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  • Prof: Good morning all.

  • Today's lecture I have called, as you can see,

  • "The Mother of All Forums: Civic Architecture in Rome

  • Under Trajan."

  • And I think you'll see what I mean when we look both at a

  • Trajanic bath building, and also the Forum of Trajan in

  • Rome, what I mean by 'Mother of all

  • Forums.'

  • These were gargantuan buildings, bigger than anything

  • that we have seen before, and interesting in all kinds of

  • ways.

  • We left off with Nerva, with the emperor Nerva.

  • And you'll recall that Nerva was old, and in fact also

  • relatively sickly, when he became emperor of Rome.

  • You'll also remember--and I remind you of his portrait on

  • the left-hand side of the screen--

  • you'll also recall that he was a member of the Senate,

  • and that he was chosen by the Senate,

  • one of their own, to become emperor of Rome,

  • the first emperor to come from the senatorial ranks in the

  • history of Rome, and he was very popular with

  • the Senate.

  • But Nerva recognized quite early on that,

  • although he was popular with the Senate and with the

  • aristocracy, he was not a favorite of the

  • army, and he realized that was not a good position to be in,

  • and so he wisely decided, very early on,

  • that he would select the most popular military man and the

  • most highly successful military man in Rome,

  • a man by the name of Trajan, as his heir.

  • And so Nerva adopts Trajan--and you see Trajan's portrait on the

  • right-hand side of the screen-- Nerva adopts Trajan in 97 A.D.,

  • so that in 98, when Nerva dies--because he

  • dies after only sixteen months in office--

  • when Nerva dies, Trajan succeeds him without

  • contest.

  • Trajan was an extraordinary emperor for Rome.

  • There are a number of important points about Trajan that should

  • be made that have an impact on our understanding and analysis

  • of his architecture.

  • One of those is he's the first Roman emperor to be born outside

  • of Italy.

  • He was born in Spain, the first emperor born in

  • Spain.

  • That's not to say that Spain was the boondocks,

  • by any stretch of the imagination.

  • Spain had already been colonized by Rome and was very

  • highly developed with regard to its civilization.

  • He also came to power as a relatively young man.

  • He was only 45 years of age--a couple of years younger than

  • Obama-- and consequently he was in--and

  • he was in very good physical shape,

  • and so he had the physical wherewithal to be the kind of

  • energetic emperor that Rome needed at this particular point.

  • He undertook many military campaigns,

  • and very successfully, and he was the emperor that

  • extended Rome to its furthest reaches,

  • to its greatest borders, to its most extensive borders,

  • during his reign.

  • And actually these were borders that were never gone beyond.

  • After this point, we'll see that the emperor

  • Hadrian consolidates the extent of the Empire,

  • as reached by Trajan, and no one ever takes it beyond

  • that.

  • So this is going to be the furthest extent of the Empire

  • that we'll see in the course of the semester.

  • And he was also extremely wise when it came to his choice of

  • the kinds of buildings that he wanted to put up,

  • because he followed in the footsteps of Vespasian and

  • Titus, by favoring major public

  • architecture in Rome, and by eschewing private

  • architecture.

  • He wanted, above all, to disassociate himself from

  • Nero, and from Domitian, who had favored palatial

  • architecture, as you'll recall.

  • And so he builds public architecture in Rome,

  • and allies himself in this regard to such earlier emperors

  • as Augustus and as Claudius and as the Flavian dynasts,

  • and we're going to see that in his building projects today.

  • Like so many other emperors, when he first came to power,

  • he looked around to see which buildings had fallen into

  • disrepair, and he decided to restore as

  • many of those as he could.

  • And he chose very carefully.

  • Again, he obviously did not choose buildings of Nero,

  • many of which had already been destroyed,

  • in any case, but rather looked back further,

  • in fact, dug deep into the Republic,

  • a time, a simpler time in many respects,

  • and a time prior to the shenanigans of the monarchically

  • minded emperors like Nero and Domitian,

  • and he restored buildings from the Republic and from the

  • Augustan period.

  • And he looked back, for example,

  • to the Forum of Caesar in Rome, the Forum Iulium,

  • which you all know well, and we've talked about it

  • before, and I'm not going to discuss it in any detail today.

  • Just to remind you that it began to be restored--

  • that is, the Forum of Julius Caesar--

  • under Domitian, and that that restoration was

  • completed by Trajan at some point during his reign,

  • between 98 and 117 A.D.

