Attractions

Rome Architecture – Ancient Structures

The principal monuments of Rome architecture belong chiefly to the period between 100 B.C. and A.D. 300, including the Colosseum (A.D. 70–82), the Pantheon, and the Baths of Caracalla (c. A.D. 215). Beginning with the reign of Augustus (30 B.C. – A.D. 14), Rome architectural output proceeded on a vast scale to accommodate the needs of the rapidly expanding empire. Provincial towns were laid out according to logical plans, particularly in North Africa. In Syria, arcaded streets were built.

Each town's focus was the forum, or open public square, surrounded by colonnades and the principal buildings in axial arrangement. The great forum in Rome itself was built in stages, as each emperor sought to glorify his achievements. The last large forum to be built was that of Trajan (2d cent. A.D. ), and was the most extravagant. Within each forum, a temple, conforming to Etruscan type, was usually elevated on a high base with steps ascending to a deep portico. Since the temple was to be seen only from the front, Rome architecture often included the utilization of pilasters or engaged columns along its sides. Examples of circular temples include the temple of Vesta at Tivoli (1st cent. B.C.) and the 3d-century temples of Jupiter at Split and Venus at Baalbek.

The Colosseum

In Ancient Rome, entertainment was considered vital to the happiness of citizens. In Ancient Rome, there were many things a people could do to keep entertained. One of which would be to visit the Colosseum. The Colosseum was a prime spot for entertainment as well as a masterpiece of Rome architecture, holding as many as 50,000 spectators at one time.

The Colosseum took ten years to construct. It stands 160 feet high, containing windows, arches, and columns. Each layer contains 80 main arches. Before each show, spectators would fill in through 76 arches. The Emperor used two of the remaining arches, and the other two were used for the gladiators.

Each visitor was seated according to his or her gender and social status. The men would be seated normally, as the women and the poor would be forced to sit or stand on the fourth level. Depending on the weather, an enormous colored awning, the velarium, could be stretched overhead to prevent the hot sun from coming in on the spectators.

Wooden flooring was utilized to hide the underground chambers in which the props, people, and animals were kept prior to their performance. Most shows in the Colosseum lasted all day beginning with comedic contests and exotic animal shows in the morning and moving on to professional gladiator events in the evening.

In most tournaments and games, death played a prominent role. Professional gladiators, primarily condemned criminals, prisoners of war, and slaves fought either animals or eachother, often to the death. Their weapons might include nets, swords, tridents, spears, or firebrands.

This form of entertainment in Ancient Rome was fundamentally political. The shows were to teach the local Romans how to fight in preparation for visits outside their Empire and to display the strength and courage of the Roman citizen to visitors to the city of Rome.

Campidoglio

Capitoline Hill. The Campidoglio has been the seat of civic government since Rome itself began. Though most of the buildings here date from the Renaissance, this hill was once the epicenter of the Roman Empire. Originally, the Capitoline Hill consisted of two peaks: the Capitolium and the Arx. The hollow between them was known as the Asylum; it was here, in the days before the Roman Republic was founded in 509 BC, that prospective settlers came to acknowledge the protection of Romulus, legendary first king of Rome -- hence the term "asylum." Later, during the Republic, temples occupied both peaks, and, later still, in 78 BC, the Tabularium, or Hall of Records, was built here to house the city archives.

In 1536 Michelangelo was charged with restoring the piazza on the summit of the Campidoglio to its former glory, in preparation for the impending visit of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, triumphant after the empire's victory over the Moors. In emulation of ancient Roman triumphal processions, it was decided that Charles V should follow what was believed to have been the route of the Roman emperors, through the city to the newly magnificent Campidoglio. Much of Michelangelo's plan was not finished for several centuries, but almost everything here today follows his original designs, including the distinctive stellate pattern set into the pavement, added in 1940.

You travel to the piazza on the cordonata (a gently graded ramp), designed by Michelangelo to allow a carriage to be pulled up the hill with minimal difficulty. As you climb, the buildings and visual effects of the site gradually reveal themselves. The equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius at the center is a copy of the original from the 2nd century AD, which stood on this spot from the 16th century until 1981. It was placed there as a visual reference to the corresponding glory of Charles V and the ancient emperor. The city's authorities had it restored and placed in the courtyard of the Museo Capitolino, saving not only what was left of the gold but also the statue's bronze, which had been seriously damaged by air pollution. The copy was placed on the original pedestal in 1997.

