Peer Reviewed Title: Restauratio and Reuse: The Afterlife of Roman Ruins Journal Issue: Places, 20(1) Author: Jacks, Philip Publication Date: 2008 Publication Info: Places Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/66n5329v Acknowledgements: This article was originally produced in Places Journal. To subscribe, visit www.places-journal.org. For reprint information, contact [email protected]. Keywords: places, placemaking, architecture, environment, landscape, urban design, public realm, planning, design, volume 20, issue 1, restauratio, reuse, afterlife, roman, ruins, Philip Jacks Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. Restauratio and Reuse: The Afterlife of Roman Ruins Philip Jacks As sustainability becomes ever more critical to the archi- not look upon classical antiquities solely as models for tectural profession, it is worth noting that the practice of imitation. Their objective was to critically analyze these recycling has a long history. Perhaps nowhere is this so remains and assimilate their forms into new typologies. richly documented as in Rome—both for the abundance Their projects—some executed, some known only from of its classical ruins and the fact that over many centuries drawings—hold many lessons for contemporary design- it was really two cities—one pagan, the other Christian. ers seeking to reuse and recontextualize the architectural As the institutions of imperial Rome gradually gave forms of modern cities. way to the urbs sacra, their physical vestiges had to be reappropriated. At times, this process occurred with little Traffic in Spolia during Classical Times thought as to symbolic meaning; at others, the effect was One of the earliest and most celebrated instances of quite conscious. recycling sits on the Akropolis, in Athens. After the Per- Only by the sixteenth century, however, did some- sians laid siege to the city in 470 BC, citizens salvaged the thing approximating “adaptive reuse,” grounded in a charred column drums and metopes from the Parthenon, set of design criteria, appear. Renaissance architects did then in its early stages of construction. Eventually, the blocks of that older temple became the matrix for the one we know today. The genius of Iktinos was to retrofit old Above: Porticus of Octavia (view of interior pediment from Severan restoration). with new into a single proportional system so refined that Opposite: Arch of Constantine, south facade. it eluded the notice of archaeologists until the last century. 10 Jacks / Restauratio and Reuse Re-Placing In late republican Rome (123 to 23 BC), the scaveng- ing of building material was likewise a thriving business. Cicero once reproved his friend Verres for faultily restor- ing the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum with stones redressed from the original structure. New marble was preferable, he argued, and the old blocks would have been better discarded, given to the contractors as com- pensation.1 One consequence was a market in recycled materials that made older habitations prime targets for demolition. This became such a problem that two far- sighted consuls, Hosidianus and Volusianus, pleaded before the Senate in 44 AD to outlaw the buying and selling of property by third-party speculators. Eventually, the emperor Vespasian, who ruled from 69-79, issued an edict to regulate profiteering in building debris by private citizens. Alexander Severus renewed this sanction in 222, just as the imperial quarries at Luna began to restrict the supply of white marble.2 Yet it was this same emperor who restored the Porticus Octaviae with dismembered column shafts and entablatures of Pentelic marble. On the exterior pediment, the blocks were dressed smooth, but on the interior face, less exposed to public view, they were left rough-hewn. Was this a question of haste, or negligence? Or did the builders purposefully leave it that way to draw attention to its “otherness”? Such ambiguity is reflected in the Latin term restaura- tio—which Livy (59 BC–17 AD) and Tacitus (ca. 56–117) his immense Domus Aurea for public edifices.5 In the case understood to mean something akin to our modern sense of the emperor Commodus, who ruled from 180-192, this of restoration. Late classical authors, however, construed meant refashioning the bronze Colossus of Nero with his it more loosely. The fourth-century grammarian Servius own likeness as the sun god Helios. drew an etymological connection between instar (likeness) However, the triumphal arch dedicated by the emperor and instauro (renew): “instar autem est ad similitudinem; Constantine in 315 represented a more willful act of unde non Restaurata, sed Instaurata dicuntur aedificia ad appropriation on several levels. Its architecture was almost