  • And I remind you of that here.

  • You'll recall its location, right next to the Victor

  • Emmanuel Monument in Rome.

  • You'll remember that even though it was restored by

  • Domitian and Trajan, it has fallen on hard times.

  • And if you look at the Temple of Venus Genetrix,

  • you see that all that survives, besides the podium and the

  • staircase, are three columns from that

  • restored version, by Trajan.

  • You see the same three columns over here,

  • and then you'll recall the great open space,

  • with colonnades on either side, and then the market area,

  • the shops or tabernae on the left.

  • I showed you this view as well, pointing out one of the

  • architectural blocks that belonged to the restored

  • building, the building under Trajan.

  • And you can see that Trajan continues this interest in

  • ornamentation that was characteristic of the Flavian

  • period: very ornamental architectural decoration,

  • very deeply carved, with a strong contrast between

  • light and dark.

  • So he does continue this Flavian interest in very

  • elaborate architectural decoration.

  • You'll remember that the Temple of Venus Genetrix,

  • in the Forum of Julius Caesar, had a pediment that had in the

  • center of that pediment a scene depicting Venus rising from the

  • sea.

  • And there is other Venus imagery, and I show you a

  • detail-- and it's on your Monument

  • List--I show you a detail of part of a frieze that depicts

  • cupids-- chubby, winged babies,

  • as you can see here, cupids--who are carrying the

  • arms--you can see one of them with a sword sheath over here--

  • they are carrying the arms and armor of Mars:

  • Mars, of course, the consort of

  • Venus, and Mars making reference also to military victory.

  • This frieze, as far as we can tell,

  • does belong to the Trajanic renovation of the building,

  • but it probably does look back to an earlier Julian frieze that

  • decorated the original temple in Rome.

  • And I use that restoration of the Temple of Venus Genetrix,

  • in the Forum of Julius Caesar, as an example of the kind of

  • restoration work that Trajan embarked on,

  • at the beginning of his principate.

  • But much more important to us today are two buildings,

  • the first a bath, and the second a forum,

  • that are examples of the devotion that Trajan had to

  • public architecture during his reign.

  • And I show you a view here, in fact, a plan of the

  • so-called Baths of Trajan in Rome that were dedicated in A.D.

  • 109.

  • As you can see from the Monument List,

  • we know the architect in this particular case.

  • It is Apollodorus of Damascus.

  • And his name says a lot about him: Apollodorus from Damascus,

  • modern Syria.

  • So it's very interesting.

  • We have an emperor from Spain and an architect from Syria,

  • who worked together.

  • This is a sign that things are beginning to change in the Roman

  • Empire, as the Romans--as Trajan extends those borders even

  • further.

  • It brings in even more multifaceted civilizations

  • around the world, and talent begins to pour into

  • Rome from all of those places.

  • Apollodorus of Damascus, as we'll see today,

  • was an extraordinary architect, right up there with Severus and

  • Celer, and with Rabirius:

  • in fact, one could argue even the equal of Rabirius.

  • And what's particularly interesting is that Apollodorus

  • of Damascus, like Severus and Celer before

  • him, appears to have been, above all, a great engineer.

  • He actually accompanied Trajan on Trajan's military campaigns,

  • and served as Trajan's military architect.

  • So his first commissions were building bridges--

  • I'm going to show you a reference to one today--

  • building bridges, or building forts and camps on

  • Trajan's military campaigns, and then using that expertise,

  • ingratiating himself with the emperor,

  • who sees that he is enormously talented--

  • because Trajan participated in these campaigns himself--

  • seeing how talented he was, and then putting him in charge

  • of his building projects in Rome,

  • which is really quite interesting.

  • And so these projects are not only aesthetically pleasing and

  • fascinating, but also show extraordinary

  • engineering skill on the part of the major designer,

  • namely Apollodorus of Damascus.

  • Now these Baths of Trajan are very interesting in all kinds of

  • ways.

  • You can already see, by looking at the plan,

  • their location.

  • They are located on the Esquiline Hill and part of the

  • Oppian Hill, which I don't think I've mentioned

  • before--O-p-p-i-a-n, the smaller Oppian Hill.

  • And the Baths of Titus--well let me remind you first that the

  • Domus Aurea of Nero was built, in part, on the Esquiline Hill.

  • And you'll recall the so-called Esquiline Wing,

  • which is the one wing of Nero's Domus Aurea that is still

  • preserved underground.

