Prof: Good morning.
 
It's Inauguration Day--Happy
Inauguration Day to everyone--
and I thought that actually the
inauguration of Barack Obama
today and the particular lecture
in this class are very well
suited to one another.
 
Because although you see that
the title of today's lecture is
"Technology and Revolution
in Roman Art,"
I could also call it something
like "The Change the Romans
Believed In."
 
Because the change the Romans
believed in,
the change the Romans believed
in was a shift from what we call
traditional Roman architecture
to innovative Roman
architecture.
 
And that's what we're going to
be talking about today,
what we call innovative,
and what we'll call in the
course of this semester,
innovative Roman architecture.
We've already talked about what
we've called traditional Roman
architecture,
and I just want to look again
with you,
to begin today with the Temple
of Portunus,
that we looked at last time,
the Temple of Portunus in Rome,
near the Tiber River,
a temple that was put up in the
late second,
early first century B.C.
 
And we talked about the fact
that this was a traditional
Roman building of this day.
 
A traditional Roman building
though that was quite
derivative,
that looked back at Greek
architecture,
Greek religious architecture,
and Etruscan religious
architecture,
and drew from both of those,
drew elements from both of
those,
and combined them together into
what we termed a new Roman
creation,
at least in the traditional
vein.
We talked about the fact that
the Etruscan elements of this
particular monument were its
tall podium,
were its deep porch,
were the freestanding columns
in that porch,
were the single staircase and
the emphasis on the
façade,
that having that single
staircase achieved.
We also talked about the fact
that while there were columns
all around the structure,
which is actually a Greek way
of doing things,
that those columns were
attached or engaged into the
wall,
which still gave it a certain
sense of flatness,
including on the back,
that was also characteristic of
Etruscan architecture.
 
We also talked about the Greek
elements that were incorporated
here,
and those included the fact
that the building was made out
of stone,
and also the fact that one of
the traditional Greek orders,
in this case the Ionic order,
was used for the structure.
So this bringing together of
Greek and Etruscan elements in
this thoroughly Roman building,
but a building that again we
would call a traditional Roman
building.
And what do I mean by
traditional?
All the traditional Roman
buildings share in common the
following features.
 
They have columns and they have
walls,
and those columns and walls
serve a structural purpose and
that is to hold up the flat or
the sloping ceiling,
the sloping roof,
and that is in fact exactly
what you see here.
 
But at this very same time,
in the second century B.C.
and into the first century
B.C., we begin to see a new kind
of experimentation that is going
on concurrently with this,
an experimentation that grows
up in some of the same towns
that we see traditional
buildings like this.
And what made this
experimentation different than
anything that had come before is
the fact that the Romans use,
for these buildings,
a completely new material,
and that material is concrete.
 
We talked about the fact that
already in the Temple of
Portunus concrete was used,
but concrete was used only in
the podium.
 
You can't see it.
 
It is inside the podium and
serves to strengthen--
concrete has a great deal of
strength and can sustain great
weights--
and so it was placed in the
podium for utilitarian purposes
so that it could help to support
the temple that was located on
top.
But again, none of its
expressive possibilities were
explored by the designer of the
Temple of Portunus or any of the
other temples we looked at last
time.
But what begins to happen also,
in the course of the second and
first centuries B.C.,
is architects beginning to
realize that this new concrete
technology has an opportunity to
transform Roman architecture,
and they begin to experiment
with that transformation.
 
In order to understand the
concrete buildings that we're
going to be looking at this
morning,
which are absolutely
fascinating--and I hope you'll
be as enthralled by them as I
am,
and they again stand at the
very beginning of this
development of innovative
architecture in Rome--
it's important to know a bit
about concrete,
Roman concrete that is,
and I want to make a few points
about it.
 
Roman concrete -- the Latin
term for it is opus
caementicum,
as I've indicated here.
Roman concrete is different
from what we think of today as
concrete.
 
It's a composite of various
natural elements that becomes a
liquid mass when mixed with
water and eventually hardens
into a very,
very strong substance,
much stronger than any of its
ingredients are on their own.
Roman concrete was a mixture of
stone rubble and liquid mortar,
and composed of lime,
sand and something called
pozzolana --
pozzolana being a
volcanic substance,
which was very plentiful in
Italy, especially around the
area of Pompeii,
Herculaneum,
the area of Campania.
Concrete was used in Rome from
the early second century B.C.
on, but it was not until the
end of the second century,
and the beginning of the first
century,
that the expressive
possibilities of concrete began
to be fully realized.
 
Concrete--I think this is also
important to mention,
when you think about concrete
construction in relationship to
stone construction,
that we've already discussed --
concrete is not cut or quarried
the way stone is.
Concrete is caste in molds.
 
Concrete can be caste in any
shape, at least any shape that a
carpenter can build with wood.
 
And like modern builders,
the Romans erected wooden
frames for their walls and
ceilings and they poured
concrete into those wooden
frames.
What's most important for us,
in the context of this lecture
and in this course in general,
is that the introduction of
Roman concrete into Roman
architecture freed the Roman
architect from the confines of a
rectilinear architecture that
they had inherited from the
Greeks,
the kind of rectilinear
architecture that made up a
temple like the Temple of
Portunus.
This is a very momentous change
and one that will have a lasting
impact on the buildings of the
Romans.
Let me try to give you a sense
of what I mean by this.
One could argue that the
greatest concrete structure
built by the Romans was the
Pantheon.
And I remind you of the
Pantheon on the right,
in fact the dome of the
Pantheon, which would not have
been possible without concrete
construction.
But it's interesting to compare
the Pantheon to an attempt that
Etruscan architects made to
create something similar but out
of stone.
 
I show you on the left-hand
side of the screen an Etruscan
tomb that dates to 600 B.C.
 
So, very early in time,
600 B.C., an Etruscan tomb at a
place called--
it's not on your Monument
List--but at a place called
Quinto Fiorentino,
Q-u-i-n-t-o,
new word, F-i-o-r-e-n-t-i-n-o.
Quinto Fiorentino,
an Etruscan territory.
And what the architects have
done here is to try to create a
round tomb, and they've used
stone, as you can see,
and they have laid those
stones.
They've cut and quarried the
stones as usual.
They've tried to cut them in
the shapes that they need in
order to make this work.
 
And they've piled them,
one on top of the other,
row after row after row,
until they've gotten --
it started out okay at the
bottom,
but as they get further and
further on to the top and it
gets rounder and rounder,
and converges at the apex,
they start to have trouble,
as you can see.
And although it's a heroic,
a valiant attempt on their
part, it isn't terribly
successful, at least to my mind,
aesthetically.
 
And, in fact,
they were worried about it
falling down,
so they even had to place a
stone pier here,
to support the dome,
to make sure that it didn't
drop.
And actually that was pretty
successful, because here it is,
still today,
looking pretty good in that
regard.
 
But with the introduction of
concrete into architecture,
under the Romans,
building a dome like the
Pantheon was simplicity itself.
 