antiquam similitudinem facta” (“likeness in appearance also entirely reconstituted from earlier monuments—not just means in similitude, whence buildings made similar to the the famous reliefs of Marcus Aurelius on the attic, the old are said to be not restaurata but instaurata”).3 Hadrianic roundels, and the Trajanic frieze on the interior It may be mincing words to distinguish between renew- fornix, but also capitals, columns, and architraves. ing or even reconstructing, and repairing or restoring; but The appropriation of these elements all formed part of instauratio would come to signify a new form that resembled a larger ideological program aimed at legitimizing Con- rather than replicated an original.4 stantine’s sovereign authority over Rome.6 As part of this effort, the heads of Marcus Aurelius were replaced with The Gesture of Appropriation those of Constantine and the tetrarch Licinius. However, Even by antique standards the Arch of Constantine, the sculptors involved with this project also depicted hon- however, marked a wholly new way in which fragments orific statues of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius in the relief from the past could be reappropriated and recommemo- of Constantine’s oration. On the one hand, Constantine rated. Earlier emperors had taken great license in can- was projecting his victory over Maxentius by co-opting nibalizing the projects of their dishonored predecessors. the memory of these beneficent rulers. On the other, he Vespasian, Titus, Galba and Trajan all availed themselves was physically appropriating the forms of an earlier epoch of Nero’s condemnatio memoriae by reclaiming the site of to forge a new aesthetic. Places 20.1 11 Seen in this light, the intermixing of spolia was hardly tion in the year 458 obliged Roman citizens to remove the haphazard or spurious. It articulated a new taste for vari- ornament (“ornatum”) from ruined buildings so it could etas. Put another way, the disparity in styles had an appeal be reused for new public projects. Such legislation stopped of its own. This practice pervaded much of Constan- short of the destruction en masse of ancient sancta, however, tine’s building spurt in Rome, most notably the Lateran leaving open the possibility that their vestiges could be basilica, where despoiled capitals along the nave alternated reutilized for Christian worship. Ultimately, this was what between Ionic and Corinthian. spared large stores of antiquities from the nefarious lime- kilns, where marbles were incinerated to produce lime. Resanctifying the Ruins In early Christianity, clerics saw the need to exorcize One of the last interventions on behalf of the ancient pagan cult sites of their demons—a kind of spiritual white- city was the repair of the Augustan Temple of Saturn in the washing. Upon arriving in Agrigento, in Sicily, in 597, Roman Forum, which had been ravaged by fire sometime Gregory the Great (540–604), then a bishop, set as his between 360 and 380.7 After this, the emperor Theodosius first official act the reconsecration of the Temple of Con- I, who spent little time in Rome, issued various ordinances cordia, to the saints Peter and Paul. And in the following against the transporting of marbles outside the city limits. century, the citizens of Siracusa erected a new roof over But these all were to little avail. And the plundering of the archaic Temple of Athena, and rededicated it to the pagan cult sites became de facto policy when, in 382, his Virgin (Duomo of S. Maria delle Colonne).8 co-emperor, Gratian stripped the prefects of Rome of their In Rome, the popes took a different tack. Rather than responsibility for the upkeep of the city’s ancient temples, look to places of cult devotion, they set their sights on the which no longer held the status of public buildings. Roman Forum, still rich in imperial aura, and specifically Under Theodosius, Christianity became the official profane buildings. The church of Santi Cosma e Damiano, state religion. However, the new attitude toward ancient consecrated in 527 by Felix IV, occupied the former audi- sites was probably driven as much by an urgent need for ence hall of the city prefect’s office (Templum Urbis building material as any ideological divide. Thus, an injunc- Romae) and an adjoining library from the Templum Pacis. The old Curia Senatus required only minor modifications to be rededicated to Sant’Adriano by Honorius I (625–38). Left to right: San Nicola in Carcere, south flank and east facade; south flank And, after being donated to Boniface IV by the Byzantine (incorporating Doric temple of Spes); north flank (incorporating Ionic temple emperor Phocas in 609, the Pantheon became the first in a of Juno Sospes). long line of Roman temples to undergo official conversion, Opposite: Casa de’ Crescenzi, east facade. when it was dedicated to S. Maria ad Omnes Martyres. 