Roman Baths

After a morning's work at the office or shop, most Romans enjoyed spending the afternoon at the thermae or public bath.  Men and women enjoyed coming to the baths not only to get clean but also to meet with friends, exercise, or read at the library.

Generally, Romans would first go to the unctuarium where they had oil rubbed onto their skin and would then exercise in one of the exercise yards.  From here they would move to the tepidarium or warm room where they would lie around chatting with their friends.   Next, they would travel on to the caldarium, similar to a Turkish bath, hot and steamy.   Here they sat and perspired, scraping their skin with a strigil, a curved metal tool.  Attendants would serve them snacks and drinks.  Finally came a dip in the calidarium (hot bath) and a quick dip in the frigidarium (cold bath).  After swimming, the bather might enjoy a massage where he might have oils and perfumes rubbed into his or her skin.

Feeling clean and relaxed, the Roman might drift through the beautiful gardens decorated with mosaics and colossal sculptures or enjoy athletic events in a theater-like rotunda. The largest of all Roman baths was the Diocletian, completed in AD 305,  which covered an area of 130,000 square yards.

The Circus Maximus

The Circus Maximus was the large, oval track where the chariot races took place. The chariots were two or four-wheeled open vehicles pulled by horses and used for hunting, battles, racing, and processions. The two-wheeled chariot was very light.  In racing, one of the main jobs of the charioteer was to stand and balance the chariot, especially when rounding a corner.

The chariots usually had two, three, or four horses, but on special occasions they might be seen with up to ten horses.  Sometimes dogs, ostriches, or camels might be used in Rome to pull the chariots around the Circus Maximus. The Romans loved the races they were very exciting with many spills and crashes. Often charioteers were killed.  However, if they were good, they might become popular heroes.

Catacombs

The catacombs were a subterranean burial place for the Christians.  All catacombs were outside the walls of the city, as there was a law forbidding the burial of bodies within the precincts of Rome. Prior to the Empire's acceptance of Christianity, Romans practiced cremation.The sixty known principle catacombs can be found mainly along the Appian Way.

These early burial sites were either a simple grave marked to preserve the memory of a Christian martyr or vaults marked to display the names of noble families sympathetic to the Christian religion.

Construction of the early catacombs began in the second century. The catacombs were used for both memorial services and internment of the dead.  Some of the catacombs were built on four levels connecting an  enormous system of galleries and linking passages with steep, narrow steps.  Bodies of the deceased were placed in niches, 16 to 24 inches high by 47 to 59 inches long cut from the wall of soft tufa rock.

The bodies were fully clothed, wrapped in linen and sprinkled with ointments to offset the decaying odor and sealed with a slab inscribed with the name of the deceased, date of death, and a religious symbol.

The Catacombs of St. Callistus served as the official burial grounds for the first bishops of Rome.  The Crypt of the Popes contains the tombs of several pontiffs.

After AD 313, Christianity was established as the official religion of the Roman Empire. Consequently, the subterranean burial practice gradually declined, as above ground cemeteries became the custom.

Domus Aurea

This ridge of the Esquiline Hill was the site of Nero's extravagant Domus Aurea (Golden House). To build the palace after the catastrophic fire of AD 64, the capricious emperor confiscated a vast tract of land right in the center of Rome , earning the animosity of most of his subjects. The palace was huge and sumptuous, with a facade of pure gold, seawater piped into the baths, decorations of mother-of-pearl and other precious materials, and vast gardens. Not much has survived of all this; a good portion of the buildings and grounds was buried under the public works with which subsequent emperors sought to make reparation to the Roman people for Nero's phenomenal greed.

The largest of the buildings put up by later emperors over the Domus Aurea was the great complex of baths built by Trajan. As a result, the site of the Domus Aurea itself remained unknown for many centuries; when a few of Nero's original halls were discovered underground at the end of the 15th century, no one realized that they actually were part of the palace. Raphael (1483-1520) was one of the artists who had themselves lowered into the rubble-filled rooms, which resembled grottoes. The artists copied the original painted Roman decorations, barely visible by torchlight, and scratched their names on the ceilings. Raphael later used these models -- known as grotesques because they were found in the so-called grottoes -- in his decorative motifs for the Vatican Loggia. Keep in mind that the temperature underground is about 50°F all year round. Reservations are strongly recommended. www.pierreci.it.