All you needed to be able to do
was to build one of these wooden
models,
wooden structures,
that you then poured concrete
into,
and voilà,
you have the dome of the
Pantheon.
 
So simplicity itself,
transformational,
vis-à-vis Roman
architecture.
The only problem with concrete
-- there were two problems with
concrete that the architects of
this period had to contend with.
One of them was that concrete
has to be protected from
moisture--that's number one--and
number two, that concrete is
less attractive than stone.
 
The Roman architects of the
second and first centuries B.C.
solved these two problems in
the same way.
What they decided to do was
when the concrete was still wet,
they attached stone to it.
 
This could either be large
ashlar blocks,
stone blocks,
or it could be small pieces of
stone,
that uncertain work or opus
incertum that we talked
about last time,
pressed into the concrete when
it was wet,
and when it all dried,
that stone both made the
building look more attractive
and also protected the building
from moisture.
 
We looked last time at that
opus incertum facing.
I remind you of the Temple of
Vesta at Tivoli,
which you see here,
and you will recall that the
Temple of Vesta at Tivoli had
concrete,
both in its podium,
for utilitarian purposes and to
support the great weight of the
temple,
but also that the architects
explored making the cella wall,
the curved cella wall,
also out of concrete.
And then when that concrete was
wet they put in these small cut,
irregularly shaped stones,
called uncertain work or
opus incertum,
to protect that.
So we saw that already in the
Temple of Vesta,
even though it was a
traditional temple,
based on Greek and Etruscan
models.
And we'll see it again today,
in several buildings,
and I'll show you just one
example,
the last structure that we'll
talk about today,
the Sanctuary of Fortuna
Primigenia at Palestrina,
an extraordinary structure
built on a hillside,
that also used opus
incertum as the facing.
And you can see it used here
for the wall and also for the
coffered ceiling above.
 
And so a stone facing,
opus incertum,
that was particularly favored
in the second century B.C.
and into the first century B.C.
 
Over time the choice of facing
changed.
Although ashlar blocks,
tufa, travertine,
and opus incertum were
popular in the second and first
centuries, as time goes on
things change.
We'll see, under the Roman
emperor Nerva there was a
revolution,
another kind of revolution of
sorts,
in Roman architecture,
and we'll talk about the
reasons for that and so on later
in the semester.
 
But with that revolution came
an interest in a new facing
material, namely brick -- brick
that was originally stuccoed
over.
 
And, in fact,
the opus incertum work
and the tufa stone that we've
talked about already today
tended to be stuccoed over as
well.
But by the second century we
begin to see an appreciation for
brick in its own right,
the attractiveness of brick,
and the Romans begin to use
exposed brick as the facing for
their buildings.
 
And I show you one example.
 
It's a detail of a warehouse in
the Roman port city of Ostia,
that we'll look at later in the
term, with this exposed brick
facing;
very attractive,
different colorations and so on
and so forth.
Just to alert you to the fact
that again the kind of facing
that we're talking about today
will not be the only facing that
is used by the Romans over time.
 
I want to show you today a
series of these concrete
constructions,
concrete experiments we might
call them,
that begin to turn up,
not only in Rome itself,
but also in some of the cities
close to Rome,
that we saw Rome began to
colonize in the Republic and
into the age of Augustus --
cities that either are the same
or very close to the ones that
we looked at last time,
and I'll show you a map
momentarily.
 
I just want to begin with one
in Rome itself.
This is the so-called Porticus
Aemilia in Rome.
The Porticus Aemilia was a
warehouse, a very large
warehouse on the banks of the
Tiber River.
The Porticus Aemilia was built,
as you can see from the dates
on your Monument List,
very early on,
193 B.C., and then restored in
174 B.C.
Only a small fragment of the
Porticus Aemilia survives today,
but we have a lot of evidence,
a lot of clues,
that we can piece together
through scholarly detective
work,
to determine what this building
looked like in antiquity,
and we can get a quite accurate
sense.
 
We have, for example,
the words of the great Roman
historian Livy,
Livy, who was writing in the
age of Augustus.
 
He tells us that the Porticus
Aemilia--
he describes it,
he mentions the Porticus
Aemilia--
and he tells us it was located
on the east bank of the Tiber
River,
and that it was southwest of
one of Rome's Seven Hills,
the Aventine Hill.
 
Southwest of the Aventine Hill,
which is enormously helpful
because it gives archaeologists
and so on a clue as to where
they might look for remains of
this particular structure.
So we have that.
 
We also have a fragment of the
building, we believe,
because it's located just in
the right place,
and I show it to you here.
 
It's not much.
 
It's essentially a hunk of
concrete that includes an arched
doorway and some arched windows,
but it's very important in
terms of allowing us to
reconstruct what this structure
looked like in antiquity.
 
But most significant of all,
we have a fragment from what is
known as the Marble Map of Rome.
 
The Marble Map of Rome,
called the Forma Urbis--
and I've put that word on the
Monument List,
that title on the Monument List
for you,
the Forma Urbis--the
Forma Urbis was a great
marble map that was made of Rome
in the early third century A.D.,
under the emperorship of
Septimius Severus,
and put up on a wall in Rome,
and we'll talk about its
location later on in the
semester.
But it purported to represent
all the buildings that were
standing in Rome in the early
third century A.D.
It is fragmentary today,
but there are a fair number of
fragments,
and fortunately a couple of
those fragments,
or several of those fragments,
are fragments that represent
the Porticus Aemilia.
So we can tell from that,
from Livy's description,
from this fragmentary remain,
we can piece together what it
looked like.
 
And you can see it here,
a very, very long rectangular
structure that went all along
the bank of the river.
Storage, you need a lot of
storage,
especially as the Romans began
to conquer the world,
they were trading more
extensively with other parts of
the world,
and consequently they needed
places along the Tiber River to
store the goods that were both
going out and coming in.
 
So they build this gigantic
warehouse along the banks of the
Tiber.
 
Now there's a fair amount of
disagreement about some of the
smaller details of this
warehouse and what it looked
like in antiquity.
 
So we have to do the best that
we can to bring that evidence
together to determine what it
looked like.
But as I said,
in some details you'll see
there's variation.
 
So several of the things I'm
going to show you vary slightly,
but the only one that you'll be
ultimately responsible for is
the one that's on your Monument
List.
But I just want you to be aware
of the fact that there are
different interpretations of
exactly what it looked like.
What we are sure of,
and what's most important for
us today, is that it was made of
concrete and that it had barrel
vaults.
 
What was a barrel vault?
 
A barrel vault was a vault that
was again made out of concrete,
placed on a wall,
and then the vault was shaped
like the side of a barrel,
as you can see here,
which is why it's called a
barrel vault --
shaped like the side of a
barrel, resting on walls down
below.
 