12 Jacks / Restauratio and Reuse Re-Placing In the case of San Nicola in Carcere, at the heart of the Ripa district, the basilica arose over the ruins of three contiguous temples in the old Forum Holitorium. Fish, produce, and cattle markets carried on from ancient days gave vitality to this neighborhood, which had come to be dominated by powerful clans, and one of these magnati, Cardinal Pietro Pierleoni, was likely responsible for the renovations to the basilica, which was rededicated in 1128. The church’s fortified tower was erected partly over the podium of the north temple (Janus) and partially immuring the front columns of the middle temple (Juno Sospes—Juno the Savior). Its prominent form and posi- tion, facing directly toward the Capitoline, declared the family’s patronage of the church and the architec- tural relics it enshrined. Rather than obscure the ruins, however, the masons solidified the Ionic colonnade of the middle temple on the north exterior wall of the basilica. Its broken architraves were shored with fieldstone and rubble, and pier buttresses were added around the ancient cella.9 In the fourteenth century, as today, six Doric columns of the south temple (Spes—“Hope”) also supported trabeat- ion embedded in the south flank of the church.10 To medieval visitors, this heterogeneous appearance must have added to the basilica’s curiosity. Renaissance architects, by contrast, recognized these temples as key to interpreting the writings of Vitruvius from the first century BC, and surveyed its ruins in isolation from the Christian accretions. Giacomo della Porta’s surgical restoration of the facade at the behest of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini in 1599 was of a kindred spirit. He retained two of the Ionic columns from the ancient pronaos flanking a central aedic- ula, while the colossal order and attic gave the effect of a triumphal arch all but detached from the structure behind. During this time, families competed in the appropria- The pastiche reveals the rudimentary quality of these tion of antiquities, not just to vaunt their Roman lineage, masons’ knowledge of ancient building technology. Yet, for but also to attain strategic and territorial advantage. The all its deficiencies, the owner proudly attested in an inscrip- Crescenzi, neighbors of the Pierleoni (and their formi- tion over the entrance that he was moved not “by vain dable rivals), constructed a tower over their mansion to desire, but to restore the city to its former beauty” (QUAM control traffic along the Tiber, as well as passage across ROME VETEREM RENOVARE DECOREM). the dilapidated Ponte Fabrizio. The Casa dei Crescenzi is generally dated between Translatio: Place, Re-Place, and Context 1040 and 1065. Its resplendent south facade is composed Here it is fair to speak of translatio in both the literal of brick half-columns between recessed piers. Overhead, sense, of a lifting from one physical context and re-place- antique corbels recarved with putti and sphinxes support ment in another, and the figurative sense, of a recontextu- a frieze composted from two different spolia (their prov- alizing. But when does the architectural grammar become enance has recently been traced to the Baths of Caracalla). so altered as to invest new meaning or function in the Recessed arches support the projecting wall (sporti) for the original? This could occur only with historical perspec- piano nobile, with a dado stitched together from coffers to tive. A rich literature of medieval guides allows us to see simulate a rinceaux motive. how visitors came to distinguish between contemporary Places 20.1 13 Rome, the living city, and the memory of classical antiq- to his uncle’s Palazzo Venezia, then close to completion. uity as conjured from the spectacle of its ruins. Alò Giovannoli’s engraving of 1615 shows the two One example may illustrate how these two worlds bifore windows on the piano nobile and the modest ground- came to intersect. There are few sights more impressive floor portal from the street. Today, viewed from the Via than the massive firewall constructed of volcanic peperino dei Fori Imperiali, traces of medieval arches can still be blocks skirting the back side of the Forum of Augus- detected around the newer Ghibelline windows, above tus. At one end, a voussoir arch, known as the Arco de’ what remained of the ancient walling in opus quadratum Pantani, leads into the south exedra flanking the Temple below—a veritable architectural palimpsest. of Mars Ultor. Travertine ledges divide the rusticated stone blocks into three courses. During medieval times Restoration, Adaptation, Reinvention