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2. Roman Architecture: The Founding of Rome and the Beginnings of Urbanism in Italy
Poziom:
Temat: Edukacja
Prof: Last time I
introduced you to some of Rome's
greatest buildings,
and I remind you of two of them
here: the Pantheon,
on the left-hand side of the
screen,
the temple to all the gods,
and then,
of course, the Colosseum,
on the right-hand side of the
screen.
These are two of the greatest
masterworks of Roman
architecture,
and we will gain momentum and
work our way up to those in the
course of the semester,
but it's not where we're going
to begin.
We're not going to begin with
these masterworks;
we're going to begin at the
beginning.
And the beginning goes way,
way back, in fact all the way
to the Iron Age,
indeed to the eighth century
B.C.
And we know on precisely what
day,
not only the history of Rome
but the history of Roman
architecture began,
and that was specifically on
the 21^(st) of April in 753
B.C.,
because it was on the 21^(st)
of April in 753 B.C.
that, according to legend,
Romulus founded the city of
Rome.
Romulus founded the city of
Rome on one of Rome's seven
hills, the Palatine Hill.
And I show you here a view of
the Palatine Hill.
This is taken from Google Earth.
I urged you last time to make
sure that you have Google Earth
downloaded on your computer and
to take advantage of using
Google Earth in the course of
this semester in order to really
get to know the city of Rome and
the location of the various
buildings that we'll be talking
about within the city fabric.
So I show you one of these
views of the Palatine Hill in
Rome,
from Google Earth,
and you can see the
relationship of that hill to the
part of Rome in which it finds
itself.
You're going to be able to pick
all of these buildings out by
yourselves in the very near
future, but let me just do that
for you here this morning.
You can see,
of course, the Colosseum,
in the upper right corner.
You can see the Roman Forum
lying in front of it.
You can see the great--that
modern street that you see right
behind the Forum is the Via dei
Fori Imperiali,
commissioned by Mussolini,
Il Duce.
We can also see in this view
the Capitoline Hill with the
oval piazza designed by
Michelangelo,
and down here the famous Circus
Maximus,
as you can see,
the great stadium,
the greatest stadium of Rome.
It wasn't the only stadium of
Rome but it was the largest,
and you can see its hairpin
shape right down here.
The hill in question right now
is the Palatine Hill,
and this is the Palatine Hill,
all of this area here.
And as you look down on it,
as you gaze down on it,
you will see the remains of a
colossal structure,
which is actually a late
first-century A.D.
palace that was designed under
the direction of the emperor of
Rome at that particular time,
a very colorful character that
we'll talk about in some detail
later in the term,
by the name of Domitian.
This is Domitian's Palace on
the Palatine Hill.
But that discussion of that
palace lies in the future.
What I want to say today is
miraculously the remains of
Romulus' village on the Palatine
Hill,
founded in the eighth century
B.C.,
actually lie beneath the
remains of the Palace of
Domitian in Rome,
and it's to Romulus' huts on
the Palatine Hill that I want to
turn to today.
Believe it or not,
remains of those huts from the
Iron Age are still there.
Now they don't look like much.
I'm showing you what remains of
Romulus' huts right there,
and you're probably having a
hard time figuring out exactly
what we're looking at.
But what we're looking at--the
architects that were working for
the designers,
that were working for Romulus,
were very clever indeed,
and they realized that the best
way to create a foundation or a
pavement for their huts was to
use the natural rock of the
Palatine Hill.
And that's exactly what they
did.
What you're looking at here is
the tufa, t-u-f-a,
the natural tufa rock of the
Palatine Hill.
And what they did was they
created a rectangular plan.
They gave it rounded corners
and they cut the stone back
about twenty inches down,
to create that rectangular
shape;
they rounded the corners,
and then they put holes in the
tufa rock.
The holes were to support
wooden poles that served to
support the superstructure of
the hut and also to support the
walls of the hut.
So the pavement of the tufa
rock of the Palatine is the
floor of the hut,
and then these holes support
the wooden poles that supported,
in turn, the superstructure.
I now show you a restored view,
on the left.
And you should all have your
Monument Lists and should be
able to follow along with the
major monuments.
You won't see every image that
I'm going to be showing here,
but you'll see a selection
there of the ones that you'll
need to learn and be able to
talk about for the midterm,
the two midterm exams in this
course.
But you'll see there this
restored view of one of these
Palatine huts,
as well as a view of the model
that one can actually see in the
archaeological museum that's on
the Palatine Hill today.
You can see,
as you look at this restored
view on the left,
you can see that rectangular
plan that we talked about here;
you can see the rounded
corners, and you can see the
wooden poles that were placed
into those holes to support the
walls and the superstructure of
the building.
You can see over here the same,
the wooden poles.
This gives you a better sense
of what they looked like in
actuality, the wooden poles and
also the superstructure.
We also know what the walls
were made out of.
They were made out of
something--and I put some of the
keywords that might be
unfamiliar to you on the
Monument List as well--
they were made out of wattle
and daub.
Well what is wattle and daub?
Wattle and daub is twigs and
rods that are covered and
plastered with clay;
twigs and rods covered and
plastered with clay.
That served as the walls of the
structure, and then the sloping
roof, as you see it here,
was thatched.
Now it's very hard--there are
no huts that look like this in
Rome still today that I can show
you to give you a better sense
of what these would've looked
like in antiquity.
But I'm sure you,
like I, have seen huts like
this on your travels around the
world.
And one example I can show
you--and would that we were all
down there right now.
This is a view of a small
village in the Maya Riviera,
near Cancun,
where one sees,
if you take the bus or a car
from Maya to Chichen Itza,
which I hope some of you have
had a chance to do.
If you haven't,
it's a great trip.
And you can see all along the
road huts that look very much
like the huts of Romulus'
village,
made out of wood and then with
thatched roofs,
as you can see here.
So this is the best I can do in
terms of conjuring up for you
Romulus' village.
We also have information with
regard to what these huts looked
like in ancient Roman times or--
not in ancient Roman,
in the Iron Age,
as I mentioned before.
We have not only the pavement
stone that's still preserved,
but we also have these urns.
We call them hut urns,
hut urns, because they're urns
in the shape of huts.
And these hut urns were used
for cremation,
in the eighth century
B.C.--these date also to the
Iron Age--
and the cremated remains of the
individual were placed inside
the door of the hut.
And if you look at this hut
urn, you'll see that it looks
very similar to the huts of
Romulus that we've already been
talking about.
It is either sort of square or
rectangular in shape.
It has rounded corners,
as you can see here,
and the roof of the hut urn is
sloping.
So we do believe we use this,
along with the surviving
pavement, to restore what these
huts of Romulus looked like in
the eighth century B.C.
Let me also note--it's
interesting just to see the
status of men and women in any
given civilization at any given
time.
There are essentially two kinds
of hut urns from the eighth
century B.C.
Excuse me, there are two kinds
of urns in the eighth century
B.C.
One of them is hut urns and the
other is helmet urns,
and you can guess,
as well as anyone,
as to who was buried in which.
The men were buried in the
helmet urns and the women's
remains were placed in the hut
urns.
So men's domain was considered
the battlefield;
women's domain was considered
the house.
But the houses are actually
more important in terms of
giving us a sense again of what
Romulus' village looked like in
the eighth century.
And if you take one of those
huts and you combine it with
another set of huts,
you can get a sense of what the
village of Romulus would have
looked like in the eighth
century B.C.