A fairly simple shape that
could not have been made,
or would be very difficult to
make out of stone,
but was easily able to be made
out of concrete.
And we see a series of those
barrel vaults,
placed one next to another,
for the warehouse,
for the Porticus Aemilia in
Rome.
It was placed--and actually I
neglected to mention,
Livy also tells us that the
Porticus Aemilia had four tiers
--
it was tiered in four levels --
and we see those four tiers
here,
rising up ever so slightly
along the slope of the Tiber
River.
 
This is a cross-section of what
the inside of the Basilica
Aemilia might have looked like.
 
You see those great barrel
vaults here.
You see that the architect has
been adventurous in the sense
that he has not placed the
barrel vaults on solid walls,
as we saw in that diagram,
but has opened those walls up,
created piers and arches above
those piers to create these
arcades,
which is quite ingenious and
very smart,
because what it does is enable
there to be both axial movement,
through the building,
but also lateral movement.
 
You can walk not only along
each barrel vault,
but you can walk in between the
piers which,
as I said, creates a sense of
much more openness,
and lateral as well as axial
movement.
The other thing that you see
here are the back walls,
where we can see just what we
saw in that fragment of the
building,
the arched doorways,
as well as the arched windows
in the back walls,
which of course allow light
into the structure.
Lots of activity needed to
happen here,
as things were moved in and
out, and those who worked here
needed to be able to see
everything that they were doing.
The view that you have on your
Monument List is this one.
It's a restored view of what
the Porticus Aemilia might've
looked like in antiquity,
and it's very helpful.
It's a cutaway view,
which gives you most of the
major features,
all in one place.
You can see that it is indeed
tiered.
There are four tiers for this
structure, that they move up
slightly as they move up the
slope of the hill.
You can see the use of the
barrel vaults.
You can see the piers down
below.
You can see the flat roof that
these seemed to have.
But as they rose up slightly
along the slope of the hill,
you can see that the designer
has placed small,
curved, slit windows on each
tier to allow again additional
light into the structure.
 
And you can also see,
from this diagram,
that it was made of concrete
and faced with opus
incertum work --
these small,
irregular stones that we saw in
the Temple of Vesta also used as
the facing material here.
 
Here's one more restored view,
which shows you roughly the
same: the four tiers,
the barrel vaults,
the windows on the various
tiers,
and then most importantly these
doorways and windows in the
back,
as well as the general space
that was available inside this
extraordinary building.
I mentioned that while we'll
look at a couple of buildings,
several buildings in Rome,
I also want to go out to some
of the colonies that were
founded by the Romans,
in the vicinity of Rome,
in the second and first
centuries B.C.,
where they began to build,
as we saw.
 
They began to plan towns.
 
They began to put walls around
those towns.
They began to put temples in
those towns and they also began
to put other structures,
including warehouses and
sanctuaries and the like.
 
The ones that we're going to
look at today--
here again, Rome is at the
star--and we're going to look at
buildings in Terracina,
over here, in Tivoli,
and also in Palestrina.
 
And you can see the proximity
of those to others we talked
about last time,
Norba and Cosa and Falerii
Novi, and so on and so forth.
 
It's not surprising,
again, to see the Romans
turning to their environs as
they make these earliest towns
and as they start to fill these
towns,
to make them into the kind of
mini-Romes that they so desired.
So we're going to look at a
series of these,
of different dates and of
considerable interest,
in terms of what they herald
for the future of Roman
architecture.
 
The first that we're going to
look at is a market hall,
a market hall at a place called
Ferentino,
and it dates to--I may have
neglected to show you Ferentino
on that map but it's in with all
the others there,
Ferentino--around 100 B.C.,
it dates to.
And you can see that it's
essentially one giant barrel
vault, one giant barrel vault,
which was used as the market
hall.
 
You can see also that that
giant barrel vault,
which is made of concrete,
has opening off it,
on the sides,
a series of arched areas,
also barrel vaulted on the
inside.
These were used as the market
stalls inside this marketplace.
You can also see I believe very
well that the facing that is
used for this concrete is
opus incertum work for
the walls and for the vaults.
 
And then what they've done to
emphasize the location and the
shape of the arches,
they have used stone around
those --
also to give further solidity
to this part of the building
they have used stone.
And you can see it's a
combination of nicely cut ashlar
blocks,
down here, but also the
voussoir blocks that we
saw in the Falerii Novi gate,
used over the arches.
 
So this combination of both
stone, of opus quadratum
stone, and also of opus
incertum,
used as the facing for this
particular structure.
What's significant about this
building is that it looks
forward to things that we're
going to see later on develop in
Roman architecture.
 
Primarily I showed you in the
introductory lecture a glimpse
of the Markets of Trajan in
Rome,
and I remind you here of the
great market hall of the Markets
of Trajan,
which is even more
sophisticated in its use of
concrete,
because it has ribbed vaults,
as you can see.
But this experimentation that
we're going to see in the early
second century A.D.
 
in Rome would not have been
possible without the
experimentation in concrete that
took place in this very early
stage in the second century and
in the first century B.C.
Even much more interesting in
fact is the building that I'd
like to turn to now,
and this is the so-called
Sanctuary of Jupiter Anxur at
Terracina.
It dates, we believe,
to 100 to 70 B.C.,
and it is, like so many Roman
buildings, spectacularly sited.
I had mentioned this on several
occasions.
We looked at the Mediaeval hill
town of Cori,
for example,
where the Temple of Hercules
was located at the very apex of
the hill.
The Romans had an incredible
knack for choosing extraordinary
locations on which to site their
buildings,
locations that made those
buildings --
that accentuated those
buildings from a distance --
but also gave those who went to
the buildings amazing views out
from those buildings.
 
This is one of those examples,
the Sanctuary of Jupiter Anxur
at Terracina.
 
The best view of this sanctuary
is from the sea.
If you happen to be fortunate
enough to be floating on a boat
somewhere near Terracina--
and it's a beautiful place to
float--
you will see,
from a distance,
the great podium of the
Sanctuary of Jupiter Anxur.
 
But you can also see it from
the town, which is where we're
situated here.
 
We're standing in the town,
a couple of decent pizzerias
right in front of us,
and we're looking up at the
hill on which the sanctuary
finds itself.
Now as you look up to that
hill, all you can actually see
is all that's actually up there
now, which is the podium of the
sanctuary.
 
The temple is no longer there,
although there's some evidence
up there,
some remains that gives us a
decent sense of what that temple
looked like in antiquity.
But the podium is extremely
well preserved,
and you see it again
magnificently sited at the top
of that hill.
 
This is a restored view of what
the podium would've looked
like--
what the podium does look like,
as we see it here--
and as it would have supported
the temple on top,
and also a back columnar
element over here,
that was roofed, as you can see.
If we look at this restored
view, we see several things that
are worth noting.
 