  • You'll recall that after Nero's damnatio memoriae,

  • and the coming to power of the Flavian dynasty,

  • that Vespasian and Titus, and even Domitian,

  • razed to the ground Nero's buildings--

  • Vespasian did that--and then he and Titus and Domitian built new

  • buildings, on top of those,

  • and chose to make those buildings the kind of public

  • buildings that the citizenry as a whole would enjoy;

  • from the Colosseum and amphitheater to the Baths of

  • Titus.

  • And you see again the Baths of Titus here, located right again

  • on top of this area that originally belonged to Nero's

  • Domus Aurea.

  • Trajan follows suit.

  • He not only is interested in public architecture,

  • like Vespasian and Titus before him,

  • but he follows their lead in building these buildings on top

  • of earlier structures, now destroyed, of Nero.

  • So it's again this same message, giving back to the

  • people the land that Nero had taken illegally from Rome during

  • his reign.

  • The Baths of Trajan are based, in large part,

  • on the plan of the Baths of Titus, with some additions.

  • But you can see the extraordinary difference in

  • scale.

  • The Baths of Titus were not small, and yet the Baths of

  • Trajan are at least three, if not four or more,

  • times the size of the Baths of Titus.

  • So this tells us something again about the grandiosity of

  • the vision of Trajan, about the funds that he had at

  • his disposal, and he got those funds,

  • in large part, because of all these military

  • victories in which he took all kinds of spoils and booty,

  • which he used to fund his building campaigns in Rome.

  • And it also tells us something about his ambitions.

  • Now I don't want you to get the impression that we never had big

  • buildings before.

  • You can think back way to the beginning of the semester when

  • we talked about Julius Caesar and his architecture,

  • and his bragging that he had built a--

  • or one of the authors of that period tells us that Julius

  • Caesar had built a Temple to Mars,

  • the biggest in the world.

  • So in its own day it was, supposedly, the biggest in the

  • world.

  • But we're getting even more ambitious vis-à-vis

  • scale.

  • And I think--perhaps again I'm psychoanalyzing Trajan too

  • much-- but I think the fact that this

  • is a man who had the ambitions that he did,

  • to extend the Empire to its furthest reaches,

  • seems to be in keeping with the kind of man who would want to

  • make the buildings in Rome, that he built,

  • a kind of microcosm of that hugely expanded Empire.

  • With regard to the plan of the baths,

  • you will see that it follows the so-called Imperial Bath type

  • that was initiated by the Baths of Titus,

  • at least with regard to baths that are still preserved.

  • I mentioned to you, when we talked about the Baths

  • of Titus, there may have been an earlier

  • bath of Nero that actually followed this same Imperial Bath

  • form.

  • But we're not absolutely sure about its plan,

  • that is, the Neronian Baths.

  • They existed, but we're not absolutely sure

  • about their plan.

  • But if we look back at the Baths of Titus,

  • you'll remember that what made them distinctive,

  • and what made them differ from the earlier Stabian Baths or

  • Forum Baths at Pompeii, was the way in which they

  • placed the bathing block in the center,

  • rather than to the side; that they arranged the main

  • rooms--the tepidarium, the frigidarium and the

  • caldaria, in this case--in axial

  • relationship to one another.

  • And then all the other rooms of the bath were displayed around

  • those, in a symmetrical way.

  • So axiality and symmetry reigned supreme.

  • And then otherwise we saw here the rest of the precinct,

  • with an elaborate entranceway over here.

  • We see roughly the same in the Baths of Trajan,

  • in that again the bathing block is located right at the center

  • of the structure, and the main rooms are aligned

  • with one another axially.

  • If you look up to where it says Baths of Trajan that at the

  • northern end is the entrance into the baths.

  • You enter from there, into N, which is a

  • natatio or swimming pool; a piscina.

  • And then you can see that is surrounded by columns.

  • On axis with the swimming pool is the frigidarium,

  • at F, and you can see, just like that of the Baths of

  • Titus, it is a groin-vaulted room:

  • a triple groin vaulted room, as you can see by the three x's

  • over the rectangular area.

  • It has a kind of an apse or exedra at the uppermost part,

  • through which one comes from the natatio into the

  • frigidarium, and you can see that is

  • screened by columns.

  • Then from there into the fairly simple,

  • rectangularly shaped tepidarium,

  • that serves more as a kind of passageway from the

  • frigidarium, into C, which of course is the

  • caldarium, or the warmest room,

  • the sauna of the baths.