This is a model that is on view
in the archaeological museum,
on the Palatine Hill today,
and it gives you a very good
sense of the village of Romulus
in the eighth century.
And of course it was from this
village that the great city of
Rome grew,
and of course there's a quite
significant difference between
Rome as it is now and Rome as it
was in the eighth century B.C.
I'm going to skip a couple of
centuries and take us from the
eighth century B.C.
to the sixth century B.C.,
and talk about what was the
greatest architectural project
in the sixth century B.C.
Just a few words about what was
going on in the sixth century
B.C.
Those who were ascendant in the
sixth century B.C.
were essentially the Etruscans.
The Etruscans lived in what is
known as Etruria.
They were a quite advanced
civilization prior to the Roman
period, lived in Etruria,
which is essentially Tuscany
today.
Etruscan, Tuscany -- Tuscany
today.
So the area around Florence and
so on and so forth is where many
of these individuals lived.
They became a quite powerful
civilization and they were able
to use that power to gain
ascendancy also in Rome itself.
And there's a period in which
there was a succession of
Etruscan kings who were leading
Rome,
and these Etruscan kings
eventually kicked out by the
Romans.
But at this time,
in the sixth century,
they were extremely important.
And it was under Etruscan
supervision and patronage that a
major temple began to be put up
in Rome in the sixth century
B.C.;
precisely in 509.
It was dedicated in the year
509 B.C., as you can see from
the Monument List.
The temple in question was the
Temple of Jupiter Optimus
Maximus Capitolinus.
Now that is a mouthful,
and I don't want you to have to
necessarily remember all of
that: Jupiter Optimus Maximus
Capitolinus.
So we will call this temple,
for all intents and purposes,
the Temple of Jupiter OMC,
Jupiter OMC -- Optimus Maximus
Capitolinus.
The Temple of Jupiter OMC was
dedicated,
again, in the year 509 B.C.,
and it was dedicated to
Jupiter,
but also to his female
companions, Juno and Minerva.
And when we think of those
three, or when those three are
joined together,
Jupiter, Juno and Minerva,
they are known as the
Capitoline Triad,
because their main temple was
on the Capitoline Hill in Rome.
And we will see the Capitoline
Triad, not only honored in this
temple, but in other temples.
I showed you one on Tuesday in
Pompeii, for example,
the so-called Capitolium in
Pompeii that honored Jupiter,
Juno and Minerva.
You'll see that when a temple
honors the three of them,
it has implications for the
architecture of that building,
for the design of that
building.
We'll talk about that right
now, in a few minutes.
But I want you to be aware of
what the Capitoline Triad is.
So it's all three of them,
honored together;
although Jupiter is always
considered supreme whenever
those three get together.
So we have a temple here that
we have to think of in large
part as an Etruscan temple,
put up during the time of the
Etruscan kings,
dedicated in 509,
but one that is beginning to
have the impact of Rome and will
itself have a very strong impact
on Roman temple architecture.
And we're going to focus quite
heavily today on Roman temple
architecture,
and then of course return to it
sporadically in the course of
the semester,
as we move through and look at
other temples,
like the Pantheon and like
others that were put up in the
Roman provinces.
The Temple of Jupiter OMC was
built on the Capitoline Hill in
Rome, so one of the other major
seven hills.
So while the hill of the
Palatine was basically the
residential section of Rome at
this juncture,
the Capitoline Hill became its
religious center where its main
temple was placed.
The Temple of Jupiter was
located on the hill,
at about the position of one of
the palaces that's there now.
We mentioned last time--and any
of you who've been to Rome know
this well--
that the Capitoline Hill was
redesigned in the Renaissance by
none other than Michelangelo
himself.
It was Michelangelo who was
responsible for creating the
oval piazza that is at the
center of the Capitoline Hill,
which was then renamed the
Campidoglio of Rome,
and there are these three
palaces, designed also by
Michelangelo,
the Capitoline,
the Conservatori,
and the Senatorial Palaces,
that serve today as two
museums, or a joined museum,
one on either side,
and a governmental building in
the back.
And you can see that very well
here.
So this is the Capitoline Hill
as it looks today,
as redesigned by Michelangelo.
But in Roman times it was the
location, or from the sixth
century B.C.
on, it was the location of the
Temple of Jupiter OMC,
the chief temple of ancient
Rome, the most important temple
of ancient Rome.
What did that temple look like?
And again, this is extremely
important, not only for it,
but for the rest of Roman
temple architecture over time.
Believe it or not,
we have quite a bit of
evidence.
It's complicated by the fact
that this temple burned down
quite a number of times
throughout its history.
We know it was still standing,
by the way, in the fourth
century A.D.,
when it was described by a very
famous writer.
So it had a very long history.
But it burned down several
times and it was rebuilt several
times,
and each time it was rebuilt it
obviously was rebuilt in a new
style,
whatever was au courant
at that time.
So it changed considerably.
And nonetheless we do have
quite a bit of information about
it.
As far as we can tell,
when it was put up in 509 B.C.
it looked something like this.
What you're seeing here is a
restored view and a plan of the
temple in 509 B.C.
And it's never too soon in a
course on architecture to learn
how to read a plan and how to
read a restored view or a
so-called axonometric view.
And I have put on--you probably
haven't had a chance to look
yet--
but I've put up on the website
for this course,
both under Announcements and
also in the Online Forum
section,
a couple of sheets that I think
will be very helpful to you,
that have terms and concepts.
It has different kinds of
vaulting and different kinds of
masonry,
and also tells you the
difference between an
axonometric view and a plan,
and so on and so forth.
I really urge you to print
those out, look through them.
In the beginning of this
semester we do have to spend a
lot of time on what things are
called,
but once we do that for a
couple of weeks,
we'll be done with it and
you'll know all the basic terms
and we'll be able to go on from
there.
But I think you'll find those
handouts extremely helpful.
So as we look at what we have
here, I think you can see by
looking at the plan that what we
are dealing with here is a
rectangular structure.
The rectangular structure has a
deep porch, and these circles
are columns -- so with
freestanding columns in that
porch.
It has a single staircase at
the front.
Having a single staircase,
rather than one that encircles
the building,
gives the building a focus;
there's a focus on the
façade for this
structure.
You can also see that the back
wall is plain;
the back wall is plain.
And the cella,
c-e-l-l-a, which is the central
space of the inside of a temple,
is divided into three parts.
So a tripartite cella.
And why was there a tripartite
cella?
You know the answer,
because there were three gods;
there was Jupiter,
Juno and Minerva,
the Capitoline Triad.
Each one had his own little
cella, with Jupiter obviously in
the center, flanked by his two
ladies, one on either side.
So whenever you see a building
with a triple cella,
you're going to know that's a
temple of the Capitoline Triad.
We can see from the outside of
the structure,
the restored view,
that it had a quite tall
podium.
The podium was in fact thirteen
feet tall -- pretty significant,
thirteen-foot tall podium right
here.
And here you also see again the
single staircase in the front,
the façade orientation,
the deep porch,
the freestanding columns in
that porch,
and the triple entranceway into
the three cellas of the
structure.
So that's the basic plan.
Let me also mention the
materials for the Temple of
Jupiter OMC,
in the sixth century B.C.,
because technology is important
in any course on architecture.
We know--and think back to what
we already know about the huts--
the building material used here
was wood for the columns and the
superstructure,
just as we saw in the Palatine
huts,
wood for the columns and the
superstructure.
Mud-brick, not wattle and daub,
but mud-brick for the podium
and for the walls,
and then the structure had
quite a bit of decoration --
you don't see it here,
but quite a bit of decoration,
sculptural decoration,
in ancient times,
and this was made out of
terracotta.