One, that the temple itself is
very much a traditional building
and one that is very much in the
tradition indeed of the
buildings,
the temples,
that we've already discussed:
this combination of Etruscan
plan and of Greek elevation that
we saw in so many of these.
You can see,
for example--and again there's
enough evidence for us to be
pretty sure that this is what it
looked like --
high podium,
single staircase,
emphasis on the façade,
deep porch, freestanding
columns in that porch,
but columns that seem to have
encircled the monument.
So this combination of--and
stone construction we think--so
a combination once again of
Etruscan and Greek elements for
the temple.
 
You'll probably notice that the
temple is slightly skewed,
the angle of the temple of
skewed, it's not straight on
with the podium,
which is very unusual for the
Romans.
 
We'll see that the Romans were
very interested in everything
being exactly as it should be:
axial, symmetrical,
both sides matching.
 
It's very unusual for them to
skew something like this.
Why did they do it?
 
It probably had something to do
either with something that was
already on the site,
some other building,
that forced them to do this,
or having something to do with
the particular god who was
honored here and the location --
the way they wanted that to be
in relationship to various
elements of the rites--
or east-west, or whatever.
There was something that caused
them to put this in the position
that they did.
 
And you can also see that it
isn't--
it has this back colonnade
behind it,
covered colonnade behind it,
but it isn't attached to it in
any way,
which is also unusual,
as we'll see.
 
The podium you see down here,
made up of a series of arcades.
You can see once again both
axial and lateral access,
because just as in the Porticus
Aemilia,
they have created smaller
arcades in the side piers,
to allow this kind of axiality
in the structure,
or movement through the
structure in more than one way.
The podium is extremely well
preserved, as you can see,
and extremely impressive.
 
It's an extraordinary place to
go.
It's a lot of fun to go there
to see this.
It's off the beaten track,
to a certain extent,
but it is on the road between
Rome and Naples,
so that if one is going from
Rome down to Pompeii,
this is the sort of thing one
can stop and take a look at,
and there're some other
interesting things along the way
as well.
 
We see here the great podium,
as it looks today.
It's made out of concrete.
 
You can see both the large
arcades and then these lateral
ones that I mentioned before,
on the interior face of the
piers.
 
You can also see that they have
used opus incertum facing
here.
 
These are regular stones,
all bunched together to create
an attractive appearance,
although this was probably
stuccoed in antiquity.
 
And then they have used stone
blocks to emphasize the juncture
of each of these walls,
but also to help give the
building increased stability.
 
So this combination of
stone--well it's all stone--
but this combination of blocks
of stone and the smaller opus
incertum stones for the
facing of the podium.
And here's a wonderful view,
I think,
that shows you a panorama
through a number of these
lateral arches,
and gives you some sense of how
carefully orchestrated this was
by the architect who was
responsible for this.
 
It's never too early for me to
emphasize that the Romans were
very concerned with creating
vistas and panoramas,
from one part of a building to
another,
from one part of a complex to
another,
and they never lost an
opportunity to do that.
So that as you stand and look
through a series of these
lateral arches,
you can see how carefully
arranged that was,
to pay attention not only to
the way in which the arches--
you can see them in a series,
as you can see here,
looking almost as if they're
diminishing in size,
although they aren't
really--but also this idea of
creating exciting visual
experiences.
 
As you walk through something,
not just to walk through it,
but to see something that
really amazes you and that
fascinates you,
and that creation of vista and
panorama --
both panorama out onto the
countryside,
from the hilltop,
but also a panorama or vista
through a building --
is something quintessentially
Roman,
and we'll see it turning up
again and again and again as a
major objective of Roman
architecture.
A view once again of the
restored view of the sanctuary.
The sanctuary had below it an
underground passageway called a
cryptoporticus--
and I put that word on the
Monument List for you--
a cryptoporticus that
was used essentially for
storage,
for storage purposes for this
sanctuary.
And, believe it or not,
we actually have the
cryptoporticus still
preserved, and we can look at
it.
 
And it's interesting because
here too we see the architects
using concrete construction,
creating a barrel vaulted
corridor,
in this case with windows on
the end and then a few doorways
and some slit windows,
all of them arched,
as you can see here,
to allow light into the
structure.
It was used,
as I said, for storage
purposes, storage having to do
with the cult,
and so on and so forth.
 
It's very important--and we're
going to look at a couple of
other sanctuaries as well--
to keep in mind that these
sanctuaries were meant--
they were different than an
individual temple in a forum
inside an urban complex.
They were meant to draw
pilgrims from far and wide,
which is one of the reasons
that they were placed in such
prominent positions,
on tops of mountains,
so that you wouldn't--
if you were going by in your
cart, or whatever,
and saw this,
from a distance,
or coming by sea,
in a boat, seeing it from a
distance,
you would be drawn--it would be
like a Mecca that you would be
drawn to.
 
So these sanctuaries were meant
to attract large numbers of
people to them.
 
So they needed to provide not
just the temple itself but other
things, and they were like
malls.
They often included shopping
areas,
souvenir shops,
shopping stores for local
specialties and that kind of
thing,
in order to encourage people to
visit.
I'd like to turn to another,
also very interesting
sanctuary, that was put up at
around this time.
This is the Sanctuary of
Hercules at Tivoli,
and it was erected,
we believe, sometime between 75
and 50 B.C., in Tivoli.
 
It is an incredible place.
 
It is not so different from the
Sanctuary of Jupiter Anxur in
its general intentions:
this whole idea of creating
this Mecca for religious
activity and also just a place
that people would enjoy coming
to and gathering together for
social interaction.
 
We see a restored view of what
it looked like in antiquity.
It is similar to and different
from the Jupiter Anxur
Sanctuary.
 
Just like the Jupiter Anxur
Sanctuary, it rests on a very
tall, on a tall and large
podium.
As you can see,
the temple doesn't stand in
isolation but is raised up on
this large podium.
You can see that it has a
temple in the center,
this one completely pushed up
against the back wall and
completely straight.
 
So axial: created in axial
relationship to the podium.
The temple, we believe,
was also one of these
traditional types of temples
with the tall podium,
with a staircase on one side,
with columns going around at
least three sides,
deep porch, freestanding
columns in that porch,
raised up on its own podium,
and then the larger podium down
below.
One of the features that we see
here,
that we did not see in the
Jupiter Anxur Sanctuary,
is the use of the circular
staircase here,
which adds drama to the design.
 
It's also on axis with the
staircase of the temple itself,
but it also serves as a kind
of--it's shaped like a theater,
a theater cavea--we call
it a cavea,
the seating:
c-a-v-e-a, the cavea of
a theater.
 
It's shaped just like that,
as you can see here,
and we believe its purpose was
not so much as a monumental
entranceway or a monumental
staircase,
although it served that
purpose, to a certain extent,
but also as a place where
people could gather and could
sit and probably watch
performances --
religious performances perhaps,
or perhaps other kinds of
performances --
in front of this,
in front of the Temple of
Hercules.
And there may have been some
kind of a stage building.
There was a wall here,
so there may have been also
some kind of stage building in
front of that semi-circular
seated area.
 