  • That also has a rectangular shape, but with these radiating

  • alcoves, radiating alcoves that we're going to see are screened

  • by columns.

  • And they are, of course, facing the southern

  • end where the sun is, and that would,

  • of course, help to heat the caldarium as well.

  • And then what we see though with regard to the Baths of

  • Trajan, that make them differ from the

  • Baths of Titus, and are part of this evolution

  • of Imperial Bath architecture in Rome,

  • is the fact that the bathing block is placed in this very

  • large rectangular precinct.

  • And this large rectangular precinct has a series of rooms

  • around it, as you can see, real rooms, and rooms that take

  • all kinds of shapes.

  • Many of them are these hemicycle type shapes,

  • screened with columns from the larger central space,

  • but some of them also look like the tabernae that we've

  • become used to in plan.

  • We see all of those there, and these were used,

  • as far as we can determine, as meeting halls,

  • lecture halls, Greek and Latin libraries.

  • So there's this extension of the bath,

  • from being just a place where you went for wellness

  • essentially, to bathe and to relax and to

  • have social interaction with your friends.

  • They are adding an intellectual element to the bath buildings,

  • so that you can also go there if you want to read--

  • if you want to go to the library and read Greek books,

  • read Latin books--go to lectures, go to seminars,

  • have conversations, intellectual conversations,

  • are also beginning to happen here.

  • So the bath becomes even more of a mecca for people who are

  • interested in intellectual life, as well as bathing and social

  • life, which is a very important

  • development culturally for the Romans.

  • Note here also this great hemicycle,

  • down here, which is part of the bath building --

  • a hemicycle that had seats on it, which probably served for

  • performances of whatever kind, that would have taken place

  • here.

  • So that's another interesting addition to the bathing scene,

  • and should you remind you of the kind of hemicycles that we

  • saw, for example,

  • in the Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at Palestrina,

  • or the Sanctuary of Hercules at Tivoli,

  • where they also had those performance areas.

  • So bringing in some of those elements from sanctuary design,

  • into bath design, in the Baths of Trajan in Rome.

  • The Baths of Trajan, some parts of them still exist,

  • but scattered, and in fact they are located

  • now in a kind of a pleasant garden area,

  • as you can see here.

  • This is a Google Earth view that shows you their proximity

  • to the Colosseum; we see the edge of the

  • Colosseum over here.

  • So the Esquiline Hill, in large part.

  • And you can just barely make out here--

  • if you look, see this curved wall,

  • down here, that curved wall is in fact

  • that hemicycle with the-- for the theatrical performances

  • that I showed you, just before.

  • And that is actually the entrance -- for anyone going to

  • Rome over break, that's actually the entrance to

  • the Domus Aurea.

  • If it's open--it periodically closes, sometimes,

  • if things are falling down--but if it's open,

  • that's how one gets there.

  • And over here you can actually see this is the--

  • I may have shown this to you before--

  • but this is actually the oculus of the octagonal

  • room of Nero's Domus Aurea.

  • You can see it, if you wander through this

  • park, you can see it from above,

  • with a grate on top of it, as well as down below,

  • if you visit the palace itself.

  • And then up here, you can see another--

  • just right up above my finger--you can see another

  • curved wall, and there's another one

  • somewhere down here, that are part of those curved

  • rooms, those hemicycle-shaped rooms,

  • that are these lecture halls and meeting halls and so on.

  • And actually that one, the one that's up here,

  • actually has niches in the wall, with shelves,

  • which indicates to us that that was used as one of the

  • libraries.

  • The scrolls would have been placed on those shelves,

  • and then have cupboards in front of them.

  • So one can see remains--it's made out of concrete,

  • faced with brick--one can see remains on the top of that hill.

  • But a model over here gives you a better sense of what it looked

  • like in antiquity.

  • We're again looking at that large hemicycle that served,

  • with its seats that served for performances here.

  • We're looking at the outer precinct wall.

  • We can see the semi-domes of some of the hemicycles here.

  • And we can also see the bathing block;

  • at the uppermost part, the entranceway;

  • the courtyard, surrounded by columns,

  • which is where the pool or natatio was located.

  • The covered area here was the frigidarium;

  • then the tepidarium.

  • The caldarium is here, and here you can see those

  • radiating alcoves, with columns,

  • that opened them up for vistas and the like,

  • as well as to the warmth of the sun.