So wood, mud-brick and
terracotta were the materials
used for this particular
building.
Oh I meant to show you--sorry,
let me just go back for a
second.
The reason that the other plan
is on the screen,
the one at the left,
this is a plan of an Etruscan
tomb,
the Tomb of the Shields and
Seats from Cerveteri,
second half of the sixth
century B.C.,
which is on your Monument List.
I only bring it to your
attention because it's
interesting that the Etruscans
also divided the main space of
that tomb into three spaces,
three separate spaces,
up at the top,
tripartite, and also gave it a
single staircase,
which gave it a façade
orientation.
I just mention that because
we'll see that those,
especially that focus on the
façade,
is an Etruscan element that is
picked up by the Romans.
Roman architecture is very much
an architecture of facades,
of the front of buildings,
with a focus on the front of
buildings,
and I wanted to make sure that
you knew that not only in temple
architecture,
but also in tomb architecture,
under the Etruscans,
that was an approach that they
already took and that was
adopted from them by the Romans.
Another view also of the plan,
just so that you can see it
again straight up,
with the focus on the
façade,
the single staircase,
the deep porch,
the freestanding columns in
that porch,
and then the tripartite
division and the flat back wall.
Now I think it's important at
this juncture to make a
distinction between the most
important Etruscan temple,
namely the Temple of Jupiter
OMC--and you see a model of that
here--
and the most important Greek,
ancient Greek temple,
the Parthenon in Athens.
The Parthenon in Athens dates,
as you probably know,
to the fifth century B.C.,
this to the sixth century B.C.
So they are not exactly
contemporary but roughly
contemporary to one another.
And as you look at this,
I think you can see for
yourselves, although I will
point out, the major
distinctions between the two.
And this is going to be very,
very important for today,
for today's lecture,
but also in the future,
because what we're going to see
is that the Romans --
when the Romans began to build
their own religious
architecture,
they looked back to what had
been done by the Greeks and what
had been done by the Etruscans.
They picked and chose what they
liked in each,
and they brought that together
in an entirely new creation.
They mixed it up with their own
culture,
their own religion,
brought it together,
an entirely new creation,
and created something
distinctive that we know of as
the Roman temple.
So what are the differences
between the two?
We've already talked about the
main features of the Etruscan
temple, but what are the main
features of the Greek temple,
of the Parthenon?
I think you can see that while
superficially they look alike,
they have columns that support
a triangular pediment and so on
and so forth,
the major differences are--and
you can't see all of those
here--
but the major differences are
that instead of sitting on a
high podium,
Greek temples sit on a much
lower podium.
They have a staircase that
encircles the entire building;
no façade orientation
there, no single staircase on
the front.
The stairs encircle the entire
building,
as you can kind of see here,
and there is a single cella--
they never used a triple cella,
as we see in the Capitoline
temple.
And the major difference
between the two perhaps is the
fact that this building is built
out of stone,
out of marble.
The Greek building is built out
of marble.
The Greeks are using marble
magnificently in the fifth
century B.C.,
and even before that.
So no ordinary old wood columns
and mud-brick for them,
they were using marble.
So when we begin to see the
Romans--
and we'll see that today--using
stone for their temple
architecture,
they are doing that under the
very strong influence of Greece,
and that's extremely important
in any assessment of early Roman
religious architecture.
Another view,
and it's one that you have also
on your Monument List,
showing the Capitoline Hill in
Roman times,
showing you the situation of
the Temple of Jupiter OMC in
relationship to the other
buildings that were up on top of
the Capitoline Hill;
mostly religious structures,
but I just wanted you to see it
did not stand alone.
Not all of these were built in
the sixth century B.C.
already, but over time,
an accretion of other
buildings.
Here you actually see the
temple in a somewhat later
version, because,
as I mentioned,
it burned down and it was
rebuilt many,
many times.
But you also can see here--this
is just useful in terms of Roman
religious practice--the altar is
located not inside the temple
but outside;
the religious service actually
took place outside.
The priest would officiate
outside the temple,
and in fact very few were
allowed to go inside to see the
sacred cult statues --
that was pretty much left for
the priest and the priesthood.
Just again to underscore the
importance of Google Earth,
for anyone who was not here on
Tuesday,
I mentioned at that time that
you cannot only go and fly over
Rome as it looks today via
Google Earth,
but they have just recently,
in the last few months,
introduced an ancient Rome
version.
So you can go,
and you click the right button,
you click your mouse in such a
way,
you can find that the whole
city will be completely
recreated into the ancient city.
And I just wanted you--it's
much more abstract,
but nonetheless it gives you a
sense of what many of these
buildings looked like in ancient
Roman times.
And this is a screenshot of the
Capitoline Hill,
as it appears in the Google
ancient Rome version of Rome.
You can't do this for the other
cities at this juncture,
just for the city of Rome.
But it's great fun to do,
and also very informative.
Now what is actually left of
the temple?
We've looked at the Campidoglio;
we see Michelangelo's buildings
are up there now.
What is actually left of the
Temple of Jupiter OMC?
Well you're looking at it right
here.
It's the podium of the temple
-- still survives -- that
thirteen foot tall podium of the
Temple of Jupiter.
We think this is a quite early
podium,
maybe not as early as the sixth
century B.C.,
but a very early podium from
the temple upon which the
structure was built.
You can get a sense of the
height of these things.
And again a characteristic of
Etruscan temple architecture,
and as we shall see of most
Roman temple architecture,
is to have a very high podium.
We can see that podium here and
we can see how it is made
technically.
You can see it is made up of a
series of rectangular blocks
that are placed one next to one
another and on top of one
another.
This is technically called
ashlar masonry,
a-s-h-l-a-r,
ashlar masonry,
to build a wall with these
kinds of rectangular blocks
piled one on top of another.
It's tufa stone in this
particular case once again,
which was natural,
a tufa stone natural to Rome,
t-u-f-a.
And this ashlar masonry;
again, a building technique
that was particularly popular in
the fifth and fourth and third
centuries B.C.
in Rome.
Now what went up after the
Temple of Jupiter OMC in Rome?
Quite a bit.
This was a very inspiring
project, a very major project,
and obviously it spawned a lot
of other building projects in
the city.
Very few of those survive--I
can't show you much else from
this particular period--and this
is for a variety of reasons.
It has to do in part with those
fires that I mentioned.
A lot of things burned and no
longer survive.
It has to do with something I
mentioned also on Tuesday,
and that is that some of these
buildings became quarries in
later times,
with later patrons and
architects using them as a
source of stone that could be
used in later structures.
So many of them were dismantled
to be used for other buildings.
And also any city that is
inhabited,
as Rome has been,
for two-and-a-half millennia,
is obviously going to lose a
certain amount of its structures
over time.
They're going to be torn down,
they're going to be rebuilt,
they're going to be
incorporated into other
buildings.
Some of those that have
survived best are those that
were actually incorporated into
other buildings.
And indeed, that's what
happened here.
The wall was incorporated into
something else and built on top
of, and that's why it still
survives.
So we don't have all that much
again besides this.
But even if we had,
whatever was standing in the
fifth and fourth centuries,
or early fourth century B.C.,
would have been destroyed in
the year 386.
Because in the year 386 B.C.,
a group of tribes,
the Gallic tribes,
the Gauls, came down,
from the north.
They destroyed everything in
their path.
They did a lot of damage to the
Etruscan settlements around
Florence and so on.
