Prof: Good morning.
 
Today's lecture is entitled
"The Prince and the Palace:
Human Made Divine on the
Palatine Hill."
And I want to begin essentially
where we left off,
and that is with the emperor
Vespasian,
the founder of the Flavian
dynasty,
and the political shrewdness
that Vespasian demonstrated,
when he made the decisions that
he did --
when he made the decision
especially to use architecture
to further his political agenda.
 
And you'll recall that the way
in which he did that was that
he--
and I'm going to show you the
site plan once again on the
Esquiline and Palatine Hills;
the site plan that shows us how
he did this.
How he did this was he
recognized that he didn't want
to associate himself with Nero,
but it was to his advantage to
associate himself instead with
the emperor Claudius.
And he did that by finishing
the platform,
and indeed the temple itself
that we looked at last time,
and that is the Temple of the
Divine Claudius,
the Claudianum,
that had been begun by
Agrippina the Younger.
 
He completed that as a nod to
Claudius;
and again, a very smart
political move on his part.
He also, as you'll recall,
razed the Domus Aurea of Nero
to the ground,
covered up what was left of it
otherwise,
and then he filled in the
artificial lake,
and he used the property that
the artificial lake was on,
to build the Colosseum,
which itself was a shrewd gift
to the Roman people,
to gain their favor,
and he did succeed in that
regard.
 
Equally important,
perhaps even more important,
is the decision that Vespasian
made in the year 79 A.D.,
and that decision--and we see a
portrait once again of
Vespasian,
on the right-hand side of the
screen,
now in Copenhagen--the decision
he made in 79 was to appoint his
elder son,
Titus, as co-regent.
 
And we see a portrait of Titus
on the left-hand side of the
screen, in military costume.
 
It's a portrait that was found
in Herculaneum,
so that we know it needs to
date prior to 79:
so very likely sometime in the
seventies,
that particular statue was put
up.
Now the reason it was smart
politically to appoint Titus as
his co-regent was that Titus was
extremely capable.
He was also extremely popular
in Rome, with the people,
with the Senate,
and what it did was to ensure
the succession:
to ensure the succession.
And so when Vespasian died of
natural causes in 79 A.D.,
Titus was prepared to take
over, and indeed he did,
and he took over without any
contest whatsoever,
which was a great
accomplishment.
Titus, however--oh,
and Titus, by the way,
was young when he became
emperor;
he was in his early thirties,
about thirty-two,
full of energy,
and he needed it for what lay
ahead, because he was unlucky.
 
And his reign was affected by
three major events,
the first of which you know
intimately already,
and that is the eruption of
Vesuvius in 79 A.D.
Titus' reign was 79 to 81.
 
So in 79 A.D.,
Vesuvius erupts and Titus has
to deal with the consequences of
that, covered over,
as you well know,
almost all of Campania.
In the year 80 he suffered,
or Rome suffered,
a very serious plague,
which Titus also had to deal
with.
 
He had to marshal all of his
energy and all his ingenuity to
deal with a very serious plague
in Rome,
and that plague was followed by
a fire,
also an exceedingly serious
fire.
So Titus had his hands full,
and perhaps it's not
surprising,
given all the stress of those
years that he too died of
natural causes in 81,
at a very young age.
 
But despite what he went
through during 79 to 81,
Titus' claim to fame was
something that happened much
earlier,
and I've mentioned it before,
and that is something that
happened already in the year
A.D.
 
70.
 
And it was in the year A.D.
 
70 that Vespasian sent his
elder son to Jerusalem,
to Judea, to get involved in a
major military war.
And it was Titus,
as you'll recall,
who was victorious in the
Jewish Wars, and that took place
in 70 A.D.
 
And it was extremely important,
not only in itself,
from Rome's standpoint,
but also because it provided
legitimacy to the Flavian
dynasty.
I mentioned that when a Roman
dynasty came to power in a civil
war--
which was the case,
both for Augustus,
after the civil war that Rome
was plunged into after Caesar's
death,
and was the case again for
Vespasian after the chaos of the
year 68/69--
they needed a foreign victory
to gain legitimacy.
 
So for the Flavian dynasty,
the war over Jerusalem gave
them that legitimacy,
and was therefore extremely
important in terms of the art
and ideology of the Flavian
dynasty.
 
I want to turn to an arch that
was put up in honor of that very
victory over Jerusalem,
sometime after A.D.
81.
 
It was the so-called Arch of
Titus,
one of the most famous Roman
monuments of all,
and it was put up,
although it bears Titus' name,
it was put up not by him,
but by his brother Domitian,
his younger brother Domitian,
who succeeded him after Titus'
death,
which is why we date it to
sometime after A.D.
 
81.
 
I want to show you first its
location, because that itself is
significant.
 
We are looking at the Google
Earth view of the Roman Forum.
You see the Roman Forum here.
 
You see the Colosseum up at the
top center.
You see the Capitoline Hill or
Campidoglio here;
the Victor Emmanuel Monument
here--I've pointed these out
many times before--the Via dei
Fori Imperiali of Mussolini;
the Imperial Fora to the left;
again the Roman Forum here;
and the Palatine Hill,
which we're going to be
concentrating on today.
 
But you'll remember that Nero's
hope was to link the Palatine
Hill with the Esquiline Hill,
which is right up to the left
of the Colosseum,
and to do that via a spur
hill--a spur hill that's located
just right here,
a bit above my finger--a spur
hill called the Velia,
V-e-l-i-a, that was to link the
two.
And you'll remember Nero's
plans for his Domus Transitoria,
this palace that was to serve
as a point of transit between
those two hills,
and you'll recall also the
remains of some of the rooms
from the Domus Transitoria.
So this was again land that had
been built up by Nero.
So it's not surprising to see
the Flavians--
once again Titus following
suit, and then his younger
brother Domitian following
suit--
to use land that had earlier
been used by Nero for new
Flavian monuments,
in this case an arch put up to
the victory that Titus
celebrated over Jerusalem.
And if you look very carefully,
again just a bit,
a few inches above where my
finger is,
you will see the Arch of Titus
standing on that spur hill,
on the Velia,
between the Palatine and the
Esquiline Hills.
 
The Arch of Titus,
again which dates to after A.D.
81, was placed right next to
the Sacred Way,
or the Via Sacra.
 
It doesn't span the street,
but it's placed right next to
it,
adjacent to it,
and I think you can see that
very well in these two views
here,
which also show that quite a
bit of ancient road actually
survives,
or a piece of ancient road
actually survives,
in the Roman Forum.
 
It's on the slope that you see
here, and you can see the way in
which it goes right by the Arch
of Titus that you see to its
right.
 
This is a view up the hill,
up the Sacred Way,
toward the Velia,
and here down,
from the Arch of Titus,
down into the rest of the
Forum.
 
And again you can see the
polygonal masonry of the ancient
road still preserved.
 
The ancient way,
the Via Sacra,
was the road that the
triumphant general took when he
returned to Rome,
after a great military victory;
so this is exactly the road
that Titus himself would've
taken when he came back from
Judea and walked in triumph,
or rode in triumph,
in his chariot,
along the Sacred Way and up to
the Capitoline Hill.
Because the triumphant general,
who was garbed with the
attributes of Jupiter,
in this procession,
made his way up to the
Capitoline Hill,
would get off his chariot up
there,
right at the altar,
in front of the Temple of
Jupiter OMC,
and make a sacrifice to Jupiter.
So you have to imagine Titus
doing this;
along with Vespasian,
because you'll remember I
mentioned to you that they
celebrated a joint triumph,
that Titus was willing to share
his triumph with his father
Vespasian.
 