this would have called to mind the new fashion for rus- In an oft-quoted letter addressed to Leo X around ticated palaces, most notably the Palazzo Vecchio in 1519, Raphael and his collaborator, the erudite Baldassare Florence. Indeed, a popular twelfth-century guide, the Castiglione, laid out a comprehensive account of Roman Mirabilia Urbis Romae, erroneously identified the ruins architecture leading up to their own day. For the first of this wall as those of an imperial palace attached to the time, antiquity was not seen as monolithic, but as having fora of Augustus and Nerva.11 evolved in distinct stylistic stages—from Augustan to It was probably not by coincidence then that, not long Flavian to Severan. After deploring the incursions of the after, this so-called “Palatium Nervae” was turned into a Goths, Raphael and Castiglione noted that in imperial residence by Pope Innocent III, as a priory for the Order of times monuments often would be restored (ristaurati), yet Knights of St. John (Cavalieri di Rodi). And in 1466 Paul II always “in the same manner and method” (con la medesima entrusted its administration to his nephew, Cardinal Marco maniera e ragione).12 As examples, they pointed to the Barbo, who added a series of chambers rising to an elegant Domus Aurea, on whose foundations Titus later erected loggia with a magnificent view across the markets of Trajan his thermae (baths), and to the Flavian amphitheater, which rose on the site of Nero’s artificial lake. Clearly, they were not referring to restoration in our Left: Forum of Augustus, exterior firewall along Salita del Grillo (Arco de’ Pantani modern sense, because neither of these later monuments in foreground; Temple of Mars Ultor in background). For a view of the north exedra bore the slightest resemblance to their precursors, but inside the Forum of Augustus, see p.4. rather to a continuity in the technical art of building. This Right: Alò Giovannoli, view of atrium to Forum of Augustus and Casa de’ Cavalieri attitude toward the past came to an abrupt halt with the di Rodi (above). Engraving, 1615. Arch of Constantine, which they deemed nothing short of 14 Jacks / Restauratio and Reuse Re-Placing an aberration from the canon of Classical architecture— Sebastiano Serlio, Peruzzi relished the opportunity to “foolish, without art or any good design.” Interestingly undertake his own excavations and to analyze its struc- enough, this conclusion was made not without careful tural system from the foundations. It is unlikely any trace observation of the monument itself, from which Raphael survived of the third order on the exterior, which Peruzzi and Castiglione were able to discern its hybridizing of left as an astylar attic. Given that the Ghibelline windows Hadrianic, Trajanic, and Antonine elements. do not align with the arcades below, he likely had no choice but to follow the preexisting wall partitions. Theater of Marcellus—Palazzo Savelli In the same way that Raphael understood the act of ris- Baths of Agrippa—Palazzo Orsini torare as a process of adaptation by successive emperors, so Around 1525, a count of the Orsini from the Pitigliano too Renaissance architects saw a continuum between the line charged Peruzzi with developing a plan to convert physical fabric of ancient Rome, such as it had survived, the Baths of Agrippa into a grandiose palace. The project and the emerging building style known as all’antica. It is known only from a large drawing in the Uffizi, labeled would not have occurred to them to preserve these ruins “therme agrippine.” Technically, the drawing is quite in archaeological isolation, only to modify their forms as unusual, because Peruzzi rendered the proposed construc- appropriate to contemporary needs. tion in sepia wash to distinguish it from the ancient ruins An early example of this practice can be seen in the in situ, which he superimposed in a precise red line.16 Theater of Marcellus.13 Begun by Caesar and dedicated by Peruzzi anchored his plan around the open rotunda, Augustus, it had fallen into disuse by 525, when a Roman originally the laconicum (dry sweat bath)—popularly prefect hauled away portions of the travertine revetment known as the Arco della Ciambella from the extensive to restore the nearby Ponte Cestio (Fabrizio). In the four- portion of its dome still standing. The sheet is oriented teenth century, the ruins, by then heavily fortified, passed east at the top, cut off where it would have connected by from the Fabii to the Savelli family.14 At that time, however, a wide hall to the caldarium (hot bath). Recognizing the the exterior was so obscured by ramparts that Petrarch mistook it for an amphitheater (“quliseo de’ Saveli”). In 1523, when Cardinal Giulio Savelli