  • So an incredible bathing establishment,

  • and one that has taken us a step further in the evolution of

  • imperial bath architecture in Rome,

  • and will serve as the major model for the two most famous

  • and much better preserved baths in Rome,

  • and that is the Baths of Caracalla and the Baths of

  • Diocletian, which we'll look at later in

  • the semester.

  • But I'd like to turn from the Trajanic baths to unquestionably

  • the most important public building that was commissioned

  • by Trajan during his reign, and I can't overemphasize

  • enough the importance of this building in the history of Roman

  • architecture.

  • And we're going to see that it is two part, in the sense that

  • it has--it is a forum, it has the forum proper,

  • and it also has markets appended to it.

  • They are done in a different architectural style,

  • and herald something very important;

  • a very important development in Roman architecture that's going

  • to be carried further by Trajan's successors.

  • What we're looking at here is a spectacular aerial view of the

  • part of Rome in which the Forum of Trajan finds itself.

  • We are looking at buildings that we have looked at before;

  • so we can get our bearings.

  • This is, of course, the wedding cake of Victor

  • Emmanuel, over here.

  • You can see a part of the oval piazza, designed by

  • Michelangelo, of the Campidoglio.

  • You can also see--what's this, down here?

  • Forum?

  • Student: The Julian.

  • Prof: The Julian Forum, the Forum of Julius Caesar,

  • much lower ground level than the rest of the city today.

  • And you can actually see those three columns,

  • from the temple, that I showed you just before,

  • as well as the tabernae of the Julian Forum.

  • And note the relationship of the Julian Forum to the Trajanic

  • Forum.

  • He's restoring Julius Caesar's Forum, at the same time he's

  • building his own.

  • I can also show you here--if you look right above my hand you

  • can see the Piazza Venezia and the Palazzo Venezia.

  • If you look at the center of that building,

  • right over the doorway, there's a balcony.

  • That is the famous Mussolini balcony;

  • that's the balcony from which Mussolini made all his speeches,

  • with his followers gathering in the Piazza Venezia.

  • And from that, from the Piazza Venezia,

  • the street that goes from there to the Piazza del Popolo,

  • is the Corso, the racecourse,

  • the Corso of Rome, which is one of the major

  • streets of Rome, one of the major shopping

  • streets of Rome, as well as one of the major

  • thoroughfares, that takes you--if you go down

  • halfway, take a right,

  • you are at the Via Condotti, and ultimately at the Piazza di

  • Spagna, or the Spanish Steps,

  • which of course is a trek that everybody who visits Rome

  • follows that path, to see the Spanish Steps.

  • Over here, the forum that we're going to be talking about today,

  • the Forum of Trajan.

  • Much of that forum is underground, and some of it was

  • turned into a garden, as you can see here:

  • a pleasant park, as you can see here.

  • Here we are looking at some of the columns from the Basilica

  • that's part of that forum, from the very well-preserved

  • Column of Trajan.

  • And also over here we'll see the markets of the forum.

  • But I just wanted you to get your bearings again in terms of

  • where it's situated in Rome, and what it looks like today

  • from the air, although it is changing all the

  • time.

  • And I wanted to show you a Google Earth image as well,

  • because this is much more up to date than the aerial view that I

  • showed you just before.

  • And you'll see the same buildings.

  • You'll see the Victor Emmanuel Monument, and you'll see part of

  • the Campidoglio.

  • You'll see the Mussolini balcony and the Corso,

  • and you'll see the Column of Trajan, and part of the

  • Basilica.

  • But what you see here is that park has been replaced by

  • structures, because they are excavating.

  • I've mentioned this before, they are excavating more of

  • this now, with the hope of someday rejoining the Roman

  • Forum with the Imperial Fora.

  • That may not be able to happen, because of traffic concerns,

  • but it is certainly something that's on the drawing board.

  • And at the very least, right now, without narrowing

  • the street, the main Via dei Fori Imperiali,

  • they are doing excavation in that park area.

  • And you can see what they've brought up.

  • This is not ancient, it's actually mostly Medieval

  • houses.

  • I hope--I felt there are no Medievalists among you--

  • but I hope they'll eventually realize that these are--

  • well, who's to say?--that they should probably remove these as

  • well and take us back to the original Forum of Trajan;

  • I hope that happens someday.

  • They're not very distinctive.

  • If one looks at them, they're just mainly rectangular

  • rooms.

  • But nonetheless they're at that Medieval level now,

  • and the question is whether they're going to go down any

  • further.