So they both would've come in,
in triumph, into Rome,
after this great victory.
 
Once again you can see the arch
in the view on the right.
Another view of the arch here,
which shows it on the Velia;
and here you can get a very
good sense of the way in which
that spur hill unites the
Palatine and the Esquiline,
as well as the proximity of the
Arch of Titus to the Colosseum.
We are seeing that the Flavians
are building up a certain area
of Rome, with their monuments,
and this is no exception.
The view that we see here,
from the Forum,
of one side of the Arch of
Titus, shows a modern
inscription,
but we'll see that there is an
ancient inscription on the other
side.
And we're also going to see
that although the arch looks
very well preserved,
it was actually quite heavily
restored by an architect by the
name of Giuseppe Valadier,
and that happened in the
nineteenth century that
Valadier--
V-a-l-a-d-i-e-r;
Giuseppe Valadier--restored the
Arch of Titus.
And the part of the arch that
is ancient is essentially the
central section,
right here--mostly on the other
side actually;
on this side just the spandrels
and the inner panels here,
and on the other side we'll
see--well I'll show you when we
get to the other side.
So this side important to know
that the inscription is a modern
one.
 
Here's the other side of the
arch, where you can see again
the central section is ancient,
with the spandrels,
these triangular areas here;
the columns on this side are
ancient;
the keystone is ancient;
the frieze up above the
keystone is ancient;
the inscription is ancient on
this side.
But all the rest was restored
by Valadier, as I said in the
nineteenth century.
 
And Valadier did something very
interesting,
and archaeologically very
forward thinking,
in that since the center of the
arch was made out of Greek
marble,
pentelic marble--p-e-n-t-
e-l-i-c--pentelic marble from
Mount Pentelikon in Greece--
which in itself is interesting
because we saw that the Flavians
were using imported marbles in
their buildings;
I've mentioned that already
before.
So we see a continuation of
that trend here,
use of pentelic marble for the
arch.
But when Valadier did the
restorations,
or the reconstruction,
he used travertine for the
modern parts of the arch,
so that when you--it probably
isn't so evident to you from
this view,
but when you stand in front of
the arch you can see the
difference in the materials,
and he wanted to point out to
the spectator that there was a
difference between the ancient
part of the monument and the
modern part of the monument,
as restored by him.
 
This view on the left,
there are quite a number of
preserved paintings and
engravings that show the arch
before the Valadier
reconstruction,
and you see one of those over
there.
And you can see we're looking
at the same side of the arch
here as we are here.
 
So once again you can see the
ancient -- what survived of the
ancient arch:
the central part;
the two columns on bases;
the keystone;
the spandrels;
the frieze;
and then the inscription.
 
So, and we see that here.
 
And this is another one of
those Roman monuments that was
essentially preserved because of
re-use over time,
or at least the part of it that
still exists.
And this was turned into,
as so many other monuments,
was turned into a fortress at
one point,
a fortress that was owned by
the Frangipani family in Italy.
So that's the ancient part;
the rest restored by Valadier.
And you have to also
reconstruct in your mind's eye
that this arch would've served
as a kind of statue base for a
representation,
or for a sculptural group,
in bronze,
that would've represented
Titus, and perhaps Vespasian
also,
together, seated in a chariot,
being led by four horses,
a great quadriga group that was
customarily placed on the top of
such arches.
 
Below that the inscription
plaque, below that,
as I've already described,
a frieze--I'm going to show you
that frieze in a moment.
 
Then the spandrels,
and then in the center here,
two great panels,
one on either--figural
panels--one on either side of
the arch.
You see the inscription here.
 
It's interesting because it
tells us that it was the Senate
and People of Rome,
the SPQR, the Senate and People
of Rome,
who put this up to the Divine
Titus,
Divo Tito,
as you can see here,
and--the Divine Titus,
who was the son--
there's an F for filius
right over here--
the son of the Divine Vespasian.
So the divinity of both of
these men, both of whom were
made gods at their death,
is alluded to here.
So the Senate and People of
Rome put this up to the Divine
Titus, the son of the Divine
Vespasian.
And you can see all of these
little holes that are located in
some of the letters.
 
The reason for those is that
those were where bronze letters
were actually attached.
 
So these letters were inscribed
and then bronze letters were
attached to them so that the
inscription would gleam in the
sunshine,
and so that you could see it
from considerable distance.
 
Down below the inscription
plaque we see the frieze,
which purports to represent
this great procession or parade
that took place when Titus
returned from Jerusalem,
and had his triumphal
procession along the Sacred Way,
and up to the Capitoline Hill
and the Temple of Jupiter.
And you can see that the artist
has made the figures fairly
small,
but at the same time has made
each one distinct from the
other,
so that this is more readable
from the ground.
And then below that,
the decoration of the keystone.
And then in either spandrel,
or triangular area at either
side of the keystones,
we see victories,
flying female figures of
victory,
that are of course making
reference,
in a general way,
to this great victory that
Titus had over Jerusalem.
 
Important from the
architectural standpoint are the
columns and especially the
capitals.
I show you a detail of one of
the preserved--
there are two again--but one of
the two preserved capitals from
this side of the arch,
the side that faces the
Colosseum.
 
And you see it here,
and it's a distinctive capital
that we have not seen before.
 
It's a capital that actually
combines the Corinthian and the
Ionic,
because you can see the
Corinthian acanthus leaves
growing up here:
flowers,
as we see, in the usual
Corinthian order,
and then prominent volutes of
the Ionic order up above.
 
We refer to this as the
composite capital;
the composite capital,
combining Corinthian and Ionic.
We see it quite infrequently in
Roman architecture,
but we do see it on occasion.
 
So it's good for you to know
about.
In the center of the bay I
mentioned that there were two
great figural panels,
and these figural panels make
reference to Titus' victory over
Jerusalem,
to this important event,
from the point of view of the
Flavians,
that gave their dynasty
legitimacy.
 
And we see one of those here.
 
We actually see an image of
Titus in his chariot,
and he's riding alone,
without his father.
He's riding alone in his
chariot, with the exception of a
female figure who accompanies
him.
And you can see that female
figure is winged,
and she is a personification of
victory--
so she is heralding the victory
that he has had in Jerusalem--
and, in fact,
she holds a laurel wreath above
his head,
crowning him,
because of that victory.
 
The chariot is led by four
horses,
who are whizzing by,
as you can see here,
and they are led,
at the front,
by a woman in a helmet and
military costume,
who might well be Roma,
the personification of Rome
herself.
 
And what is she doing?
 
She's welcoming Titus back to
Rome, after his great victory
over Jerusalem.
 
Over here, two other figures,
two other male figures,
both headless today,
but one of them in a toga,
and the other figure with a
bare chest and a mantle wrapped
over the lower part of his body.
 
Because we have the same
figures in other reliefs,
we know, despite the fact that
they are headless,
that these are personifications
of the Senate.
The dressed person,
the person in toga,
is the Senate,
the Genius--g-e-n-i-u-s,
like genius--the Genius
Senatus,
or the Spirit of the Senate.
 