commissioned Left: View of Theater of Marcellus with Savelli apartments on attic story. From Baldassare Peruzzi to redesign the attic story for a more Giovanni Antonio Dosio, Urbis Romae Aedificiorum Reliquiae (1569), pl. 31. sumptuous palace, butchers’ stalls occupied the ground- Right: Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Plan for the palace of a signore. From floor tabernae, and a warren of medieval houses had filled Trattato d’architettura, II. Codice Magliabechiano II. I. 141, fol. 20 recto. Biblioteca in around the interior caveae.15 According to his pupil Nazionale, Florence. Places 20.1 15 asymmetry of the ancient foundations, Peruzzi used it as a to the ancient writer’s description of the patriciate domus spur for invention: on one side of the rotunda he drew the as a model for the Orsini project. In De Architectura (VI, binary columns as free-standing, on the opposite side as 3), Vitruvius used the term cavum aedium to denote the half-columns engaged to piers. central courtyard—further noting that the ancients called Below, the red outline shows partial walls constricting one specific type, covered by vaults, testudinate. Although the axis from east to west. But he used the suggestion of no foundations of Roman houses had yet been unearthed, three solitary columns running on a transverse axis here Renaissance architects would have found a number of to create a spacious garden/courtyard (cortiletto ovvero ruins vaguely corresponding to Vitruvius’s description. giardino). This, in turn, egresses through a barrel-vaulted Leon Battista Alberti had identified just such a room in the vestibule to the western entrance of the palace facing onto imperial baths (ostensibly the caldarium in the Thermae of Via di Torre Argentina. Caracalla): “In the middle, as in the center of a house, there An avid scholar of Vitruvius, Peruzzi would have looked is an atrium, roofed, spacious, and majestic; off this are rooms, their lineaments taken from the Etruscan temple, as we have described it. The entrance to this atrium is Above: Baldassare Peruzzi, Survey of Baths of Agrippa (red) with ground plan for through the main vestibule, whose facade faces south.”17 palace of Count Orsini di Pitigliano superimposed. Uffizi, Gabinetto dei Disegni, Of course, the centrifugal disposition of chambers in a Arch. 456 recto. For the site of this project within the ruins of the ancient city, see the thermae made little sense when compared to the way Vit- inside front cover. ruvius described the progression from vestibule to atrium 16 Jacks / Restauratio and Reuse Re-Placing to peristyle in a domus. But, in his translation of Vitruvius Leto traced the medieval toponomastic to the Roman into Italian, the architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini aedile L. Aemilius Paullus, noting that Balneapolis was a had been the first to tackle this problem systematically. vulgarized form of “Balneum Paulli.” This false etymol- And in several diagrams for houses of signori which he ogy steered Renaissance antiquarians, who saw a further worked on in the 1490s, he laid out three variations of the affinity of the sweeping hemicycle to an ancient theater atrium (ridutto), the third called the forma rotonda. or, alternately, to the exedra of the ancient thermae, as in Given Francesco’s limited knowledge of classical prec- the Baths of Diocletian. edent, the affinity of this symmetrical arrangement to the The grandest of the schemes for the transformation palaestrae in the ancient thermae is probably accidental. In of the market ruins was that of Sallustio Peruzzi, who Peruzzi’s case, however, there is good reason to believe extensively studied the site in 1563, when Porzia Massimi it informed the design process. Not far away, just to the founded the convent of S. Caterina da Siena. This new east of Piazza Navona, the architect Antonio da Sangallo structure would comprise the former Conti palace, to which the Younger had been engaged since 1512 in enlarging were annexed the Torre delle Milizie and ancient markets. the small Medici palace occupying a portion of the Baths The shops along the Via Biberatica were to be redisposed of Nero (Thermae Alexandrinae). Here portions of one for a choir, cistern, refectory, and poultry farm. In one ancient palaestra—even some ancient statuary—were sketch, Peruzzi contemplated transforming the hemicyle found in situ.18 The grandiose Palazzo Madama, as even- into a frons scaenae, inverting the plan of the Roman theater tually completed later in the century, retained the disposi- by placing the spectators on the site of Trajan’s Forum. tion of twin courtyards, but rotated at 90 degrees, parallel Shortly after 1574, Ottavio Mascarino proposed a more to the Piazza