This is another restored view,
showing you the same.
You can perhaps see that
theatrical area better here,
again serving as a dramatic
staircase but at the same time
as a place where performances
could take place at this
structure.
 
But all the other features are
apparent.
And I want you to pay special
attention to the fact that we
have the temple pushed up
against the back wall,
not one of the short back walls
but--
well none of them are short
here--but against a long back
wall,
as you can see,
but pushed up against it,
dominating the space in front
of it.
 
We're going to see,
when we turn to Pompeii on
Thursday,
that this same idea of pushing
a temple against a back wall is
characteristic of forum design,
the design of meeting and
marketplaces,
as it is for sanctuary design.
 
The Sanctuary of Hercules at
Tivoli is preserved in part--and
I can show you one very
interesting detail,
which is what you see now on
the screen.
We are looking at part--let me
go back for a second just to
point this out.
 
If you look along the sides and
the back,
you will see that there are
columns above and then columns
with arcades:
arcades and columns in the
first story,
and then columns on their own,
in the upper story.
 
So what I'm going to show you
now is a section of the lower
story of the Sanctuary of
Hercules at Tivoli.
And we can see that what we
have here is a very important
combination--
and it's the first time we've
seen this today--
of arches with columns
interspersed,
columns placed,
engaged or attached into the
wall,
in between these arcades,
as you can see here.
The construction is concrete.
 
The facing is a combination of
stone--
look at the blocks,
the ashlar blocks,
and the voussoirs above
the arches,
and opus incertum work
for the walls,
as you can see here.
 
But the scheme of columns in
between arcades:
extremely important.
 
This is setting in place the
kind of scheme that we're going
to see used for buildings like
the Colosseum in Rome -- so
extremely important.
 
There's one detail here,
there's one detail about the
columns though I wonder if
anyone notices,
that make them different than
any other columns that we've
seen thus far this term.
 
Does anyone see what that is?
 
Student: 
>.
Prof: They definitely
don't--yes, good point.
That wasn't the one I had in
mind, but you're absolutely
right, and it leads to another
point I'm going to make in the
not too distant future.
 
They don't support anything.
 
They are used here--the
building is supported by the
concrete construction.
 
The columns don't have any
support role whatsoever.
They're there entirely for
decorative purposes.
So, excellent point.
 
And still one more.
 
Look at the facing of the
column.
What does that tell you?
 
What is it, what kind of facing?
 
Student:  Opus
incertum.
Prof: Opus
incertum;
which means what?
 
Student:  Concrete.
 
Prof: The columns are
made of concrete too.
The columns are not made out of
stone,
but the columns in this
instance--it's unusual--
but the columns,
in this instance,
made out of concrete and also
faced with opus incertum
work.
 
A view again of the complex,
just to make the point that as
at the Sanctuary of Jupiter
Anxur at Terracina there is an
underground passageway,
a cryptoporticus.
But in this case--and you can
see,
it's on the left,
underneath the left side of the
sanctuary--
but in this instance,
interestingly enough,
this isn't just a storage area,
it's actually a street.
 
The ancient name for Tivoli was
Tibur, t-i-b-u-r.
There was a street called the
Via Tiburtina,
that made its way from Rome to
Tivoli, and this underground
passageway was actually the
street.
The street ran underneath the
sanctuary.
That street,
or that part of the street that
ran under the sanctuary,
can still be seen today,
and you can see--
it looks almost like an
underground subway or something
like that--
you can see barrel vaulted
area, with a series of niches
over here,
probably for shops,
so that along the way you could
stop and shop beneath the
sanctuary.
 
So a street,
in this case,
that is part of the Via
Tiburtina, leading from Rome to
Tivoli.
 
I'd like to turn now to a
couple of buildings in Rome,
back to Rome,
to look at first a building
called the Tabularium,
that dates to around 78 B.C.,
that was a very important
building in Rome,
because it was used to house
the state archives,
at that particular juncture.
 
It was put up by a man--we even
know who put it up--
a man by the name of Quintus
Lutatius Catullus,
and I've put his name on the
Monument List for you,
and it was located on the north
side of the forum,
of the Roman Forum,
and the south slope of the
Capitoline Hill.
 
And here I show you one of
these excellent Google Earth
fly-over views of this part of
ancient Rome,
or what this part of ancient
Rome looks like today.
And we see the landmarks that
we've already pointed out:
the Colosseum at the very top;
the Roman Forum lying in front
of the Colosseum;
Mussolini's Via dei Fori
Imperiali;
the Imperial Fora over here;
the Palatine Hill up here;
the Circus Maximus here;
the wedding cake,
so-called, of Victor Emmanuel,
the modern building,
nineteenth-century building
over here;
and then the Capitoline Hill,
redesigned by Michelangelo,
with the oval piazza.
The Tabularium is located right
here.
It is again facing the forum,
the Roman Forum,
but it is the back wall of one
of Michelangelo's palaces,
the so-called Senatorial Palace
designed by Michelangelo.
What Michelangelo did is what
was done so often by later
architects,
incorporated--didn't tear down
the earlier Roman Tabularium--
but incorporated its wall as
the back wall of his Senatorial
Palace,
and that's exactly what it
remains today.
Here we see a view of the
Tabularium.
We're standing on the Forum
side, looking at what remains of
the Tabularium,
and we can see some of the
features that we've already been
discussing today.
First of all,
let me point out that it is
made out of concrete.
 
It's made out of concrete.
 
The building is concrete.
 
But here in Rome they decided
not to use--opus incertum
work was not the rage in Rome.
 
Instead they were much more
interested in cut stone.
And you can see that they have
used cut stone in this
structure,
cut tufa stone--I think you can
recognize the stone as tufa --
remember tufa is indigenous to
the city of Rome.
 
Rome has a lot of fairly decent
tufa.
They've used tufa here,
and they have used tufa work
also for the arcades above and
for the columns.
The capitals are done in
travertine, added in travertine,
considered the most important
part, so they used the more
expensive material there.
 
But you can see here,
as at the Sanctuary of Hercules
at Tivoli,
that we have this combination
of arcades and columns --
and once again,
as was already pointed out,
columns that have no structural
purpose whatsoever,
columns that are there for pure
decoration.
 
And this scheme of arcades with
columns is going to become
extremely important in the
future.
One can go inside the
Tabularium today and see what
remains of the state archives.
 
There are some very interesting
corridors and vaulting that one
can see.
 
And, by the way,
it's a nice place to go because
there's also a panoramic window
on which one can get some
spectacular views,
down over the Roman Forum,
and some great pictures as
well,
photographs as well.
 
We're looking here at one of
the corridors of the Tabularium.
You can see that the arches are
made out of stone,
supported by columns,
but in between them--
there are a series of bays,
as you can see here--
and in between them we have
domical ceilings that are made
out of concrete.
 
So concrete used here,
combined--concrete for the
domes--
combined with stone,
that the Romans were very--
handsome stone that was in Rome
itself favored,
used for the arches and used to
decorate the walls as well.
 