And this, the Genius Populi
Romani, which was the
representative of the Roman
People.
So keep in mind again,
it was the Senate and People of
Rome that put up the arch to
Titus, the son of the divine
Vespasian;
and we see themselves,
or their personifications,
represented in this scene.
More interesting from our
standpoint,
vis-à-vis architecture,
is the other scene,
on the other side of the
central bay,
where we see the Roman
soldiers, or a group of Roman
soldiers,
bringing back spoils or booty,
trophies,
from Jerusalem,
things that they have stolen
from the temple in Jerusalem.
And you can see the famous
seven-branched candelabrum that
they are carrying here.
 
The weight is so great that
their shoulders bend under that
weight.
 
And we also see them with a
table over here that has a
number of sacrificial implements
and so on, that were taken also
from the Temple in Jerusalem.
 
So they carry these along in
this parade,
for the people to see,
for those in Rome to see,
to get a real palpable sense of
what it meant to have this
victory,
and of the spoils that are
being brought back.
 
And you can see that--this is
represented very
illusionistically--
and you can see that they seem
to be walking through an arch,
that is also represented here:
a very interesting scene
indeed.
And you'll recall what they did
with those spoils.
They took those spoils and they
put them in the Templum Pacis
that we talked about last time,
or the Forum Pacis that we
talked about last time,
that served essentially as a
kind of museum where the people
of Rome could see these images.
So once again the Flavians
always showing an affinity for,
and an interest in,
the people of the city --
the people of the city that
they were trying,
of course, to court favor from.
 
So we're seeing Domitian,
who again was the commissioner
of this monument,
continuing on in the same vein
as Vespasian and Titus,
honoring this victory that gave
legitimacy to the Flavian
dynasty,
but also always acknowledging
and thinking of the impact that
it's going to have on the Senate
and the People of Rome.
The central bay,
if you stand right below it and
look up,
you will see the vault of the
interior of the arch,
and you can see that it has a
coffered ceiling,
as we've seen so often in Roman
monuments;
quite well preserved,
with the coffers and then the
rosettes in the center.
And if I show you another
detail of that,
you'll get an even better sense
of it, and also of how ornate
the decoration is.
 
We've talked about the fact
that the Flavians had a
particular interest in very
ornate decoration,
and you can see that as well
here.
In fact, the drill has been
used so extensively that it
almost dematerializes the vault,
I think, in a very interesting
way,
creating a kind of overall
tapestry of dark and light.
 
And then in the center a panel
that is surrounded by a garland,
and in the center of that panel
a depiction--
you can probably barely see it
from where you sit--
but a depiction of Titus being
carried to heaven on the back of
an eagle.
 
In this case Titus is not in
military dress but in a toga.
He's on the back of an eagle,
with outstretched wings,
and that eagle is taking him up
to the heavens.
What this is,
is a representation of
apotheosis--
a-p-o-t-h-e-o-s-
i-s--apotheosis,
or divinization:
the divinization--
because the Romans believed
that they could make humans into
gods,
after their death--the making
of Titus into a god after his
death,
and the depiction of--the
material depiction of him
actually being carried to heaven
on the back of an eagle,
a very powerful image.
And the fact that it is in the
archivolt of this vault here has
led scholars to suggest that it
is possible that the Arch of
Titus in Rome served as Titus'
tomb.
And that seems to be
corroborated by the fact that
behind the attic,
or inside the attic of the
arch, is a staircase,
as well as a chamber,
and I show both of them to you
here: a spiral staircase and a
chamber,
a chamber that might well have
served as a burial chamber for
an urn of Titus.
The urn was never found--was
not found in the excavation of
this monument,
so we can't prove this,
but I think it's very possible
that this arch served as a tomb
for the emperor Titus.
 
Titus was succeeded,
as I've already mentioned,
by his younger brother
Domitian, whom you see in two
portraits here:
a portrait from Munich,
on the left,
in military garb,
and then a bust-length portrait
in Rome,
on the right-hand side of the
screen.
Domitian was born in A.D. 51.
 
So he was only your age,
about nineteen,
when Titus went off to the
Jewish Wars.
There was never any question
that Domitian would succeed his
brother.
 
Vespasian was in this for the
long haul.
He created a dynasty and
expected both of his sons,
first Titus,
his older son,
and then his younger son,
Domitian, to succeed him.
So Domitian's eventual rise to
power was never in question.
And yet Domitian was jealous of
his brother,
who was very popular in Rome,
as I've already mentioned,
and who had this great military
victory on which the Flavians
based their claim to rule.
 
And Domitian was very jealous
of his brother.
He felt out of the loop,
and so when he succeeded
Titus--
quicker than he thought,
because Titus died way before
his time,
in his thirties,
as you know--when Domitian
succeeded Titus,
he came to power as a very
embittered man,
and he never got over that
bitterness.
 
And, in fact,
what we see Domitian doing is
really reverting to the
megalomaniacal way of thinking
of people like Caligula and
Nero,
exercising his imperial
prerogatives to the fullest and,
in fact, even insisting that he
be addressed as "lord and
god," dominus et
deus;
which I've put on your Monument
List for you,
dominus et deus,
that's lord and god.
And he, not surprisingly,
given his bent,
he not surprisingly moved away
from the public architecture
that Vespasian and Titus had
favored--
for Vespasian,
of course, buildings like the
Colosseum,
for Titus, the Baths of
Titus--the public architecture
that had been favored by his
father and his brother.
 
He moved back to being
interested in building palatial
architecture,
essentially to his own glory.
And we're going to see that the
major monument that he
commissioned was the Imperial
Palace on the Palatine Hill,
that had been begun by Tiberius
and Caligula;
he completed that palace in the
nineties A.D.
Before we get to that,
which will be our main focus
today,
I would like--because it's
extensive and there's a lot to
see--
I would like to say a few words
about another commission of
Domitian,
because he wasn't without the
desire to at least build some
public buildings,
and I'd like to begin with one
of those here.
This is a model of the
so-called Stadium of Domitian,
a stadium or a race course,
that was put up during
Domitian's reign;
we date it usually to the
latter part of his reign,
92 to 96 A.D.
And you see that model again
here.
And you can tell a lot about
this building from both the
scanty remains,
but also from other evidence
that allows us to be able to
reconstruct it relatively
accurately.
 
You see it here.
 
These stadia were hairpin in
shape--
as you can see,
a straight end on one side,
a curved end on the other--but
long,
elongated, a kind of elongated
oval with one straight side,
as you can see.
 
It was put up in very similar
fashion to theaters and to
amphitheaters,
in that they built a concrete
hill and lined that concrete
hill with stone seats,
and then buttressed it with a
wall,
as you can see here,
that was decorated,
just like the Theater of
Marcellus,
or like the Colosseum,
with in this case two tiers of
arches,
two sets of arcades,
with columns in between them,
those columns again having no
structural purpose whatsoever,
just used as decoration for the
monument.
 
And then the exits and
entrances, again done very
similarly to amphitheater or
theater architecture,
as we've discussed it thus far.
 
So the main difference is it's
not quite as tall as
amphitheaters,
for example,
or theaters,
and just two tiers of columns,
as you can see here.
 
And the main difference in plan
is that it's a hairpin shape,
again with one straight side
and one curved side.
Only a small--one can see
today, and this is essentially
underground or what survives of
it is underground,
although there's one section
that can still be seen,
as I'll show you in a moment.
 
