Richard Meier to reinvigorate the monument

with a new enclosure, it seemed again inevitable that the

result would stir controversy. Ironically, ew critics voicedmuch concern about preserving the memory o RomesFascist past; rather, they complained o the impact oanother tourist attraction on the surrounding cityscape.

Meier contextualized in a way that seemingly has becomede rigueur in the new techno-ormalism: he let one wallo Mopurgos travertine structure (with the text o Augus-tussRes Gestae inscribed) dramatically piercing throughthe glass encasement.

Contextualizing in another, less successul way, Meieralso tucked the entry to the museum beneath a travertinepavilion that rises rom the Tiber and oddly cuts o thelower hal o the acades o San Rocco and San Gerolamodegli Schiavoni.24 Visitors can, however, take some conso-lation in the refection o the soaring dome o San Roccocaptured in the windows acing on the opposite side o

Via di Ripetta. Whether this eect was conscious or not,hardly matters. Today, no less than in earlier ages, Romehas come down to us as a mlange o imagesboth realand virtualexperienced in time and space.


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Notes

1, Cicero, Oratio ad Verrem II, 1, 54, 146-48.

2. Patrizio Pensabene and Clementina Panella, Reimpiego e progettazione

architettonica nei monumenti tardo-antichi di Roma, par. I,Atti della Pontifcia

Accademia Romana di Archeologia,RendicontiLXVI (1995), p. 112. These quarries

were located some 300 km. north o Rome, at modern Carrara.

3. D. du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infmae latinitatis, tom. VII (Paris: Librairie

des sciences et des a rts, 1938), p. 154.

4. This subtle dierence was not lost on the early Renaissance humanist

Flavio Biondo, who entitled his guidebookRoma Instaurata (1446). This

ground-breaking work transposed, as it were, the physical layout o the ancient

city, obliterated with time, into a textual mapping ordered topographically.

5. Nero ruled rom 54 to 68, ollowed by Galba in 69. Vespasian ushered in theFlavian dynasty, succeeded by his sons Titus and Domitian. Trajan was emperor

rom 98 to 117.

6. Beat Brenk, Spolia rom Constantine to Charlemagne: Aesthetics versus

Ideology, in Dumbarton Oaks Papers41 (1987), pp. 104-5.

7. The inscription reads: SENATVS POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS I NCENDIO

CONSVMPTVM RESTITVIT.

8. Francesco Gandolo, Luoghi dei santi e luoghi dei demoni: il riuso di templi

nel Medioevo, in Santi e Demoni nellAlto Medioevo occidentale, Settimane di Studio

del CISAM, XXXVI (Spoleto: 1988), pp. 895-97.

9. Andreina Palombi,La Basilica di San Nicola in Carcere: il complesso architettonico

dei tre templi del Foro Olitorio (Rome: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Romani, 2006),

pp. 75-79.

10. For a ourteenth-century drawing o the ruins in situ, see T.E. Mommsen,Un problema riguardante la topografa medioevale di Roma: S. Nicola in

Carcere nellanno 1400,Atti della Pontifcia Accademia romana di archeologia ,

Rendiconti24 (1949), pp. 309-15.

11. On the perpetuation o this misnomer into the Renaissance, see Andreas

Tnnesmann, Palatium Nervae: Ein antikes Vorbild r Florentiner

Rustikaassaden,Rmisches Jahrbuch r Kunstgeschichte 21 (1984), pp. 63-65.

12. For the text, which exists in three variants, see John Shearman,Raphael in

Early Modern Sources (1483-1602) (New Haven and London: Yale University

Press, 2003), pp. 520-21.

13. Richard Krautheimer,Rome: Profle o a City, 312-1308 (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1980), pp. 299-301.

14. Benedetta Origo and Enzo Crea, Theatrvm Marcelli: El Quliseo de Saveli

(Rome: Edizione dellEleante, 1973), p. 19, purport that Luca Savelli acquiredthe ruins in 1368 rom the Pierleoni, but this is unsubstantiated.