They destroyed those.
They came into Rome and they
set the city of Rome ablaze.
And when the smoke cleared,
and it did eventually clear,
the only building that was
still standing was the Temple of
Jupiter Optimus Maximus
Capitolinus.
That's how much destruction
there was.
And so there's very little else
that we can look at from this
particular period.
What the sack of the Gauls did
was also convince the Romans
that they had not protected
their city well enough.
Right?
They were completely exposed,
and the entire city was burned,
except for that one temple.
So they realized that they
better get smart and they better
start to wall their cities,
to begin to put protective
walls around the perimeter of
those cities.
And we see a great
efflorescence of wall building
therefore after the sack of 386
B.C.
And I want to turn to that wall
construction right now.
I want to begin with the most
important wall that was put up
in the fourth century B.C.,
right after the Gallic sack,
and this was the wall around
Rome itself.
Rome was encircled with a stone
circuit;
a stone circuit that went
around the entire seven hills,
the famous Seven Hills of Rome,
enclosing it in this stone
circuit.
And fortunately some parts of
that wall are still preserved
today.
And I show you the most
extensive section here.
This is called the Servian
Walls--you can see this on your
Monument List--
Servian Walls in Rome -- dates
to 378 B.C.,
right after the sack,
not long after the sack,
378 B.C.
And some extensive sections of
that wall are preserved.
The most extensive is the
section near Rome's main train
station, the Stazione Termini.
You can see the Stazione--a
modern building--you can see the
Stazione Termini in the upper
right corner.
And here is a view of this
extensive section of the Servian
Walls in Rome.
The Romans didn't want to take
any chances.
They decided,
even though their tufa was
pretty good,
they decided they wanted to use
the finest tufa possible,
and so they brought it in from
the Etruscan city of Veii,
V-e-i-i.
Veii was a famous and important
Etruscan city,
that the Romans had just made
their own.
So it was a perfect source for
them of outstanding building
materials,
and they brought in an imported
yellowish tufa,
from the Etruscan town of Veii,
to use for this very
significant,
very important wall that was
going to protect them from this
time forth.
And you see that wall again
here.
It is very weathered;
even though it still stands,
it's very weathered.
So the stones don't look as
expertly carved as they would've
been in ancient Roman times.
And what you can--it's hard to
see here,
and I'll show you better in a
different wall shortly,
but what it's hard to see is
the system of what are called
headers and stretchers;
headers and stretchers that
they used for this wall.
What a header is,
you take the same size
rectangular block,
but when you put the short side
out,
facing out, that's a header,
and when you put the long side
of the rectangle facing out,
that's a stretcher.
So it was an alternating
headers and stretchers.
Again, I'll show you that
better in another wall
momentarily, but use of headers
and stretchers here.
And we can also see that the
blocks are quite regular.
We are dealing with what we
call ashlar masonry,
once again, the same kind of
construction,
this placement of these fairly
regular blocks,
one next to one another and one
on top of one another,
ashlar masonry.
In Latin the term is
opus, o-p-u-s,
quadratum,
q-u-a-d-r-a-t-u-m:
opus quadratum.
So you can call this either
ashlar masonry or opus
quadratum:
squared work.
The same sort of thing as we
saw in the podium of Jupiter
OMC, being used for the Servian
Walls in Rome,
in 378.
I showed you last time this
section of the Servian Walls.
Here you can get a much better
sense of the coloration of that
yellowish tufa from Veii.
This is also very weathered,
so it's hard to see the headers
and stretchers,
but it's another section of
wall--just in case any of you
are going to Rome anytime soon--
that one can see on the
Aventine Hill,
which is a beautiful
residential hill in Rome,
one of the most lovely places
to wander in the entire city.
You will come across another
section--you never know when
little pieces of antiquity will
crop up.
They come up in the most
unusual places as one wanders
the city, which is one of the
reasons it's such a fascinating
place to visit.
Now the Romans realized--what
was going on at the same time is
the Romans were beginning to
extensively colonize--
well they had these
imperialistic ambitions.
They wanted to colonize the
world, but they began with the
places closest to them,
and they began to build
extensive colonies in Italy,
especially in an area very
close to the city of Rome
itself.
And they recognized,
as they began to build,
what I mentioned to you last
time I like to call mini-Romes,
because these are little cities
in the version of the capital
city itself.
As they began to build these
mini-Romes,
they recognized that these
mini-Romes also needed security,
also needed to be protected by
walls that were comparable to
the Servian Walls.
So we see this great
efflorescence,
not only of colonization,
but also of wall building in
the period following the sack
and the period following the
construction of Rome's own
Servian Walls.
And I want to show you a few
examples of that.
This is a map that was
custom-made for this course.
You can find it on the web
portal, and I think you'll find
it very useful,
because what I've done here
obviously is focus on--
I don't clutter it up with a
lot of places we're not looking
at--
I focus on the towns that we
are actually going to be looking
at buildings in.
So I think you'll find it
extremely helpful.
Rome is here at the star.
You can actually click on the
map and that will take you to a
map of Rome itself.
But we see the star where Rome
is, and the towns that I'm going
to take you to,
that have walls,
are the city of Cosa,
the town, the village really at
that time, of Cosa;
the town of Norba,
that you see over here;
and the town of Falerii Novi.
But I wanted to show you the
map, because you see how close,
how proximate they are to the
city of Rome itself.
I'm going to show you these
fairly rapidly,
just to give you a sense again
of the kind of wall construction
that was going on in the
colonies,
in the Italian colonies,
at this time.
This is--we'll look first at
the city walls of the town of
Norba.
And you can see from the
Monument List that dates to the
second half of the fourth
century B.C.
And as you look at these walls,
these are not done out of tufa
but a local stone to Norba,
more grayish in color,
as you can see here.
But you can tell me yourselves
right off, that's not opus
quadratum,
that's not ashlar masonry.
The blocks are not rectangular
and they're not that even;
in fact, they're multi-sided
blocks, some of them are
polygonal blocks.
And we technically call this
polygonal masonry.
And they've taken these
multi-sided blocks,
piled them up,
in a very interesting way,
to create a very handsome
wall--I like this wall a lot
myself--
a very handsome wall to
encircle the town of Norba.
So polygonal masonry in this
particular instance.
And we see the same use of
polygonal masonry at the town of
Cosa, which is north of Norba,
as you'll remember from the
custom map, the town of Cosa.
The walls date to 273 B.C.
at Cosa, and you see glimpses
of them here.
And I think you can see once
again a grayish stone used for
these walls, and you can see
that the construction is once
again polygonal masonry.
The pièce de
résistance,
the greatest masterwork of
Roman wall design in this early
period is the wall that you see
here.
This is the wall at Falerii
Novi.
Falerii Novi was founded as a
colony in 241 B.C.,
and the walls were put up
sometime between 241 and 200
B.C.
And we see them here,
and you can see that the wall
also had a quite spectacular,
at least for its date,
quite spectacular gate.
Now if we look at the walls
first--
actually, first of all I want
to point out that they have
chosen to use two different
kinds of materials here,
as is immediately apparent as
you look at this color view.
They chose to use a grey
peperino stone,
p-e-p-e-r-i-n-o,
a grey peperino stone,
from the Alban Hills,
for the arch of the gateway,
and to use a reddish-brown tufa
for the walls themselves.
A reddish-brown tufa,
peperino, grey peperino stone,
from the Alban Hills.
So they were very careful about
their selection of materials,
in part to emphasize this
distinction in texture and in
color.