Lombarda. conservative reutilization to accommodate the nuns.19 Markets of Trajan—“Theatrum Paulli” Baroque Rome and the Church Triumphant Arguably the most radical project to transform an ancient As the popes engaged in ever more ambitious attempts site—the complex today known as the Markets of Trajan— to leave their imprint on the city, antiquities became never saw realization. The picturesque Torre delle Milizie, increasingly vulnerable to despoiling. No site engendered erected in 1232, rises to the north of the Aula Magna as the more controversy than the Colosseum, which lay aban- road ascends along the promontory up to the Quirinal hill. doned by the sixth century. Medieval guides denoted this piazza as “Balnea Neapolis,” then Bagnanapoli, and eventually “Magnanapoli.” Renaissance architects interpreted the cluster of Left: The Markets of Trajan as they appear today. ancient tabernae as a grand palace, the so-called “Palatium Right: So-called “Bagni di Paolo” (hemicycle of Markets of Trajan). From Bernardo Militiarum,” replete with a semicircular atrium facing Gamucci, Libri Quattro delle Antichità della Città di Roma (1565). Woodcut based on onto the imperial forum. The antiquarian Pomponio drawing by Giovanni Antonio Dosio. Places 20.1 17 The structure had already been appropriated in various Tempio de’ Martiri on the site for the Jubilee of 1675, ways. By the twelfth century the Frangipane family had advocated leaving the Colosseum unaltered as a testimony claimed two levels of arcades on its eastern side for their both to Christian martyrdom and the grandeur of impe- palatium. In 1332, on the occasion of King Ludwig of rial Rome. But his pupil Carlo Fontana was more easily Bavaria’s visit to Rome, the arena was outfitted for bull- swayed. Around 1705, he undertook a round peripteral fights. In 1366, the Compagnia dei Nobili Romani Sancta church at one end of the long axis by commission of Inno- Sanctorum began purchasing houses clustered around cent XI Odescalchi. His design, published posthumously the arena. After 1490, the Compagnia del Gonfalone per- in L’Anfiteatro Flavio of 1725, never saw realization.21 formed passion plays there and erected a modest chapel, dedicated to S. Maria della Pietà. Roma Fascista In 1585, however, Sixtus V earmarked the Colosseum as It is appropriate to end with the Mausoleum of Augus- part of his grand scheme to reconfigure Rome on a stellar tus, a monument which, more than any other, has embod- plan. The amphitheater would be converted into a monu- ied the sense of historical destiny for modern-day Romans mental church with an esplanade all around to link with from 1934, when Mussolini commenced work on the Piaz- the road under construction from S. Giovanni in Laterano zale Augusto Imperatore, right up to the present. (Via Merulana). Only two years later, however, he changed Ironically, this tomb of Rome’s second founder, who his mind and directed the architect Domenico Fontana had transformed a city of brick into one of gleaming to revamp the ruins as a wool factory, with covered shops marble, remained devoid of symbolic importance for most on the ground floor and artisans’ lodgings on the second of its afterlife. The Colonna family used it for their forti- story. The ancient Meta Sudans (a monumental conical fied enclave in the twelfth century. In 1519, Leo X had its fountain) and newly dug fountains extending as far as the exterior stripped of travertine blocks for the laying of the Tor de’ Conti would supply water for washing and dying Via Ripetta (at which time the obelisk from the ancient fabrics. According to Fontana, the project was one year horologium was unearthed). Then, in 1546, Francesco from realization when Sixtus’s death put an end to it.20 Soderini bought the ruinous mound and undertook exca- Bernini, when approached by Clement X to erect a vations that resulted in the discovery of numerous ancient statues.22 At this time the interior was rearranged with cir- cular hedges forming a labyrinth garden. And in the eigh- Left: Sallustio Peruzzi, Design for renovation of the hemicyle of the Markets of teenth century, its Portuguese owner, Vincenzo Correa, Trajan as a Vitruvian theater. Uffizi, Gabinetto dei Disegni, Arch. 682 recto. sold the property to the Marchese Francesco Saverio Right: Mausoleum of Augustus as labyrinth garden of Palazzo Soderini. From Vivaldi-Armentieri, who refitted its grounds as a bullring. Etienne Du Pérac, I Vestigi delle Antichità di Roma (1575). The Master Plan of 1909 called for refurbishing the Opposite: Richard Meier’s reuse of the Ara Pacis. Photo by Gianpietro Ziro from mausoleum as a concert hall, renamed the Augusteo, Flickr.com. and disencumbering it from annexed buildings. Mus- 18 Jacks / Restauratio and Reuse