And what's interesting is that
we find in these corridors a
series of ramps and a series of
steps.
And there's actually one
staircase that has sixty-six
steps--I've counted
them--sixty-six steps,
as well as ramps.
 
And what we see happening
here--and these are again
covered by barrel vaults--
what we see happening here is
the Romans paying a lot of
attention to varying the
experience that you have when
you walk through buildings.
Sometimes you're going to be
walking on a straight path,
sometimes you're going to be
walking on a ramp,
sometimes you're going to be
walking on stairs,
to vary that experience.
 
And you're going to see
panoramas and so on along the
way, to make it an experience to
go into a building and to wander
around that building.
 
But we're also going to
see--and I'll show you this
particularly in the last
structure we talk about today--
we're also going to see the
Romans not hesitating to be the
controlling force,
that they very much were,
and to establish certain
pre-determined paths that you
have to take.
 
So you're having a varied
experience,
but you're kind of having it in
the way that the Romans want you
to have it,
and that's an interesting
phenomenon that I hope we'll
think about together as we
converse in the online forum.
 
I want to show you one last
building in Rome today,
before I show you the real
pièce de
résistance of
concrete architecture of this
early period.
 
I'd like to show you one more
building in Rome.
It's a later building,
and in some respects it belongs
in a later lecture.
 
It's the Theater of Marcellus
in Rome,
a theater that was put up by
Rome's first emperor,
Augustus, after the death of
his nephew and son-in-law
Marcellus.
 
He seems to have put it up,
that is, Augustus seems to have
put it up.
 
He was in great grief at the
loss of this young man because
he had hoped that Marcellus
would succeed him.
Marcellus was married to
Augustus's daughter,
Julia.
 
He'd hoped that Marcellus would
succeed him, but Marcellus,
unfortunately,
died very young.
Augustus was in incredible
grief, and he put up this
theater in Rome,
this stone theater in Rome,
in honor of Marcellus.
 
The theater was put up,
as I mentioned,
either in 13 or in 11 B.C.
 
So I can talk about this--we
have several lectures on
Augustus--
and I can talk about this in
that lecture,
but I decided to put it here
because it really is the
culmination,
in a sense, of some of the
experiments we've been talking
about today,
and I wanted you to see it in
this context for that reason.
 
We are looking at the Theater
of Marcellus as it looks today.
Parts of it are extremely well
preserved, as you can see,
at least these first two tiers
here.
The main reason that the
building has survived,
and you can--well I'll talk
about the details in a moment--
the main reason that the
building has survived--
and I believe I mentioned this
in the introductory lecture--
is that it was re-used over
time.
It was re-used as a fortress in
the Middle Ages,
it was used as a palace in the
Renaissance,
and it was used most recently,
and is still being used,
as a very luxurious condominium
today.
This is where Google Earth
really comes in handy.
If you go onto Google
Earth--because it's very
difficult to get a sense of the
way in which the ancient part of
this structure relates to the
rest of the structure today,
without going up above it.
 
And by going up above it,
and looking at it,
both from above and--and Google
Earth now allows you to do 3D at
the same time,
so you can do 3D and up above
at the same time--
you can see the relationship of
this building to its modern
locale.
And, by the way,
it's just in the shadow,
it's very close to the
Capitoline Hill;
it's a hop, skip and a jump
from the Capitoline Hill,
this area of Rome.
 
It's actually the so-called
Jewish Ghetto area of Rome--
it served as a ghetto in times
past and is still referred to
that way today--
and it has some of the best
restaurants in Rome.
 
If you have never had
carciofi alla Judea,
Jewish artichokes,
wow, they are incredible,
and there are several,
lots of restaurants in this
area that has them.
 
They're a real Roman treat.
 
It's considered a very
characteristic part of the
cuisine of ancient Rome,
and it's definitely something
to experience.
 
But we see the Theater of
Marcellus right here,
and you can see,
both the façade,
which is the ancient part of
it, but also the rest of the
building and the way in which it
is used today as a condominium
with apartments opening off
these lovely courtyards with
trees and plants and flowers and
all sorts of things there.
And there's another famous
temple, the Temple of Apollo
that is located right outside;
there are at least three
columns preserved of that
temple, but also its podium
right in front of the Theater of
Marcellus.
This is again Google Earth.
 
You can look not only at what
the building looks like today,
but you can re-create;
now, in these last couple of
months,
they've enabled us to re-create
ancient Rome as well,
and one can do that for all of
the buildings that we'll be
looking at this semester,
and this one is their
re-creation--it's fairly
simple--
but their re-creation of the
Theater of Marcellus.
 
And it allows us to look at
some of the features of that
building.
 
Again, sorry that I have to
talk so much about terminology
at the beginning but,
as I mentioned,
once we get through this,
the first couple of weeks,
we won't have to do much of
that anymore.
But the basic components of a
Roman theater were the seating,
which is called the
cavea,
c-a-v-e-a,
which is this semicircular
seating that we see here.
 
The cavea is usually
divided into a series of
wedge-shaped sections--
which you cannot see here,
but I'll show you in another
view in a moment--
wedge-shaped sections that are
called,
each are called the
cuneus,
c-u-n-e-u-s,
cuneus.
And then there is a stage
building--
we're seeing the back of that
here--
but a stage building facing the
seating,
called a scaenae frons,
s-c-a-e-n-a-e f-r-o-n-s,
a scaenae frons.
 
What's important to us here,
in the context of this lecture,
is that while the Greeks built
their theaters--
and Greek theaters were the
main prototype for Roman
theaters--
while the Greeks built their
theaters on hillsides,
the Romans were not content,
as a civilization that was
interested primarily in urban
centers,
the Romans were not content to
build their theaters on hills.
 
They didn't want to be
constrained by having to build
their theaters where hills
happened to be,
and so now, with concrete
construction,
what they were able to do
instead was to build a hill out
of concrete anywhere they wanted
to build a hill out of concrete,
right in the center of downtown
Rome,
and then hollow that concrete
out in order to create the
entrances and exits from that
structure.
And that's exactly what they
did for the Theater of
Marcellus.
 
If we look at this detail of
the outside of the Theater of
Marcellus,
we will see that this building,
made out of concrete,
is, like the others we've
talked about today,
faced with some kind of stone.
In this case the stone is
travertine.
The decision of Augustus was to
get this more expensive stone,
bring it from Tivoli,
and use it for this structure.
Blocks of stone,
ashlar blocks of stone,
as you can see here,
and interspersing,
among the arcades,
columns;
columns that,
as were pointed out before,
have no structural purpose
whatsoever;
columns that serve only as
decoration, and the fact that
they were decoration is apparent
in the fact that they have
varied the orders here.
 
We see the Doric order used for
the first story and the Ionic
order used for the second story,
and we think there may have
been a third story;
today what you see up there is
part of the later construction.
 