If you look at the wall you can
see we're dealing here clearly
with ashlar masonry,
with opus quadratrum,
and here you can see much more
clearly,
than any of the other walls
I've shown you because they're
so well preserved,
the headers and the stretchers,
the alternating square and
rectangular blocks,
the scheme of headers and
stretchers that is used for this
wall.
The most important part,
of course, is the arch,
the stone arch.
It's a masonry arch,
as you can see.
It's not the earliest arch in
Roman architecture,
but it's one of the earliest.
It has been amazingly done,
I think quite masterfully done.
If you look at it,
you will see that what the
designer has achieved is to take
a series of wedge-shaped blocks.
These are called
voussoir blocks--
I put that word on the Monument
List for you--
voussoir blocks,
these wedge-shaped blocks,
and has carved them in such a
way that each one fits very
effectively and very well into
the overall scheme.
They're wedged in next to one
another.
In fact, as you gaze at it,
you kind of think:
"Gee,
I wonder if any of those blocks
are going to fall out from where
they are?"
But they don't because they're
wedged in so closely,
next to one another.
And then they have finished the
line of the arch very nicely so
that it has a very attractive
appearance,
and because it is done in a
different stone it stands out
extremely well from the rest of
the wall.
This is really again a
masterful treatment,
in my opinion,
of a wall at this particular
time, with the wonderful
addition of the arch.
And I think we begin to see--we
talked last time about how
important making of arches and
vaults and especially the use of
concrete--
although here we see a stone
arch, clearly a stone arch.
But we're going to see that the
capacity of the arch to be used
for expressive purposes in
architecture is capitalized on
by the Romans.
And I wanted you to be
aware--this is not only
important as a wall of this
period but important in the way
that it's prescient of what's to
come with regard to the way in
which the Romans are going to
start to deploy the arch in
extraordinarily creative and
innovative ways in Roman
architecture.
It all begins here.
The wall and gate of Falerii
Novi stand at the beginning of
this incredible development in
Roman architecture.
I want to say something very,
very quickly about town
planning during this period,
because just as I mentioned,
Romans were colonizing towns in
Italy and they were putting
walls around them,
but they were also beginning to
think about how they thought
about city construction in
general,
or the making of urban spaces
and places during this
particular period.
So I just want to show you
fleetingly two examples.
The town of Cosa,
of which we've already looked
at the walls,
dating to the third century
B.C.
And it's worth noting that it
was again after the sack of 386
that this explosion of town
building really began.
As we look at the town plan of
Cosa,
you can see that it is
encircled by the wall that we
looked at just before,
and you can also see it's
roughly regular in shape,
roughly kind of a square.
As you can see here,
there are gates in the walls,
and then there is a scheme of
streets that is comparable to
what I mentioned last time was
typical for an ideal Roman city
plan,
and that is the two main
streets, the cardo and
the decumanus of the
city.
The cardo being the
north-south main street,
and the decumanus being
the east-west street,
and them intersecting very
close to the center of the city.
And it's usually very close to
that same center that you find
the forum,
or a great open space,
meeting and marketplace of the
city,
as well as a host of other
buildings: basilica,
market, and so on.
And then, on the highest hill
of the town of Cosa,
a Capitolium,
a temple to Jupiter,
Juno and Minerva,
on that highest spot,
the most important religious
structure of that town.
That's the town of Cosa.
And then the other more
important one is the town of
Ostia,
the port of Rome,
the town of Ostia which was
first founded in 350 B.C.,
and it was at that time a
military camp or castrum
was--
c-a-s-t-r-u-m--a castrum
was laid out there.
And you can see a plan of that
castrum.
You see the dark dotted lines
here is the original plan of
Ostia, 350 B.C.
All the rest that you see
around it is the city as it grew
into the second century A.D.,
when it had its efflorescence.
So we see the original city
here.
And you can see it is perfectly
regular.
And I mentioned to you last
time that this is very different
from what happened in Rome.
Rome grew in a very haphazard
way over the centuries.
There was never any real
attempt to plan the city.
But when the Romans were left
to build the kind of ideal city,
the city that they thought was
the ideal Roman city,
they almost always built it in
a very regular fashion,
as a square or as a rectangle,
as regular as they could make
it,
and it varied depending upon
the terrain.
If there were a lot of hills
and so on, it might end up with
a somewhat more irregular shape.
But here you see it at its most
regular,
planned like a castrum
or a military camp,
rectangular with the two main
streets,
the cardo,
the north-south street,
the decumanus,
the east-west street,
crossing exactly at the center
of the city.
And then what's located there?
The forum of the city,
the great open meeting and
marketplace,
and then all the other major
buildings deployed around that,
and then, of course,
the residential structures and
the shops interspersed among
those,
in this typical Roman town plan
of the fourth century B.C.
I want to spend the rest of
today's lecture on the three
most important buildings,
in a sense, that I'm going to
show you today,
vis-à-vis the
development of Roman religious
architecture,
specifically temple
architecture.
And I think I'm going to
actually call for your help.
You've learned a lot already
and I think you now know enough
to help me along a little bit
here on sorting out some of
these temples.
One of them is located in Rome
and the other two are located
outside of Rome.
I'll show you the map again in
a second so that you can see
where those other two are.
But I'm going to begin with the
one in Rome,
which takes me back to Google
Earth here,
to show you the situation of
the so-called Temple of Portunus
in Rome,
that dates to,
we believe, sometime--
it was put up sometime between
120 and 80 B.C.
in Rome.
You're going to get so good at
this that you're going to be
able to point all these places
out, without me.
But we're looking back again
over--this is the Palatine Hill.
We're looking at a slightly
different angle,
Palatine Hill over here.
The very edge of the Colosseum
you can see in the upper left.
The great Via dei Fori
Imperiali of Mussolini over
here.
The Imperial Fora here.
The wedding cake of Victor
Emmanuel, the Vittoriano,
that I showed you last time,
over here -- the more modern
building.
The Capitoline Hill.
You can see the oval piazza of
Michelangelo right here.
And the Circus Maximus over
here.
And for any of you who've been
to Rome, the Isola Tiberina,
that wonderful little island
that one can cross the bridge to
get to, in Rome,
down here.
So here's the Tiber River,
looking nasty as it usually
does.
It's very green and not the
sort of place you'd want to take
a swim in, as you can well
imagine.
But you see the Tiber River
here.
And if you look very closely,
you will see two temples.
This is a round temple,
which has a very uninventive--
it's called today,
very uninventively,
the Round Temple by the Tiber,
the Round Temple by the Tiber
for obvious reasons.
And then here a rectangular
temple that looks like it has a
red roof because it's been
undergoing reconstruction and
restoration recently.
You see that here.
This is the Temple of Portunus.
So you can see,
in conjunction to another
temple, it was built very close
to the river,
to the Tiber River.
Now let's look at the plan
together of the Temple of
Portunus.
Based on your understanding now
of typical Etruscan religious
architecture,
typical Greek religious
architecture,
what would you say about this
plan?
Is this more like an Etruscan
temple or more like a Greek
temple?
I can't remember if I--I think
I forgot to mention,
with regard to the Parthenon,
that not only does the typical
Greek temple of the fifth
century B.C.
have a staircase that encircles
the entire monument,
it has a colonnade,
a freestanding colonnade,
that encircles the entire
monument,
and that's called a peripteral,
p-e-r-i-p-t-e-r-a-l,
a peripteral colonnade.