But what's absolutely
miraculous is the fact that the
actual hairpin shape of the
Stadium of Domitian is
preserved,
in its entirety,
in the shape of one of Rome's
most famous piazzas,
and my favorite,
by far, the Piazza Navona,
which you see from the air
here, in a Google Earth image.
And you can see again the exact
shape: the straight side and the
curved side, of Domitian's
Stadium, still preserved in the
Piazza Navona in Rome.
 
It's a wonderful piazza.
 
For those of you who've been
there, I'm sure you have enjoyed
spending time there.
 
For those of you haven't,
it really is a mecca within
Rome.
 
And you can see not only is it
a pleasant place to walk but
also a place to see great
buildings,
for example,
Francesco Borromini's
Sant'Agnese in Agone,
and Bernini's Four Rivers,
famous Four Rivers Fountain,
in the center of the piazza,
in dialogue with one another.
 
And as we look at this from the
air,
and we look at the curved end
of the Piazza Navona,
you can see there's one street
that you can take out of that
curved end,
one small street.
If you take a left,
and then a left again,
you will see the remains of the
Stadium of Domitian;
I'm going to show those to you
in a moment.
And if you stay in the center
of the piazza,
near the Four Rivers Fountain,
and you go sort of diagonally
across from that,
you will end up at one of the
four best ice cream places in
Rome;
you can get some of the best
gelato in Rome.
You can get good gelato almost
anywhere in Rome,
and in Italy,
but the very best,
this is one of those four;
I'll say something more about
that in a moment.
 
Here are the remains of the
Stadium of Domitian that can
still be seen.
 
Very few tourists notice this,
but it's well worth looking at,
because you can see the
brick-faced cement construction
that served for the--
that was how the substructures
of this building were built--
and I think you can even see
that from a distance here--
made out of concrete,
faced with brick --
but the arcades and the
columns, that I showed you
before,
out of travertine,
ashlar masonry travertine,
which was one of the last
buildings actually in Rome to be
made of travertine ashlar
masonry.
Just to show you also that
again--just as when we were in
Capri I showed you the Bar
Tiberio,
and its reference to
Tiberius--it's amazing what
those who put up restaurants and
bars and so on,
around Rome,
it's amazing--it demonstrates
the strong sense of history that
Italians have.
Because just the fact that they
recognize that these are remains
from the Stadium of Domitian--
everyone thinks of this
structure as the Piazza Navona--
but the fact that they are well
aware of the fact that it was
Domitian's Stadium,
so that the wine bar across the
street--
and this is one that was just
opened the last couple of
years--
the wine bar across the street
is called the Domiziano:
the Domiziano,
after Domitian,
because it's right across the
street from the Stadium of
Domitian.
With regard to ice cream--I
take my gelato seriously,
and I'm sure all of you who've
been to Italy feel the same way.
It's not like American ice
cream--not that American ice
cream isn't good--but it's
absolutely fantastic.
And so I will make some
recommendations this semester.
And this is the first one that
I'm going to make,
because it's one of my
favorites, and everyone agrees
this is one of the best ice
cream parlors in Rome.
It's called Tre Scalini.
 
It's also a restaurant,
a restaurant you can pass on.
Like so many restaurants in the
center of famous piazzas,
it's not the best,
but--and you don't have to sit
outside,
although they will try to
beckon you to sit outside,
because it costs more to eat
the ice cream outside than it
does if you just walk into--
walk through the door--there
are actually two doors,
one on that side,
one on this side--
go right up to the counter,
take a look at what's there,
and make your order.
 
And my recommendation for this
particular gelateria is the
tartufi;
they are very famous.
This is the best tartufo
in Rome, without question,
if you like chocolate.
 
It's a chocolate bomb
essentially, as you can see in
these images here.
 
It is one big,
well fairly large,
very rich chocolate,
with big, the biggest chocolate
chips you ever saw on it,
and then they put a dollop--I
don't even like whipped cream,
but when it's panna on
top of the tartufo,
I go the whole way.
So you have the panna on
top of the tartufo.
And if you sit outside and are
willing to pay extra,
they'll throw a pirouette on
top;
if not, you have to forego the
pirouette.
But I really highly--whether
you like chocolate or you don't
like chocolate--
I've gone with people who are
not the kind of chocoholic I am,
who like this anyway.
So it's really a treat,
and at least once when you're
in Rome you have to indulge in a
tartufo at Tre Scalini.
I want to move from Domitian's
Stadium to the building that
we're going to concentrate on
today,
because again it is so
extensive, and that is
Domitian's Palace on the
Palatine Hill.
We usually refer to it as
Domitian's Palace on the
Palatine Hill,
or the Imperial Palace on the
Palatine Hill.
 
But the nomenclature is
complex, because in antiquity it
was referred to as the Domus,
the Domus Augustana--like the
Domus Aurea,
the Golden House of Nero--the
Domus Augustana:
Augustus' House,
essentially.
 
Because by this point the word
Augustus had become
synonymous with emperor;
so every emperor was the
Augustus.
 
So this is the Domus Augustana,
which again continues
construction.
 
We talked about the fact that
Tiberius had begun a palace on
the Palatine Hill,
on the slope of the Palatine
Hill that Caligula had added to
that.
His successors:
Claudius was not that
interested in palatial
architecture,
as you'll remember;
Nero had other plans for the
Domus Transitoria,
and for the Domus Aurea.
So it was left to the Flavians,
specifically to Domitian,
to complete the Imperial
Palace, which he does,
and then it is dedicated,
as you can see from the
monument list,
in A.D.
92.
 
We also know the architect of
the Domus Augustana,
and that was a man by the name
of Rabirius, R-a-b-i-r-i-u-s;
a very important Roman
architect by the name of
Rabirius.
 
To get back to the nomenclature
for a moment.
So the actual name of the
palace was the Domus Augustana.
But here's where it gets
complicated.
There's also a public wing of
the house and a private wing of
the house.
 
The public wing--and you can
see it in this Google Earth
image from the air--
the public wing is on one
story--and we see that over
here--
and that was referred to in
ancient times as the Flavian
House,
the Domus Flavia,
the Domus Flavia.
 
The private wing was on two
stories, or part of it was on
two stories--you can see it
here;
it's even larger,
more extensive--and that was
called, in ancient times,
also the Domus Augustana.
So this word,
the Domus Augustana,
referred both to the private
wing, as opposed to the Domus
Flavia, but also to the palace
as a whole.
So I just wanted you to be
aware of that,
because as you do your reading
in the textbooks and so on,
you might find that a little
bit confusing.
But we can simplify it
completely and just call it the
Palace of Domitian on the
Palatine Hill,
which is what I suggest we do.
 
So once again we can see quite
good , in this view from the
air, the way in which this
Domitianic structure was planned
and built.
 
We see over here,
for example--and I'm going to
show you these in plan,
and also the remains
shortly--we can see on the upper
left what is a basilica;
next to that an audience hall;
a great fountain court over
here;
a triclinium or dining
room over here;
and then fountains on other
side that belong to the Domus
Flavia or the public section of
the palace.
 
And then over here the private
area,
as I said larger,
on two stories,
right here,
with a court in the center and
a whole host of small rooms
surrounding that,
living quarters and so on,
for Domitian and others;
a peristyle court;
another peristyle court;
and then a great sunken stadium
over here on the right.
This was a far cry from
Romulus' huts,
as you see them;
Romulus' village,
of the eighth century B.C.,
that I remind you of over here,
and show you what has happened
in the interlude.
But what's extremely important
I think,
given Domitian's view of
himself as lord and god,
as dominus et deus,
it's interesting to see what he
builds.
 