COST: EUR5, EUR10 with tour, audio guide EUR2. Wed.-Mon. 9-7:45.

Foro Romano

The Roman Forum lies in what was once a marshy valley between the Capitoline and Palatine hills, a valley crossed by a mud track and used as a cemetery by the Iron Age settlers on the Palatine. Over the years, a marketplace and some huts were established here, and after the land was drained in the 6th century BC, the site eventually became a political, religious, and commercial center -- namely, the Forum. It evolved into the heart of ancient Rome and became a symbol of the values that inspired Rome 's conquest of an empire. The monuments that are visible today mostly date back to the time of the emperors and the pleasure-loving, ever-more-corrupt imperial Rome of the 1st to the 4th century AD. The original Roman Forum is only one part of the labyrinthine archaeological complex that goes by that name. It can also be confused with the later Imperial Forums (or, more properly, Fora), built by Julius Caesar and the emperors as the city's needs grew.

Hundreds of years of plunder and the tendency of later Romans to carry off what was left of the better building materials reduced the Forum to its current desolate state. It is difficult to imagine this enormous area as Rome 's pulsating heart, filled with stately and extravagant temples, palaces, and shops and crowded with people from all corners of the empire. Adding to the confusion is the fact that the Forum developed over many centuries; what you see today are not the ruins from just one period but from almost 900 years, from about 500 BC to AD 400. The earliest buildings were destroyed by fire or earthquake or were replaced by larger, more lavish structures. But as often as not, the foundations of the older buildings remained, and many have survived to the present, pitted and scarred with age, alongside their later cousins.

Archaeological digs continue to discover more about the site, but for the uninitiated, making sense of these gaunt and craggy ruins isn't easy. It's worth investing in the little booklet that superimposes a plan of the Forum in its heyday onto a photo of the site as it is today. Nonetheless, the enduring romance of the place, with its lonely columns and great, broken fragments of sculpted marble and stone, is such that it makes a lovely, quintessentially Roman walk.

COST: Free, guided tour EUR3.50, audio guide EUR4. Daily 9-4:30.

Pantheon

This onetime pagan temple, a marvel of architectural harmony and proportion, is the best-preserved monument of imperial Rome architecture. It was entirely rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian around AD 120 on the site of an earlier pantheon (from the Greek pan, all, and theon, gods) erected in 27 BC by Augustus's general Agrippa. The majestic circular building was actually designed by Hadrian, as were many of the temples, palaces, and lakes of his enormous villa outside the city at Tivoli . Hadrian nonetheless retained the inscription over the entrance from the original building that named Agrippa as the builder, in the process causing enormous confusion among historians until, in 1892, a French architect discovered that all the bricks used in the Pantheon dated from Hadrian's time.

The most striking thing about the Pantheon is not its size, immense though it is (until 1960 the dome was the largest ever built), nor even the phenomenal technical difficulties posed by so vast a construction; rather, it is the remarkable unity of the building. You don't have to look far to find the reason for this harmony: the diameter described by the dome is exactly equal to its height. It is the use of such simple mathematical balance that gives classical architecture its characteristic sense of proportion and its nobility and timeless appeal.

The Pantheon is by far the best preserved of the major monuments of imperial Rome, a condition that's the result of it being consecrated as a church in AD 608. No building, church or not, escaped some degree of plundering through the turbulent centuries of Rome 's history after the fall of the empire. In 655, for example, the gilded bronze covering the dome was stripped. Similarly, in the early 17th century, Pope Urban VIII removed the bronze beams of the portico, using the metal to produce the baldacchino (canopy) that covers the high altar at St. Peter's Basilica. Most of its interior marble facing has also been stripped and replaced over the centuries. Nonetheless, the Pantheon suffered less than many other structures from ancient Rome.

The Pantheon serves as one of the city's important burial places. Its most famous tomb is that of Raphael (between the second and third chapels on the left as you enter). The inscription reads "Here lies Raphael; while he lived, mother Nature feared to be outdone; and when he died, she feared to die with him." Two of Italy 's 19th-century kings are buried here, too: Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I. The tomb of the former was partly made from bronze that had been taken from the Pantheon by Urban VIII to cast as cannon. The great opening at the apex of the dome, the oculus, is nearly 30 feet in diameter and was the temple's only source of light. It was intended as a symbol of the "all-seeing eye of heaven."

COST: Free. Mon.-Sat. 8:30-7:30; Sun. 9-6.