So based on what you know about
the Temple of Jupiter OMC and
the Parthenon in Athens,
does this plan--in plan,
when we look at this building--
does this look more like an
Etruscan plan or like a Greek
plan?
Okay Mr.***Roma.
Student: I'd say it's
more of a combination.
Prof: Good.
Student: With the
peripteral colonnade and also
the --
Prof: All right,
all right.
Okay. Yes.
It looks like it might be a
combination.
Give me what the Etruscan
characteristics are first.
Student: Well I think
the Etruscan would be the single
staircase, of course,
and also the three entrances;
so you've got a triad maybe.
Prof: All right.
The single staircase,
absolutely, which gives it a
façade orientation.
Is there a triple entranceway?
There are spaces between the
columns.
These are columns here.
Student:
>
Prof: But look at the
cella.
Student: Over there the
cella's a single cella.
Prof: The cella's a
single cella.
So this is not a Capitolium.
But there are spaces,
you're right,
between the columns.
So take us a little further
with the columns.
You can see the columns in a
deep porch, deep porch,
freestanding;
columns in the front are
freestanding.
So façade orientation,
single staircase,
deep porch, freestanding
columns in that porch,
in this case a single
cella--those are all Etruscan
characteristics.
So it looks as if we are
dealing here essentially with an
Etruscan plan.
But you're right--what's your
name?
Student:
>
Prof: Neil was right,
however, that this is a
combination in that there are
columns that go around the
monument.
But is it a peripteral
colonnade?
Student: Probably not.
Prof: Probably not.
Why not?
Because what's different about
these columns?
You can see it in plan.
They go all the way around
but--
Student: They're not
freestanding.
Prof: They're not
freestanding.
They're attached or engaged
into the wall.
They're attached to the wall.
What do we call that?
We call that a
pseudo-peripteral colonnade.
So yes, it kind of looks like
it goes around,
but it doesn't really because
it's attached into the wall and
it kind of gives that sense of
flatness that we got in the
Etruscan temple.
So you were absolutely on the
mark.
It's a combination of the two.
And that is exactly what we see
coming together at this
particular time in Roman temple
architecture,
this wonderful way in which the
Romans have looked at Etruscan
precedents,
they've looked at Greek
precedents.
They decide what they like.
They mix it up,
as I said before,
in a way in which it best
represents their own culture,
their own religion,
and create something that we're
going to see becomes
distinctively Roman.
The building is very well
preserved, so we can go on to
actually look at it.
Here it is.
It stands in almost pristine
shape in Rome today,
right near the Tiber River,
as I mentioned.
A wonderful temple in which we
see some of those features that
Neil has already pointed to,
and that is the façade
orientation,
the single staircase,
the deep porch,
the freestanding columns in
that porch.
From a distance it does indeed
look peripteral.
It looks like there are columns
all the way around.
But as you look closely you
will see that the columns are
indeed attached to the wall,
on the side,
and around the other side.
Now that you see the actual
view, there are some other
things that give this away,
as a temple that has clearly
also been built under very
strong Greek influence.
And what are those?
Student: Stone.
Prof: Stone -- yes
absolutely.
This is not made--this is not a
wooden, mud-brick,
terracotta temple.
This is a temple that is made
out of stone.
It's not made out of marble,
it's made out of travertine.
It has travertine,
t-r-a-v-e-r-t-i-n-e.
Travertine is an Italian stone
brought from or quarried at town
of Tivoli, T-i-v-o-l-i,
which we'll talk about a lot in
the course of this semester.
Travertine brought--Tivoli's
about an hour's high-speed drive
today from Rome,
obviously longer in antiquity,
but it's fairly proximate to
Rome.
So this wonderful stone,
travertine, from Tivoli,
brought to serve as a facing
for the podium,
and for the columns,
used in the columns.
So it is essentially a stone
structure.
We'll see that the walls are
made of tufa,
but those walls were stuccoed
over with white stucco,
so that the impression that you
would've gotten,
if you were in ancient times
when this was in more pristine
condition,
was that you were looking at a
white marble temple,
which would've certainly
conjured up the idea that you
were looking at a temple that
was made à
la Greque;
that was made in the Greek
style.
Anything else that gives away
the influence of Greek
architecture?
Do any of you know your orders?
Student: Ionic order
columns.
Prof: Ionic order. Good;
I-o-n-i-c, Ionic.
The three major--and you'll
find this in your Terms and
Concepts.
So bone up on those there.
The Doric, the Ionic and the
Corinthian, and we'll look at
all of them today.
The Ionic order,
what characterizes the Ionic
order are these what are called
spiral volutes,
v-o-l-u-t-e-s;
spiral volutes.
And you can see those here.
This is a typical Ionic column
clearly made--
we don't see the Etruscans
using this--
clearly made under the
influence, the very strong
influence,
of Greek architecture,
Greek temple architecture.
Here's a view of the Temple of
Portunus, from the side,
and from the rear.
We once again see the way those
columns encircle the structure
but are engaged into the wall.
You can also see the blocks of
tufa stone, ashlar blocks,
just as we saw them in the
walls, of tufa stone used here.
And you can get some sense
there're some remains of some of
the stucco that was stuccoed
over in white,
so that from a distance,
at least, you would have the
impression that the whole
building was made out of stone.
And even stone--you might even
be fooled into thinking it
wasn't travertine,
it was marble,
if you were far enough away.
I also need to mention
something very important for the
future of Roman architecture,
and that is that concrete
construction was used in the
podium.
You don't see it.
It was only used inside the
podium.
The reason it was used inside
the podium is concrete is very
strong.
It can sustain great weight and
the Romans recognized very early
on that they could use it in
utilitarian ways to help support
buildings.
At this particular time the
concrete was made up of rubble
and liquid mortar and a kind of
a dash of volcanic dust,
and they brought all of that
together to create a material
that could sustain great weight.
So they used it here for
utilitarian purposes.
But we're going to see already
next Tuesday the Romans
beginning to take advantage of
concrete for very expressive
purposes --
and how well they do it --
which culminates ultimately,
obviously, in buildings like
the Pantheon and its incredible
dome.
Here's a detail of the Ionic
capitals of the Temple of
Portunus.
You can also see this building
has, as it would have if it were
made in Greece,
what's called an Ionic frieze;
an Ionic frieze,
which if you look very
carefully,
there's some remains of the
candelabra and the garlands that
hung from those candelabra in
the original design of this
temple.
I also think it's interesting
to look--here's a view again of
the Temple of Portunus as it
looks today.
This is a nineteenth-century
painting of the Temple of
Portunus, as it looked at the
time it was done,
by that artist.
And what you see is something
that I have already alluded to,
but which is extremely
important for the preservation
of buildings like this.
And that is that this building,
the Temple of Portunus,
like so many in Rome,
was reused in later times and
transformed into something else,
and it is probably only because
it was transformed into
something else that it's
survived as well as it did.
Because you can see that what
happened is that they walled in
the front.
They gave it a real
façade,
a doorway, three windows,
a medallion with the Madonna,
a cross, at the top,
a bell tower,
and they turned it into a
church.
And because it was an active
church it was kept in good
shape.
You can see those Ionic
capitals and the frieze with the
garlands and so on,
of the Temple of Portunus.
And you can also see the Round
Temple, by the way,
which still does stand also,
over here, right near it,
near the Tiber River.
So this is the reason that we
are fortunate that the Temple of
Portunus survives.
And it does survive,
in large part,
because again it was
transformed into a church in
later times.
And this is one of the
fascinations of Rome,
by the way;
you never know--so many
churches mask earlier buildings.