And he certainly felt that he
was very much in the tradition
of Romulus;
he wants to associate himself
with Romulus,
and also, of course,
with Augustus,
who lived, as you know,
on the Palatine Hill.
 
But at the same time he wants
to inject his living space with
the kind of grandeur that had
not been--
that was certainly true under
Nero in his Domus Aurea,
but that had not been true for
any of the other earlier Roman
emperors.
 
So the Domus Aurea,
the impact of the Domus Aurea
once again, is something we
should think about as we look at
this incredible palace.
 
This is a plan from the
Ward-Perkins textbook that
perhaps shows you better than
the view from the air exactly
what this structure was all
about.
We see the public wing on the
left-hand side,
the Domus Flavia of the palace
on the Palatine Hill.
And it includes,
as you can see in the upper
left corner, a basilica:
a basilica, a room with a
central space,
divided by two side aisles by
columns.
 
And that was a basilica that
Domitian himself sat in and
tried cases in,
as the judge.
Then, next to that,
an audience hall,
or an aula,
a-u-l-a;
that was the place where
Domitian met with visiting
dignitaries.
 
Then on axis with the--up in
the upper right,
a lararium,
which was a place where they
kept household gods and so on--
then on axis with the audience
hall,
the peristyle, the peristyle.
And if you look at that in
plan, it's got columns,
of course, as peristyles do.
 
But look at what's in the
center of it.
It actually is a fountain,
and it is a fountain that is
octagonal in shape.
 
So the impact of Nero's Domus
Aurea immediately clear,
the impact of that remarkable
octagonal room on the
architecture of Domitian and on
the architect Rabirius:
so an octagonal fountain.
 
And then on axis with the
aula or audience hall,
the peristyle,
is the triclinium or
dining room of the house:
a very large dining room with
panoramic windows through which
one could see a very
interestingly elliptically
shaped fountain,
one on either side.
 
Now as you look at that plan of
the Domus Flavia,
and especially at the basilica,
the audience hall and the
triclinium,
there is one feature that all
three of those have in common,
that I haven't yet mentioned,
which is what?
 
All three of them have what?
 
No one?
 
Student:  A half circle.
 
Prof: A half circle;
okay, exactly,
an apse, an apse on one end,
and all of those apses face in
the same direction.
 
The basilica has an apse;
the audience hall has an apse;
the triclinium has an
apse.
Those were Domitian's apses.
 
That's where Domitian sat,
dominus et deus;
he wanted to be honored and,
in fact,
worshipped, as lord and god,
and he needed a space to do it
in,
and he wanted to sit on a
throne, underneath the dome of
heaven,
in a sense.
 
So the dome of heaven was a
vault,
made out of concrete and
decorated in some way in
antiquity,
probably with mosaic,
or whatever,
to give it the sense of a dome
of heaven.
 
He wanted to sit in that space
in every one of those rooms.
So whether he was trying a law
case,
welcoming visiting dignitaries,
or eating in his
triclinium,
he wanted to sit beneath at
least a semi-dome of heaven.
 
And that's indeed what he did,
as he was again worshipped as
dominus et deus.
 
So this is a very important,
I think,
phenomenon in this particular
monument,
and one that is well worth
thinking about,
in terms of the way in which
architecture is used by given
individuals to define
themselves,
to define their lives,
and to define their era.
Over here again the private
wing;
I'm going to hold on that for a
moment and we'll come back to
that shortly.
 
This is a detail of the
basilica, where we see the plan
of the basilica,
and also a cross-section of the
same structure.
 
And you can see it is
completely in keeping with other
basilican architecture we've
looked at, both in civic
locations and elsewhere.
 
A central nave with an apse on
one end--again,
imagine Domitian sitting over
here;
the central nave divided from
the side aisles by columns,
fairly simple but very
interesting structure in the
context of this particular
palace.
Over here an outstanding
restored view that probably
gives you a better sense than
almost anything I can show you
of the Domus Flavia or the
public space of Domitian's
Palace.
 
Here's, of course,
the basilica over here,
and you can see that this room,
like all of the rooms in this
palace,
were done in marble,
and that marble was of various
colors,
as you can see here,
and it was marble that was
brought from all over the world.
 
We've talked about the fact
that the Flavians did this.
We've talked about this as the
case for the Templum Pacis,
for example,
bringing marble from Egypt and
Asia Minor and Greece and
elsewhere in the Roman world,
bringing it all here and using
it, using that variegated marble
to make--
to ornament,
obviously, this palace in Rome.
 
Over here the aula or
the great audience hall;
the Aula Regia we call it,
over here, also with the marble
on the floor,
as well as on the walls.
You can see that this
particular room--
and it was apparent in plan as
well--
has scalloping around the
perimeter of the room:
a series of niches,
as you can see,
with statuary in them,
surrounded by columns,
two tiers with other windows up
above,
as you can see.
 
And here you get a sense of
that space in which Domitian
would have sat:
the apse of the room,
the curvature of the wall,
made, of course,
out of concrete--as this entire
structure was--
made out of concrete,
with a semi-dome.
And you have to again imagine
Domitian sitting beneath that,
or inside that apse and beneath
that semi-dome here.
The peristyle court,
open to the sky;
columns all around,
covered colonnade,
two stories,
and then in the center this
octagonal fountain.
 
Leave it to Domitian,
leave it to Rabirius,
to transform Nero's octagonal
room into a fountain,
in the context of this palace.
 
And then on axis again,
with the Aula Regia,
and with the peristyle,
is the triclinium.
And this restored view again
gives you a very good sense of
that apse in which Domitian
would have sat enthroned,
with the semi-dome above his
head, two tiers;
again, the walls decorated with
variegated marbles brought from
all different parts of the
world;
as well as with columns.
 
And then picture windows,
through which you would see
these very interesting
elliptical fountains,
as you dined,
one on either side of the
structure.
 
There's a lot of controversy as
to how the rooms that were
roofed, were roofed -- whether
they had barrel vaults or not.
You can see this particular
restored view shows one flat
roof and one barrel vaulted
roof.
We're not absolutely sure about
that, and again scholars
continue to argue which was the
case here.
I mentioned statuary in the
Aula Regia,
and we have some evidence for
what that statuary might have
been like,
and the way in which it was
used by Domitian.
 
I show you two examples.
 
These are two statues,
one representing Hercules,
on the left,
and the other,
on the right,
representing Apollo.
And these are truly colossal in
scale,
and they are made of beautiful
materials,
again imported materials -- in
this case a kind of maroon
colored stone,
and in this case a greenish
colored stone.
 
Again, they're very large in
scale, colossal in scale,
and you can see the exaggerated
musculature of both of these
figures.
 
And I think they are very
telling in terms of--
as we think about Domitian
sitting in rooms like the Aula
Regia,
greeting visitors,
and when you think about what
this man,
who wanted to be worshipped as
lord and god thought of himself,
and you see the kind of
statuary that he surrounded
himself with--
this is a very different man
than his predecessor Claudius--
the kind of imagery that he
associated himself with.
 
It's a way of pumping himself
up, I think, by having himself
surrounded by these very
athletic figures of Hercules and
also of Apollo.
 
What do you think this is,
just from looking at it?
The remains--you can see the
remains are not as extensive as
one wishes they were,
but enough is there to allow a
reconstruction of the whole.
 
What are we looking at here?
 