But if there was a third story,
whether that had columns or
pilasters,
which you'll remember are flat
columns,
if it had those,
those were probably of the
Corinthian order.
Because that is exactly the
scheme that we see on the later
Colosseum: Doric,
Ionic and alternately
Corinthian.
 
But we're sure at least of the
Doric and of the Ionic.
So these columns have no
structural purpose whatsoever;
purely decorative.
 
In a sense they're kind of the
icing on the cake.
They don't hold up the building
but they decorate it in a very
nice way,
and it shows you that the
Romans are beginning to use what
the Greeks used as structural
components of their buildings,
namely columns,
to hold up walls,
to hold up roofs,
they are using them for purely
decorative purposes,
playing around with their
original purpose and using them
in a different way,
and we see that happening in
spades here.
 
If you go into the building you
will see the corridors of the
Theater of Marcellus.
 
You will see what first looks
like a barrel vault,
done out of concrete
construction,
resting on stone,
on travertine piers.
But you see that that barrel
vault curves.
A curving barrel vault is
technically called an annular
vault, a-n-n-u-l-a-r.
 
You see an annular vault here,
or a diagram of an annular
vault here.
 
It's essentially again a barrel
vault that curves.
We sometimes refer to it as a
ring vault, because of its
shape.
 
So you see those annular vaults
used in the Theater of
Marcellus.
 
These are the same vaults that
will be used ultimately in the
Colosseum.
 
A quick view of a typical Roman
theater, the Theater of
Marcellus in Rome,
and a typical Greek theater.
This is the famous Theater at
Epidaurus, of the mid-fourth
century B.C.
 
in Greece.
 
And I show you -- just wanted
to point out the main
differences.
 
They look superficially alike
in that both of them have an
orchestra,
they have an area of seats,
they have a stage building,
but there are some important
differences.
 
One is--and you can't see that
over here -- but the Greek
theater had a round orchestra;
the Roman theater always has a
semicircular orchestra.
 
Both of them have seats,
the cavea.
Here you can see these
wedge-shaped sections of seats
called the cuneus,
that both Greek theaters and
also Roman theaters had.
 
Both of them have stage
buildings, although the stage
building is more prominent in
the Roman context.
But the most important
distinction is the one I've
already drawn,
and that is,
as you can see at Epidaurus,
the Greeks build their theaters
on hilltops;
you can see the trees and part
of the hill very clearly here.
 
The Romans build theirs on
hills made out of concrete --
not always, there are some
exceptions to that.
We do have some Roman theaters
built on hills,
when the hill happened to be in
a good location and particularly
beautifully sited,
but for the most part Romans
build them on their own concrete
construction.
I've mentioned the Monument of
Victor Emmanuel,
the Vittoriano,
and I just wanted to say a
couple more words about it
because--
and you'll see how it fits into
the context here in a moment--
because it's a
nineteenth-century building.
And it's a building that was
put up to honor the first king
of the kingdom of Italy.
 
His name was Victor Emmanuel I.
 
It was put up in 1885,
and you see it here,
again, a major landmark in the
city.
This is a Google Earth image
once again.
But the reason I show it to you
in this context today is that it
is in a sense terraced on the
slope of the Capitoline Hill.
You see Michelangelo's oval
piazza up there.
It's terraced on the slope,
a series of levels.
Staircases leading to terraces,
leading to other terraces,
leading to the top of the
building, decorated with
statuary.
 
It's a real experience to climb
up it.
It's an amazing place to go.
 
It has the Tomb of the Italian
Unknown Soldier here,
with guards and an eternal
flame and all of those things.
And I must add,
for any of you who have not
been in Rome in the last year,
and who are hoping to go
sometime soon,
or whenever in the future,
they have just added,
on top of the Victor--it was
always a great place to climb up
and see great views of Rome--
but they have just added an
elevator,
a modern elevator that they've
created,
that you can now take up,
taking you even higher than you
were ever able to go before.
 
The views of Rome from there
are among the most spectacular
that one can see in the city.
 
So I happened--unfortunately
when I was there this past June
it was raining,
and it doesn't rain in Rome
that often at that time of year,
but it was, so many of the
pictures that I took are sort of
a grey background and so on and
so forth.
 
But nonetheless some of the
most spectacular views you can
see of the city.
 
So don't miss out on that
opportunity.
But I show it to you in this
context because of all of this
terracing up a hill.
 
The idea for this kind of thing
goes way back to the second
century B.C.,
and comes from buildings like
this one.
 
This is, without any question,
the masterpiece of Roman
concrete architecture,
concrete construction,
sanctuary design,
in the second and first
centuries B.C.
 
We're not absolutely sure of
its date.
For a long time--this is,
by the way, the Sanctuary of
Fortuna Primigenia,
at a town called Palestrina.
The date is very controversial.
 
There are many who long
associated it with the Roman
general Sulla,
and said that it dated to 80
B.C.
 
There are others who have
contended that it's much earlier
than that;
it dates to the second century
B.C,
and if it dates to the second
century B.C,
it's even more amazing,
because that means it comes at
the beginning rather than at the
end of this second and first
century B.C.
development.
 
I tend now--I've gone back and
forth.
I taught it as a Sullan
building for quite awhile.
Now I've been teaching it the
last few years as a
second-century building.
 
It probably doesn't matter all
that much;
it dates to one or the other
and it's an example of what was
going on at that particular
time.
But I'm giving you a date this
year as second century B.C.,
which I think,
at this juncture,
is probably--
my personal opinion is that's
probably where it belongs.
 
You're looking at it here.
 
It is an incredible--it is part
of an incredible hill town.
Just like Cori,
the city of Palestrina is a
beautiful hill town.
 
You can see it here with all
the wonderful red roofs of the
town that tie the design of the
town together.
The culminating monument of
that town is still the Sanctuary
of Fortuna Primigenia.
 
Once again the Romans have
found a spectacular locale for
this sanctuary cum theater cum
shopping mall,
Mecca for Romans of its day,
on this hillside.
Once again they have in fact
taken over the entire hillside.
They have terraced the
hillside, as we can see,
and they've essentially poured
concrete on that hillside to
create a system of ramps and
stairways and with a temple at
the very apex.
 
It is pretty well preserved
today.
You can see there's an awful
lot of it still there.
If you're coming by car,
you can either park down here
or up there,
and you can make your way up
the ramps,
up the staircase to the various
levels,
and then up to the theatrical
entranceway into the uppermost
part.
The Temple of Fortuna herself,
which was at the apex and was
located probably in what may
have been a kind of mountain
alcove,
at that particular time,
was transformed in the
seventeenth century,
by the famous Barberini
family--famous Italian family;
popes came from that family and
so on--
transformed into--they were
very smart too--
transformed into a nice little
palace that they could go and
stay in when they felt like it.
 
A small palace but one that
takes the exact shape of that
uppermost part of the sanctuary.
 
I'll show that to you in a
moment.
Here's a view from Google Earth.
 