There's one right near,
not too far from these,
where you can actually see
three Roman temples that stood
side by side were incorporated
into the Church of San Nicolo in
Carcere.
And you can actually see the
remains of all three of those
temples used in that church.
And it's one of the
fascinations,
obviously, of wandering around
the city of Rome.
The other two temples that I
want to show you today--
we're looking back at the map
of this particular area--
are located at Cori,
and you can see the proximity
of Cori,
not just to Rome,
but also to Ostia,
right here.
The city of Cori and the city
of Tivoli.
And now you see Tivoli from
where travertine comes;
the location of Tivoli in
relationship again to Rome.
It's not very far,
which is why the building
material was so easily
transportable from Tivoli to
Rome.
Let's look first at Cori.
Cori is one of those
incredibly--those of you who
have traveled around Italy,
outside of Rome,
around Italy,
know that one of the glories of
traveling in Italy is to go into
some of these medieval hill
towns.
You go into these places and
you--whether by car or by bus or
cab--you make your way up to the
very peak of that hill town.
It's very picturesque,
and then ultimately you get to
the top and you stand up there
and you get this incredible
panorama over the city and over
the landscape.
That's the kind of place Cori
is.
It's a medieval hill town.
But leave it to the Romans--and
they had a knack for doing this
wherever they went--they found
the best location in Cori for
their temple.
And this temple is located
almost at the very peak of the
hill of Cori,
and you have to drive all the
way up to see the temple,
the so-called Temple of
Hercules at Cori.
We don't really know if this
was put up to Hercules,
but it's been called the Temple
of Hercules for a long time.
So we continue to call it that.
And you see it here in plan,
in restored view,
with its little complex in
front, and then the temple as it
looks today.
So looking at this one,
then we can see again that we
are dealing with an Etruscan
plan, with freestanding columns
in the porch.
You can't see it here,
but you can up there.
It does have a single staircase.
It's a kind of pyramidal
staircase.
It has a side as well as a
front -- or sides as well as
fronts.
But you can see it does not go
all the way around,
as a Greek staircase would
have.
It's focused on the front.
So we once again have this idea
of single staircase on the
front;
façade orientation of
the temple;
deep porch;
freestanding columns in that
porch;
single cella, in this case.
Now, Neil, what happens when
you go around in this one?
Student: Is that for
this one?
Prof: Yes.
Student: Well there's
no columns around on this one.
Prof: There are no
columns.
There are no columns.
It's not a peripteral colonnade.
It's not a pseudo-peripteral
because it doesn't have--but
what is this?
They look sort of like flat
columns.
They're what are called
pilasters, p-i-l-a-s-t-e-r-s,
pilasters, which are
essentially flat columns.
So it does have some
articulation--you can see them
up there--there is articulation,
but it's been flattened out
still further.
So once again an Etruscan plan
with some nod to Greece,
in the sense that there's a
recognition -- we've got to have
something that goes around here.
But, they don't want to take it
out, they don't want to use an
actual column,
and they flatten it out,
as you can see so well here.
Now again, anyone who knows
your orders, what Greek order is
used here in this building?
Yes?
Student: Doric.
Prof: The Doric,
the Doric order.
The simplest and most severe
order is used here,
the Greek Doric order,
and the system of Greek
triglyphs and metopes;
triglyphs and metopes.
I'll show you a detail in a
moment and I'll explain what
those are.
So the Greek Doric order,
triglyphs and metopes,
for this temple.
And one thing we couldn't see
in that plan is the high podium.
So that's another Etruscan
feature.
So once again we see this very
interesting and very eclectic
bringing together of Etruscan
elements and Greek elements in
what we can call early Roman
temple architecture.
Here's another detail of the
Temple at Cori.
You can get a--I took this on a
very grey day so you don't get
the sense of the glory of what
it can look like up there.
But you get some sense of its
situation,
right at the edge,
with a spectacular--
on a beautiful day--a
spectacular panorama of the
mountains,
the other mountains in this
area, and of the hill town
itself.
And here we can see the Doric
order better;
very simple,
with the so-called triglyphs
and metopes;
t-r-i-g-l-y-p-h and
m-e-t-o-p-e-s,
triglyphs and metopes.
Triglyphs are triple striated
bands.
And you can see them up there,
the triple striated bands,
and in between them square
panels.
So this alteration of triple
striated bands,
the triglyphs,
and the square panels,
the metopes,
which is typical of the Doric
order,
the Greek Doric order.
You see it in the Parthenon,
for example,
and it has been taken over here
by the Romans.
You also see something very
interesting about Roman building
practice here,
because if you look at the
columns,
you'll see that the upper part
of the columns are what is
called fluted,
fluted -- they have striations
in them.
But they're not fluted at the
bottom.
You can see it stops right
here, the fluting stops here and
the bottom is plain.
What's the reason for that?
Well we know that even in Greek
Hellenistic times,
that approach was taken,
and we believe it was done for
two reasons.
One: practical purposes.
Why are there no flutes at the
bottom?
Because people are more likely
to lean up against the columns,
at the bottom,
than they are obviously at the
top,
and when people lean up against
columns,
the flutes start to break off.
So they decided not to flute
the bottom.
But it may have been also for
decorative reasons,
because we'll see,
when we get to Pompeii,
in the very near future,
that there are many columns at
Pompeii that have fluting at the
top,
painted white,
and then the bottom,
the plain bottom,
painted red,
for reasons of taste and
decoration.
And it's very possible--we do
know that ancient--
I don't want to destroy any
illusions here--
but ancient buildings were very
often painted,
and ancient sculpture was
always painted.
So these might've been a lot
more garish looking in ancient
times than they are today,
which might also have taken
away from this sense of having a
marble building.
So that's something that we
probably should keep in mind as
we evaluate these structures.
The last one I want to show you
today is the Temple of Vesta at
Tivoli -- also beautifully
situated.
It's a temple that dates to 80
B.C.
Also probably not a Temple of
Vesta, but it's a round temple,
and temples of Vesta were often
round.
So it's tended to be called by
scholars a Temple of Vesta -- in
80 B.C.
Again, beautifully situated out
over a particularly verdant area
of Tivoli, where you can look
down and around this beautiful
area.
There's a waterfall very nearby.
It's just magnificent,
and you can see it's not
surprising that some
enterprising family decided to
build the Sybilla Restaurant
right here,
and there's a patio on which
one can go and eat under
umbrellas,
and so on and so forth, here.
Here's the temple,
the ancient temple of 80 B.C.
And once again we look at a
plan over here.
And I also show you a view of
the so-called Temple of Venus
from Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli,
just to make the point that
this is as Greek as we've gotten
thus far,
in the sense that the Greeks
really loved round temples.
They built them a lot.
There was a very famous Temple
of Venus,
in their case Aphrodite,
on the island of Knidos,
and that Temple of Venus on the
island of Knidos is the one that
was duplicated by Hadrian for
his villa;
and we'll talk about this later
in the semester.
But I show the one at Hadrian's
villa because it gives you a
very good sense of what this
structure was like in ancient
Greek times as well,
because we think it's a replica.
A round structure;
freestanding columns encircling
the entire building,
low podium, a staircase around
that podium that encircled the
entire building,
and then a Temple of Venus in
the center.
When we look at the plan of
this structure we will see it's
pretty close.
It's round.
It has columns that are
freestanding,
that encircle the entire
structure.