Student:  The octagonal
fountain..
Prof: The octagonal
fountain, the octagonal fountain
of the peristyle court.
 
Excellent.
 
See it's really--most people,
who wander around these
remains, would not be able to
figure out for the life of
themselves what this was.
 
But you'll be glad when you go
up on the Palatine Hill to know,
as you stand here,
that this was once an octagonal
fountain,
with a spectacular water
display undoubtedly.
 
This is the triclinium,
or what survives--sad--what
survives of Domitian's
triclinium.
This is his apse;
this is the very apse in which
Domitian would have sat
enthroned, as he ate with
special invited guests,
as he held a state dinner in
Rome.
 
And you can see,
if you look very carefully,
again the construction is
brick-faced concrete
construction.
 
We talked about the fact that
after the fire of 64,
a decision was made to begin to
use brick as a facing,
because brick was more
fireproof than stone.
And we see that borne out;
the entire Imperial Palace on
the Palatine Hill was made of
brick-faced concrete
construction.
 
But if you look very carefully,
you will see some stucco and
you will also see some marble
revetment.
So, in this case,
that brick was covered over
with marble, to give it a much
more luxurious look for the
dominus et deus.
 
Also interesting here--actually
there's a tarp on top of
preserved mosaic,
and I'll show you that mosaic
in a moment--
but what's interesting here is
that the pavement rests on
something that should remind you
of something we saw earlier in
the semester,
which is what?
 
You're nodding, so.
 
Student:  The
hypocaust..
Prof: The hypocaust.
 
It's a hypocaust system;
just as we saw in the Stabian
Baths in Pompeii,
they have raised the pavement
up on these piles of brick,
and then in between them would
have placed terracotta pipes and
also braziers with hot,
hot coals, and so on and so
forth, to heat the floor of the
triclinium,
so that Domitian could not only
sit in his apse,
but could have his feet warm
while he ate.
 
This gives you again I think a
really good window into the kind
of man we are dealing with here,
and what he was trying to
achieve, once again through
architecture,
through architecture.
 
This is another view of the
apse in which Domitian sat,
and here we do see--without the
tarp we can see that the mosaic
is actually pretty well
preserved.
And it is the colors that we so
often find in Roman mosaics ,
especially in major public
buildings and in private
palaces: this combination of
green,
maroon and white,
as you see here,
with a variety of very
attractive geometric shapes.
Again, you can see the concrete
construction,
faced with brick,
and you can see the remains of
some of the marble revetment
that would have covered the
walls and made this all that
much more ostentatious in
ancient Roman times.
 
This fountain is a marvel.
 
I love this fountain.
 
This is the fountain that you
see, or one of the two that you
would see, through the panoramic
windows of the triclinium
in Domitian's Palace.
 
And this is where I think the
genius of Rabirius shows
through;
and Rabirius shows,
in a sense, himself to be the
Frank Gehry of his day --
somebody who really enjoyed
undulating forms,
and the way in which concavity
and convexity can be played off
against one another,
to great result.
It's an elliptical fountain.
 
It's fairly small in scale.
 
It's elliptical,
as you can see here,
and the convexity of that
ellipse played off--
and you see it repeated again
here--
played off against these
interesting undulating walls;
all of this created again out
of concrete and faced with
brick.
 
So you imagine the bricks have
to be very carefully molded to
fit where they need to fit into
this incredible scheme.
And, of course,
in antiquity this would have
been stuccoed over,
and probably had some marble
revetment on it,
and so on and so forth.
But the shape is absolutely
marvelous,
and I think we are definitely
in the presence of a great
architectural genius,
in the person of Rabirius,
who was working for Domitian.
 
The private wing of the palace,
equally spectacular in its own
way.
 
I mentioned to you already that
it's larger in the space that it
covers than the Domus Flavia.
 
And part of it is on two
stories, the part that you see
over here.
 
There's a fountain court in the
center, and then two stories of
rooms around that;
another peristyle back here;
and then a stadium,
once again a hairpin shape,
with a curved side and a flat
side, just like his stadium in
Rome.
 
But he already had a stadium,
a public stadium,
where one could watch
racehorses and races and the
like.
 
He used this instead.
 
And it's actually
sunken--because remember this
part is two stories--this is
sunken, a sunken stadium next to
it.
 
It was used as a place for
pleasurable walks,
as a kind of outdoor garden
where Domitian,
and again special visitors,
could spend some time,
a pleasant place to walk within
the city.
We see here another axonometric
view from Ward-Perkins,
where we can also get a very
good sense,
not only of the Domus Flavia,
as we've already described it:
the basilica and the
aula on one end;
the octagonal fountain in the
center;
and then over here the dining
hall with the two elliptical
fountains, one on either side.
 
Here we see again the private
area with the sunken stadium
over here;
with the peristyle court with a
fountain in the center;
two stories around that;
and then over here another
couple of other peristyle
courts.
 
There are actually three
peristyle courts in total here.
But what's interesting,
I think, when you look at this
axonometric view,
I think it's interesting to see
that--
or a kind of cutaway view--to
see that from the outside a lot
of these spaces didn't look as
interesting as they did from the
inside.
We are definitely moving--we've
seen that be the case for
awhile, vis-à-vis Roman
architecture.
Think back to some of the early
residences in Pompeii where they
were very plain and severe on
the outside,
but when you went inside and
saw the atrium and the
impluvium and the
compluvium and the
garden,
it was something else again;
this whole element of surprise.
 
And that's true even here,
I think,
in this palace,
where the structures are less
interesting from the outside and
more interesting from the
interiors of them.
 
Here's a Google Earth image
again of just the private part
of the palace where we see this
interesting peristyle court;
the other two peristyle courts
behind it;
these rooms placed on two
stories;
and then once again the sunken
stadium.
The sunken stadium is actually
quite well preserved.
As you can see here,
it's one of the better
preserved parts of the villa
today.
You can get a very good sense,
not only of its shape but also
of its scale;
it's enormous, a huge stadium.
And again you have to imagine
Domitian wandering around here.
And you can see the curved end
on one side,
but most importantly the
concrete construction,
faced with brick,
and including columns and other
marble revetment.
 
This is a view of that first
court, the one that has rooms on
two stories around it.
 
Once again, Rabirius has had a
great deal of fun with his
fountain.
 
He seems to have taken
particular pleasure in designing
fountains and in letting his
imagination run free with regard
to fountain design.
 
You see here again he's playing
off convex against concave.
He's done all of this out of
concrete;
these shapes are done in
concrete, faced with brick,
and again the bricks have to be
molded very specially to fit the
space within that,
that they need to accommodate
themselves to.
 
And if any of you know anything
about those female warriors
called the Amazons,
they carry shields called
peltas, p-e-l-t-a;
these should remind you--don't
they look like peltae?
 
They look very much
like--that's probably
coincidental,
I'm not implying here that
there's any particular
iconography to this particular
fountain.
 
But who knows?
 
But they do look very much like
shields that are carried by
Amazonian women.
 
But at any rate,
this playing off of convex
against concave;
Rabirius is clearly enjoying
himself with this monument.
 
Then the rooms on two stories.
 
And you see,
just as we saw quite some time
ago in the second phase of the
Villa of the Mysteries,
where they were beginning to
open up the exterior and create
bay windows and more windows and
make it less severe than it had
been in the original Domus
Italica,
we see that sort of thing here:
many more windows used,
the wall being opened up.
 