15. Serlio, Tutte lopere darchitettura (Venice: 1619), Bk. III, . 69v. In 1925,

excavations within the caveae revealed a ourteenth-century house. Paolo

Fidenzoni, La liberazione del teatro di Marcello e lo scoprimento di una casetta

medioevale, Capitolium 2 (1926-27), pp. 599. (Tabernae were single-room shops

covered by barrel vaults, oten built in groups in ancient Rome. Caveae werethesubterranean chambers in in a Roman arena or amphitheater.)

16. The drawing, Ufzi Arch. 456 recto, was frst published by Heinrich

Geymller, Documents indits sur l es Thermes dAgrippa, le Panthon et les Thermes de

Diocltien (Lausanne-Rome, 1883), p. 16. Further, Alonso Bartoli,I monumenti

antichi di Roma nei disegni degli U fzi(Rome: C. A. Bontempelli, 1914-22), vol. VI,

p. 32. Rodolo Lanciani reused to accept that the plan was asymmetrical around

the north-south axis. In hisForma Urbis Romae (1893-1901), pl. 21, the entire

bottom hal o Peruzzis drawing is transposed rom t he west to the south with

a long corridor opening to the Via Papalis. The accuracy o Peruzzis drawing

(as recorded later by Palladio) was confrmed by a ragment o the Severan plan

discovered in 1900. Christian Huelsen, Die Thermen des Agrippa: ein Beitrag zur

Topogaphie des Marseldes in Rom (Rome: Loescher, 1910), pp. 14-16. Heinrich

Wrm, Baldassare Peruzzi: Architekturzeichnungen. Taelband(Tubingen: E.

Wasmuth, 1984), pl. 147.

17. A lberti, De re aedifcatoria, VII I, 10. For discussion o this passage, see Linda

Pellecchia, Architects Read Vitruvius: Renaissance I nterpretations o t he

Atrium o the Ancient House,Journal o the Society o Architectural Historians51(1992), p. 390 .

18. In 1509 Alonsina Orsini, widow o Pietro de Medici, acquired the palace and

adjacent properties con vestigia e pareti delle antiche Terme. Foundations o the

Alexandrine baths extended as ar south as the medieval church o S. Salvatore alle

Terme. On the overlapping typologies, see Christoph L. Frommel, Der Rmische

Palastbau der Hochrenaissance (Tbingen: E . Wasmuth, 1973), Bd. I, 55.

19. Jack Wasserman, Ottavio Mascarino and his D rawings in the Accademia Nazionale

di San Luca (Rome: Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, 1966), pp. 81-82, fg. 38.

Mascarinos complex was demolished during the restoration o this archaeological

zone under Corrado Ricci in the 1920s.

20. Domenico Fontana, Della Trasportazione dellObelisco Vaticano e delle Fabriche di

Nostro Signore papa Sisto V(Rome: D. Basa, 1590).

21. Hellmut Hager, Carlo Fontanas Project or a Church i n Honour o theEcclesia Triumphans in the Colosseum, Rome,Journal o the Warburg and

Courtauld Institutes36 (1973), pp. 319-37.

22. Anna Maria Riccomini, A Garden o Statues and Marbles: the Soderini

Collection in the Mausoleum o Augustus,Journal o the Warburg and Courtauld

Institutes58 (1995), pp. 265-83.

23. Spiro Kosto, The Emperor and the Duce: The Planning o Piazzale Augusto

Imperatore in Rome,in Henry A. Mi llon and Linda Nochlin, eds.,Art and

Architecture in the Service o Politics(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978), pp.

270-302. In the context o Mussolinis grandersventramento, see Idem, The Third

Rome, 1870-1950: Trafc and Glory (Berkeley: University o Cal iornia Press,

1973), p. 32.

24. Nicolai Ourousso, An Oracle o Modernism in Ancient Rome,New York

Times, Sept. 25, 2006.

All photos are by the author unless otherwise noted.