But it has a higher podium,
as we're going to see,
and even though it's circular,
they've given it a staircase on
one side,
which gives it--even a round
temple,
which you think of as something
you just keep circling,
has a kind of façade
orientation,
in this instance.
So they are applying some of
these Etruscan characteristics
to an almost pure Greek type.
Here's a view,
it's very well preserved,
a view of the Temple of Vesta
at Tivoli, as it looks today.
And what order is this?
Student: Corinthian.
Prof: The Corinthian
order;
the Corinthian,
the last of the three great
Greek orders.
The Corinthian order,
which is very ornate and which
I'll describe in a moment.
We see it here,
supporting a frieze once again,
in this case a frieze with
garlands and libation dishes.
We can see here also it is a
very tall podium;
so an imposition of an Etruscan
element on this structure.
Greek orders.
The building is made out of
stone.
The columns and the facing of
the base are made out of stone,
in this case travertine once
again.
Travertine again was quarried
right next door -- this is
Tivoli, right there.
And you can see the travertine
detailing on the doorway and on
the windows as well.
But what you see here that we
haven't seen before--
remember I talked about the use
of concrete in the podium of the
Temple of Portunus in Rome--
here we see concrete used for
the wall of the cella.
If the Greeks had put up this
building,
they would've made the walls of
the cella out of stone and they
would've cut those stones very
carefully to create the kind of
curvature that was needed.
But the Romans were getting
really smart,
in terms of making things
easier for themselves.
They realized it was going to
be a lot easier to build a round
structure with concrete than it
was to have to carve all those
stones in just those shapes.
So they have used concrete here
for the cella.
We still could argue this is a
utilitarian purpose,
but at the same time I think
it's beginning to demonstrate to
us the expressive possibilities
of concrete.
And we also see,
if you look very carefully,
the way in which--we'll talk
much more about this next week--
but concrete,
in order to make concrete
impermeable to water and so and
so forth,
you have to face it with
something.
And they faced it with very
small stones of irregular shape,
which we call uncertain work,
or opus incertum,
-o-p-u-s i-n-c-e-r-t-u-m,
opus incertum,
which is put into the concrete
while it is still wet,
to give it the ability to
withstand water but also to give
it an attractive stone-like
appearance.
And you can see that opus
incertum work used here.
Here's a detail of the wall,
where you can see its curvature
and also see that opus
incertum work.
And here is a detail of the
capitals, the Corinthian
capitals that are used here.
What's characteristic of
Corinthian capitals is that they
have,
like the Ionic,
they have volutes,
these spiral volutes,
but they are much smaller and
much more delicate,
and they are in a sense
incorporated into the flowering
plant.
This is called an acanthus
plant, a-c-a-n-t-h-u-s.
Acanthus plants grow all over
Italy.
You see them everywhere.
So they are just copying a
plant that is indigenous to
Italy.
They use those acanthus leaves,
that seem to grow out of the
column,
to incorporate the spirals,
and there's always a prominent
central flower that is also part
of this motif.
It's important to note,
at the beginning,
that while the Greeks used the
Doric and the Ionic order almost
exclusively,
the Greeks did invent the
Corinthian order.
They used it in very late
Hellenistic times,
but quite infrequently.
The Romans use all three but we
are going to see very quickly
that they decide pretty early on
that the Corinthian capital is
their capital,
and almost every
building--we'll see some
exceptions--
but almost every building we'll
see in the course of the
semester uses the Corinthian
capital.
Why did they take to the
Corinthian capital in
particular?
This is something we can think
about in the course of this
semester and debate.
I think it has to do probably
with two major reasons.
One: it was particularly
decorative, very highly
decorative, more so than the
others.
But maybe even more important
than that is the fact that the
Corinthian capital,
at least in my opinion,
looks the best from the most
vantage points,
because it's pretty much the
same all the way around.
The Doric is pretty severe.
The Ionic looks best from
certain angles where you can
really see the volutes well,
less well from other angles.
But this looks pretty much the
same wherever you see it.
So it's a very flexible and
easy to use capital type.
We see also here--I referred to
this last time but I want to
describe it for you just in a
second--
we see here the coffering,
c-o-f-f-e-r-i-n-g,
the coffering of the ceiling,
which is basically placing a
series of receding square
elements there,
to give a sense of depth in the
ceiling.
And then in the center you see
these flowers that match up
nicely with those in the
Corinthian capitals,
which are called rosettes,
r-o-s-e-t-t-e-s;
and we'll see coffering and the
use of rosettes quite
extensively in Roman
architecture.
I mentioned the restaurant.
The Sybilla used to be a
horrendous restaurant.
When I started taking pictures
of Roman buildings I guess I was
a little more timid than I am
today.
So I always thought,
"Well gee,
if I'm going to go into the
terrace and want to take a
picture of the temple,
I'm kind of going to have to
eat there."
I would never do that now,
but I did that at one point,
and I made the mistake of
eating in this restaurant twice,
and I never went back again.
But when I went just a couple
of years ago to see the temple
once again, I saw that they had
really--some new owners must
have come along.
They've really expanded the
restaurant and it looks very
pretty now, and this is the
terrace on which one can eat.
I haven't tried it but I might
actually, next time I go.
I want to just end with a
couple of remarks.
One is that one of the
interesting things is that,
although the temples that we
talked about today were in part
made out of stone,
in all cases travertine,
we do know that already in the
year 146 B.C.--
so earlier than a couple of the
temples we looked at just now--
in 146 B.C.
the Romans had already put up
another temple to Jupiter,
near the Tiber River,
that was made entirely of
marble, entirely of marble.
So they were already beginning
to think, not just of their own
local stone or stones that were
from local, close places in
Italy, but imported marble.
And so I want you to know that
so that we can talk about it in
the future.
And we also know that in 142,
the ceiling of the Temple of
Jupiter OMC was gilded,
and we also know that not long
after that they re-paved the
Temple of Jupiter OMC and gave
it multi-colored stone.
So what this is telling us is a
lot of people in Rome were
beginning to think of temples
that were more ornate than
anything that had come before.
There are some very
conservative individuals,
who did some writing at this
particular time,
who bemoaned the fact that the
Romans had moved away from the
Etruscan temples made out of
wood and mud-brick and so on,
and were becoming too
ostentatious in their taste.
But I think these new Greek
style temples were definitely
here to stay.
And I just wanted to end up
with a quote from Cicero.
After one of these fires,
these fires that so often raged
in Rome,
the Great Fire of 83 B.C.,
Cicero talks about the
rebuilding,
still again,
of the Temple of Jupiter OMC.
And I quote from Cicero when he
says: "Let us feel that
conflagration to have been the
will of heaven and its purpose
not to destroy the temple of
Almighty Jupiter,
but to demand of us one more
splendid and magnificent."
What did that mean?
More Greek, more Greek-looking,
more marble.
And--the last comment I'm going
to make is--to make the Temple
of Jupiter OMC even more
magnificent.
The Roman general Sulla,
who was sacking Athens at this
particular time,
goes into Athens,
and after he sacks it,
takes it over,
conquers it,
he goes up to the biggest
temple in town,
the Temple of Olympian
Zeus--Zeus, the Greek
counterpart of Jupiter--
and he takes some of the
columns, actually steals some of
the columns from that temple,
has them shipped back to Rome,
and he incorporates them into
the Temple of Jupiter OMC,
on the Capitoline Hill.
These columns--my last
point--these columns were
fifty-five and one-half feet
tall, and they were made of
solid marble.
So that gives you some sense of
the objectives of the Romans
vis-à-vis temple building
in the first century B.C.