They've gotten so sophisticated
in their use of concrete that
they are able to open the walls
up more,
with these rectangular windows
of different shapes--
as you can see,
some large, some smaller,
some on the ground,
some higher,
sort of like windows--
and then above additional
openings that are arcuated on
the top.
So clearly he's again enjoying
opening up this wall and
creating interesting views,
from one part of the structure
to another.
 
Two more images of that
wonderful fountain,
where I think you can see even
better the way in which this has
all been done out of concrete,
faced with brick.
And you have to imagine,
of course, the spectacular
water display,
the actually water jets that
would've come up.
 
The Bellagio it may not have
been, but it probably was
something--
sort of the ancient version of
the Bellagio in Las Vegas,
the fountains at the Bellagio.
Here you see a restored view of
this fountain court,
where you get a sense that once
you add a bunch of statuary and
water jets--
which you don't see actually
working here--
and paint the walls,
the whole thing would've been
even more spectacular still;
and I think that gives you some
general sense of the original
appearance of the palace.
 
Around the court,
the fountain court,
and the private wing that we've
just looked at,
there were a series of rooms,
and if you look at some of
those rooms in detail,
I think you'll be amazed by
what you see;
some fantastically shaped
rooms: some of them cruciform,
cross-shaped;
some of them going way back to
the frigidaria with
circular rooms with radiating
alcoves.
And not surprisingly,
again given what Severus and
Celer were able to achieve at
Nero's Domus Aurea,
given the fact that the octagon
is clearly also in the mind of
Rabirius in this building,
we see him creating small
octagonal rooms,
and exploring and experimenting
with those octagonal rooms.
 
And you see a couple of them in
plan, on the side,
on one of the sides of this
fountain court.
I show you here a view from,
or several views from the
Ward-Perkins textbook,
where we see a cross-section,
a plan,
and also an axonometric view of
one of these octagonal rooms
that we believe was designed by
Rabirius for the Palatine
Palace.
And I compare it down here to
the octagonal room of Nero's
Domus Aurea, which was clearly
the model for Rabirius' foray
into designing octagons.
 
It's a much smaller room than
Nero's octagonal room,
but he takes the whole concept
a step further.
It's an octagon;
yes, it's eight sided,
just like the Domus Aurea.
 
It has radiating alcoves.
 
Some of them are rectangular,
some of them are circular,
as you can see here.
 
And if you look at the
axonometric view,
you will see two interesting
things that are a step forward.
One of them is the fact that
although in the Domus Aurea the
eight-sided room--
although the room was
eight-sided, the dome was itself
essentially curved;
it's a traditional dome.
 
What we see happening here
though is they take the eight
sides and continue that
segmented feel into the dome.
So we have an eight-sided
segmented dome in this octagonal
room in the Palatine Palace,
which is different than the
Domus Aurea.
 
And the other thing,
and perhaps even more
significant,
is the fact that if we look at
the individual niches,
we will see that they are
envelopes of space,
in the same way that Nero's
Domus Aurea was,
and that they have--and just
like Nero's Domus Aurea,
they have niches within niches.
But what Rabirius has done here
is something really quite
extraordinary and very different
from anything we've seen earlier
in Roman architecture,
and that is he's placed some of
these additional niches or
windows or doorways off axis
with the niche itself.
 
Now we have seen that the
Romans cared above all about
axiality and symmetry,
and yet we see here--and this
is why I call him the Frank
Gehry of Roman architects--
he is willing to try something
entirely different.
He is clearly enamored of
circles and rectangles and domes
and the like,
but he is also willing to
dispense with the usual axiality
of Roman architecture,
and explore placing things off
axis in a quite inventive way.
And I can show you that even
better by looking quickly at the
two views of one of these
octagonal rooms,
from the private wing of the
Palatine Palace,
where you can see not only--and
I hope you can see it from where
you are--
you can see not only the
segments--can you see the
segmented dome?
I think quite clearly here.
 
You can see these envelopes of
space.
You can see these openings;
this whole idea of creating
vistas from one building to
another but--
and you can see the way in
which these vary,
that some are doorways,
some are windows--
but I think you can also see
the way in which he is beginning
to place--
here's a window that is placed
completely off axis with the
niche.
This is even more apparent in
this other view,
where you can see one of these
radiating niches,
and in that radiating niche
there's an opening that starts
at the floor,
and then there's another
opening, to the left of it,
that's higher up.
And again you get this sense of
asymmetry, rather than symmetry,
in this.
 
And this is again very
experimental,
very different;
it really is different than
almost anything I can show you,
not only before but even after
this great work of architecture,
and it gives us some insight
into the creativity of Rabirius,
and the way in which Domitian
was allowing him to be.
 
Because I think this goes above
and beyond.
Clearly Domitian is imaging
himself;
I think especially in the
public realm of this building,
he's very concerned with how
he's presenting himself to his
public.
 
Over here I have the sense that
he has really let Rabirius be
Rabirius;
that he's let Rabirius do what
he wanted to do to create an
interesting and architecturally
exciting space,
in which he could live and
could enjoy some of the
interesting architectural motifs
that Rabirius instills in this
extraordinary structure.
Now Domitian was succeeded by
John Kerry;
no, well sort of,
in the sense that he was
succeeded by a man by the name
of Nerva, who looks very much
like John Kerry,
don't you think?
That's a coin of Nerva on the
left-hand side of the screen.
Domitian, by the way--I think I
may have forgotten to mention,
but he ended up just the way
Nero did.
He was--well in his case he was
actually assassinated;
Nero was forced to commit
suicide but Domitian was
assassinated.
 
He was issued a damnatio
memoriae at his death.
And he was succeeded by Nerva,
Nerva who was appointed by the
Senate.
 
The Senate had had it with
despots, and they decided the
time had come to choose one of
their own.
And they selected Nerva,
who was an elderly and very
highly respected member of the
Senate.
And this was the first time the
Senate did this--
since Augustus founded the
Empire in his reign,
the first emperor of Rome--this
is the first time that an
emperor was appointed by the
Senate.
And Nerva was a highly
respected and pretty
level-headed guy,
and he was able to bring peace
and prosperity back to the
Empire.
He did not last very long
however.
He had a very brief reign,
and therefore very little time
to have an impact on
architecture.
But again you see him
represented on a coin on the
left-hand side of the screen.
 
I'd like to show you one
building though;
I'd like to end today with one
building that was actually begun
by Domitian and then completed
by Nerva.
It began as the so-called Forum
Transitorium,
under Domitian,
and became the Forum of Nerva,
under Nerva.
 
In order to do this I need to
take you to the general plan of
the Imperial Fora in Rome.
 
We've looked at this before.
 
You'll remember the location of
the Roman Forum here,
and obviously down below:
the Forum of Julius Caesar that
we've already studied;
the Forum of Augustus built
right next to that,
that we've also looked at in
detail;
and then the Forum Pacis,
or the Templum Pacis of
Vespasian,
which we have looked at more
recently,
and which you'll recall was
built in such a way so that it
faced the Forum of Augustus and
the Forum of Julius Caesar next
door.
 
I mentioned to you I think
already that there was a very
large piece of property over
here that was--
on which stood essentially one
of Rome's Seven Hills,
the Quirinal
Hill--Q-u-i-r-i-n-a-l;
the Quirinal Hill of Rome
occupied this area.
But it was an area that was
being eyed by Domitian.
You can see from his palace
that he had big plans,
and once the palace was coming
to fruition,
he was thinking again about
public architecture and the fact
that he would really like to
build a forum to rival that of
his father,
a forum that was bigger than
that of his father's.
 