You can see Google Earth
doesn't always work.
When you go out to some of the
smaller places,
it's hard to zero in on it well
enough to get a decent focus.
But you can see it actually
here.
You can go to Palestrina and
see it on Google Earth.
These are the various tiers,
with the palace at the
uppermost part.
 
Here's a restored view--it's on
your Monument List--that gives
you a sense of what the building
looked like in antiquity.
You can see the entranceway was
down here, a small arched
entranceway.
 
But you really needed to go up
the ramps.
You could go up on either side.
 
So we see this composite,
just like we saw at the
Tabularium, this combination of
ramps and staircases to make
your way up;
varied experiences,
but at the same time a
pre-determined path.
Because while you had some
choice when you first arrived,
you could go up the ramp on
either left and right--
and you can see it was a
covered ramp in antiquity--
but when you got here you had
one choice,
you had to go up the stairway,
to this level,
and then there were some shops
here you could explore.
But then if you wanted to go up
to the next level,
you had to go back to the
central stairway,
up to this level,
back to the central stairway,
and then to the stairway in the
shape of a theater at the
uppermost part.
 
So again, experience is
stressed, your experience of the
building was stressed,
but at the same time your path
was determined by the Roman
designer.
This is another view of the
same, where we can see the
entranceway, the ramps,
the staircase leading you from
one to the other;
the uppermost staircase.
Here you can well see the
theatrical --
the way in which the theater,
the semi-circular theater is
used both as an attractive
entrance stairway to the
structure,
but at the same time as a place
where performances could
actually take place.
Then what's called a hemicycle.
 
You see several hemicycles here;
h-e-m-i-c-y-c-l-e,
these curved areas.
 
The columns follow that curve.
 
You see that hemicycle at the
very top, and then at the apex
of the structure the shrine of
Fortuna herself,
a small round shrine.
 
In fact it's almost an
anticlimax to see how small the
shrine at the uppermost part of
the structure is.
How did the Romans achieve this?
 
They created,
as you can see here,
a series--or they converted the
hillside into a series of
man-made terraces.
 
They built those terraces up,
in some instances,
by barrel vaults.
 
You can see the series of
concrete barrel vaults here,
as they have built some
elements up along the way.
And the ultimate result was
what you see here --
the same sort of thing we saw
before,
the ramps, the staircase,
the hemicycles with columns
supporting a curved wall,
a series of shops,
the spectacular theater-like
staircase,
the curved hemicycle at the
uppermost part,
and then peaking up at the top
the Temple of Fortuna herself.
It's hard to conjure up in a
classroom in New Haven the
actual experience that one has
when one goes to Palestrina and
climbs through this structure,
and it's not as well preserved
today as it once was,
obviously, in antiquity.
But in the few minutes that
remain I want to try to
recapture, or try to take you
through that experience.
We're obviously--and to show
you how arduous it actually was.
It's a climb up there,
and in fact this is one of
those examples,
and there are many in Italy,
that one likes to call
Stairmasters made by nature,
essentially -- places that you
can go and you can put,
exert a lot of effort into
making your way to the top of
this sanctuary.
 
The best natural Stairmaster in
Italy is of course--
any of you who have been along
the Amalfi Coast,
know there's nowhere on the
Amalfi Coast that you don't have
to climb up and down,
at multiple times of day.
And that's exactly what's
happening here.
And you can see how steep this
path up the ramp was,
and we're going up the ramp
again.
It was covered in antiquity.
 
It's open to the sky today.
 
As we go along the ramp we see
the remnants of some of the
capitals.
 
These are travertine capitals,
as you can see here,
fallen down.
 
But if you look at some of
these capitals in detail,
you see something quite
extraordinary,
and that is the capital isn't
straight.
The uppermost part of the
capital slopes.
Now why is that?
 
The reason that is,
is because if you're going to
put columns along the inner wall
of the ramp,
which is what they did,
the column--
the capitals--have to conform
to the incline of the ramp,
and so they have slanted those
capitals.
The whole idea though of
changing--the Greeks would never
do something like that;
it would be sacrilege to change
the shape of a capital.
 
But this Roman architect has
done that with abandon here.
He needed to do it,
because he needed to fit it
into the scheme,
although he could've not had
columns there,
but he wanted to have columns
there.
 
So he slanted them.
 
This whole, this sort of
sacrilegious approach to
traditional Greek and Etruscan
architecture,
the willingness to change
things, to experiment--
I told you this was a change
you believe in--
the willingness to change these
things,
to experiment with them in ways
that had never been done before,
to go against the tenets of
traditional ancient
architecture,
namely that of the Greeks and
Etruscans,
is something quintessentially
Roman and something that we see
happening here,
and again heralds a very
innovative future.
Here we see again the ramp,
we see the capitals,
the slant of the capitals,
and we see that the work here
was done,
was concrete faced with opus
incertum,
both for the walls and also for
the ceilings.
 
As one makes one's way up the
ramps,
we see these alcoves,
all of this done--
the various shops,
the alcoves--all of it done
with concrete faced with opus
incertum.
We see the remains of the
hemicycles.
You can see the columns made of
tufa with travertine capitals
supporting this curved attic of
the hemicycles.
We see the vaulting with its
concrete construction.
This is an annular vault once
again, where we can see the
facing in the coffers is opus
incertum work.
Another view of that,
both the wall and the annular
vault, decorated with opus
incertum work;
a detail of that opus
incertum work to show you
how very attractive it was.
 
It's a pity that it was
stuccoed over in ancient Roman
times.
 
A view that I took again just
to give you a sense of how steep
the climb is.
 
You've made it up the ramp,
now you're at the central
staircase, you're on your way
up.
It's very, very steep.
 
The stairways are pretty--are
short, so that it's a very
arduous trip up,
as I said.
And then you can get a sense of
the fact that you would've seen
the Sanctuary of Fortuna at the
top;
now you see the embracing arms
of the Barberini Palace,
but you can see those arms
follow the exact shape of the
original hemicycle that was once
there.
And you can also see the
theater staircase very well
preserved;
and I show you a detail of that
theater staircase,
leading into the doorway into
the museum today.
 
And just in closing,
a return to the restored view
of the structure itself,
with the temple or the shrine
of Fortuna at the very apex,
a shrine that unfortunately no
longer survives.
 
But I think as you look at this
last view of this monument,
you can see that what the
architects have created through
this terracing,
through pouring concrete on
this spectacular hillside,
is a kind of a pyramid,
a kind of a pyramid with the
goddess at the apex;
a pyramid that I would contend
was more extraordinary through
what the Romans did with
concrete than what nature itself
had provided in the form of this
mountain.
And it gives you an incredible
sense of what the Romans were
capable of doing in the second
and first centuries B.C.,
vis-à-vis concrete
architecture,
experiments that again are
going to have a lasting impact
on the architecture that we'll
be studying in the course of
this term.
 
Thank you.
 