And he'd like to put it over
here, facing his father's forum,
across the Forum of Augustus
and the Forum of Julius Caesar.
He dreamed those big dreams but
he was never able to realize
them.
 
What he did instead was to take
this area that was located
between the Forum of Vespasian
and the Forum of Augustus,
the Forum of Julius Caesar;
this area that I mentioned to
you was called the
Argiletum--A-r-g-i-l-e-t-u-m;
I think I've got it there,
the Argiletum.
That area was a street that
connected the Roman Forum with
an area of Rome called the
Subura--
S-u-b-u-r-a--the Subura,
which was a residential area
that I mentioned had in it
mostly these wooden apartment
houses;
large numbers of people lived
in the Subura.
 
So there was this street,
the Argiletum,
that attached the two,
or connected the two to one
another.
 
And Domitian decided to use
that as a forum,
to himself, that would be
placed next to that of his
father.
 
And he placed in that forum a
temple of his patron goddess
Minerva;
his patron goddess was Minerva,
and he built a temple to honor
her, in this location.
Because this forum was like a
street and was so narrow,
that had an effect on what
could be built there;
so that you can see,
for example,
in plan,
that while the Forums of Julius
Caesar and Augustus,
and the Forum Pacis,
all had colonnades,
covered colonnades in fact,
there was no space to build a
covered colonnade here.
So what they had to do was
place the columns very close to
the wall and not put any ceiling
on top of those columns.
You can see the same here.
 
This is a plan of the original
Forum of Domitian,
or what was called the Forum
Transitorium,
because it served as a point of
transit between the Subura and
the Roman Forum.
 
The Temple of Minerva over
here, consistent with temple
architecture as we've seen it
thus far this semester:
a temple with a frontal
orientation,
single staircase,
façade orientation,
freestanding columns in the
porch, and so on.
The entranceway over here.
 
The Forum Pacis would be here.
 
The Forum of Caesar and
Augustus at the top.
And then you can see these
bases for the columns,
very close to the wall -- not
attached to it,
but very close to the wall on
either side,
because there's no space for
colonnades.
Here's a Google Earth image
showing the Imperial Fora,
as it looks today,
part of the later Forum of
Trajan,
the Forum of Augustus,
and what is preserved of the
so-called Forum Transitorium
over here.
 
This is a model of what the
Forum Transitorium would have
looked like in ancient Roman
times,
in the time of Domitian,
with the Temple of Minerva,
with these columns on either
side.
And you can see from this model
the difference that that makes,
when you don't have enough
space to build covered
colonnades.
 
You've got columns that look
like they are projecting out of
the wall, with projecting
entablatures on top of them.
We have not seen this before in
built architecture.
This is a very important
development.
We have seen it in painting but
we haven't seen it in built
architecture.
 
Here's a detail of the Forum
Transitorium,
with these columns placed
almost flush with the wall--
although not quite,
they project a little bit in
front of the wall--
with the projecting
entablatures.
 
The walls made out of tufa
blocks, as you can see here.
The rest with marble,
and a panel at the top;
and we think there would've
been lots of such panels
representing the goddess Minerva
herself.
So we see that here.
 
We have not seen it in built
architecture before,
but we have seen it in
painting.
This is a detail of Cubiculum
16, in the Villa of the
Mysteries,
and you can see one such set of
columns that project out of the
wall,
with the projecting
entablatures up above.
So it's something again that we
think may have been done in
temporary wooden architecture,
for example.
But keep in mind how early that
painting is--you all know the
date of it, because you've
studied it for the exam;
it's mid B.C.
 
So it's way before even the
Augustan period,
and yet we see that there,
and now we finally see it in
built architecture,
and it's going to have a real
history in Roman architecture in
a very different way than
concrete does.
 
This whole idea of decorating a
wall by placing a series of
columns that project in and out
along that wall,
giving it a kind of--using the
traditional language of
architecture,
columns, to create a kind of
undulating wall,
or what we're going to call
later in the semester a
"baroque"
wall.
 
Two details of one of the
surviving capitals,
with the frieze up above,
a frieze that represents scenes
of women weaving;
I'm not going to get into the
meaning of all of that here
today.
But you can see the way in
which the columns project
somewhat out of the wall:
Corinthian capitals,
projecting entablature,
very highly decorated,
just like all of Flavian
architectural ornament,
as you can see here,
very deeply drilled,
and so on and so forth.
 
But this whole idea of
decorating a wall in this way,
and instilling movement in that
wall by this undulating
in-and-out scheme,
is going to again have a very
important future in Roman
architecture.
This is an interesting view
because it shows us just what
we've looked at,
some of those remaining columns
from the so-called Forum
Transitorium,
which was renamed the Forum of
Nero after Domitian's death and
damnatio memoriae.
 
Nero just took it over and
said, "Okay,
it's my forum now"
and renamed it to himself,
but didn't add anything
architecturally to it.
We see it here.
 
And this is one of those great
views in which you can see the
difference between modern ground
level and ancient ground level.
In order to see the lower part
of the forum,
you've got to go right up to
the edge of the street and look
down on it.
 
And this also an interesting
engraving by the famous artist
Piranesi, a Piranesi print of
the eighteenth century.
He did a lot of wonderful
prints.
And if there's any interest in
this class,
by the way, we have plenty of
these at Yale,
and I know one of the teaching
fellows,
if not more than one,
would be more than happy to
find the time to take those of
you who might be interested in
looking at Piranesi prints of
Rome,
over to the British Art Center
and so on,
or elsewhere,
to take a look at these.
But what's interesting about
this one is it shows where the
ground level was at the time
that this was engraved by
Piranesi;
that is, in the eighteenth
century, it was pretty much
where it is here.
It was much higher than it is
now, and then when they
excavated it,
in modern times,
they got us down to ancient
ground level and to the bottoms
of the columns.
 
I want to end up with this one
last image,
because--very different,
very different--
but it allows us to continue on
with a point that I made when we
discussed the Colosseum,
and which has already turned up
in the online forum,
and that is the use of Roman
buildings as quarries for later
architects and later patrons,
namely princes and popes,
and the way in which buildings
like the Colosseum were pirated
for later architecture.
In the case of the Forum
Transitorium,
or the Forum of Nerva,
we know that the Temple of
Minerva,
that the material out of which
it's made--
the reason that it does not
exist at all today,
the Temple of Minerva,
is that it was taken apart and
reused by Pope Paul V for a
fountain that he wanted to build
on the Janiculum Hill in Rome,
the so-called Acqua Paola,
which you see here.
The Acqua Paola,
the temple was torn down in
1606--
it still stood in 1606,
it was torn down then--
and it was placed in this
fountain,
or used for the construction of
this fountain,
that was dedicated in 1612,
and built by the architect
Giovanni Fontana.
And you see it here.
 
And it's not easy to determine
exactly which parts are from the
temple itself.
 
But much of the building stone
that you see here,
reused in this fountain,
comes from the Temple of
Minerva in Rome.
 
So it shows you again the way
in which these buildings were
used as quarries.
 
But the way in which Roman
buildings live on -- they either
live on as themselves,
or they live on as other
buildings.
 
And I think that's a nice
thought and a nice note on which
to end today.
 
Thank you.
 