  • But here you can see, not only the remains of the

  • Forum of Trajan, but also the Forum of Augustus.

  • Here's the Temple of Mars Ultor -- that great precinct wall that

  • divided it from the Subura, also visible here.

  • And here we see the great hemicycle that we'll look at

  • today of Trajan's Forum, behind it the Markets of

  • Trajan.

  • It's important for us to look back at the general plan of the

  • Imperial Fora, to see where the Forum of

  • Trajan fits in.

  • We have already looked at the Forum of Julius Caesar,

  • with its Temple of Venus Genetrix.

  • We have looked at the Forum of Augustus, with its Temple of

  • Mars Ultor.

  • Remember the exedrae on either side of that temple,

  • the embracing arms, that were new at that time,

  • and an important component of the Forum of Augustus.

  • Vespasian adds his Forum Pacis over here.

  • Domitian adds a narrow forum, the so-called Forum

  • Transitorium that served as a point of transit between the

  • Roman Forum and the Subura here.

  • He puts a temple to his patron goddess, Minerva,

  • in that forum.

  • But it is, at his death, it is taken over by Nerva and

  • renamed the Forum of Nerva.

  • I mentioned to you, when we talked about the Forum

  • Transitorium, that Domitian also had his eye

  • on this property over here.

  • He had schemes as grandiose for public architecture,

  • at one point, as for palatial architecture,

  • but palatial architecture won out and he put all of his effort

  • into the palace, on the Palatine Hill,

  • and never realized any construction in this area.

  • When Trajan became emperor, he decided that he would again

  • focus on public architecture, and that he would build a forum

  • like none other before it.

  • And so he begins to do that.

  • Now that was no small feat in this particular part of the

  • city, because most of this area was occupied by a hill;

  • the so-called Quirinal--Q-u-i-r-i-n-a-l--the

  • Quirinal Hill, in Rome, occupied most of this

  • space.

  • So what he needed to do--it's great to have an architect

  • engineer in your back pocket, so he set Apollodorus of

  • Damascus to work.

  • He said: "You're a great engineer.

  • All you need to do is take down a good part of the Quirinal

  • Hill, to make way for this great forum that I want to

  • build."

  • And lo and behold, Apollodorus was absolutely up

  • to the job, and that's exactly what he sets out to do.

  • He removes 125 feet of the Quirinal Hill,

  • in order to make way for the Forum of Trajan.

  • And that very number, 125 feet, is actually

  • commemorated in the Column of Trajan,

  • because the Column of Trajan was built to that very same

  • height, 125 feet, to show you,

  • as you stand in the forum, how much of that hill had to be

  • cut back in order to make way for the forum.

  • You can see by looking at this plan of the Imperial Fora as a

  • whole-- and this is--not only did

  • Trajan take the Empire to its furthest extent,

  • this is the last forum that was added to the Imperial Fora,

  • in Rome.

  • You can see, by looking at it in connection

  • to the others, that if you count it,

  • plus the markets-- which you see wending their way

  • up what was left of the Quirinal Hill here in plan--

  • if you compare that to the others, you can see that the

  • Forum of Trajan, and the Markets of Trajan,

  • were almost as large as all of the other fora--

  • not counting the Roman Forum--but all of the other

  • Imperial Fora together, which gives you some sense of

  • why I called this "The Mother of All Forums."

  • Now we're going to look at the plan of this,

  • and I'm going to show you an individual plan in a moment.

  • But what I want to say, while this is still on the

  • screen, is that I want you to look at

  • the exedrae that you see on either side of the main space of

  • the forum, and on either side of the

  • basilica over here.

  • These are not coincidental.

  • They are certainly meant to make reference to the exedrae of

  • Augustus' forum.

  • Trajan modeled himself after Augustus.

  • He became a kind of neo-Augustus.

  • He took on Augustus' hairstyle and his manners,

  • and so he was trying to associate himself,

  • in his life, with Augustus.

  • He's doing it here also, through architecture,

  • by placing those exedrae on either side of his forum.

  • Here's a plan of the forum itself, on the left-hand side of

  • the screen, where we can see all of its major features.

  • You'd enter into the forum down here.

  • There was a very elaborate entranceway, here.

  • And you can see that the façade is actually not

  • straight, but convex, convex:

  • a convex façade, which is very interesting,

  • curved façade, with an elaborate entranceway

  • over here.

  • The entrance into the main part of the forum,

  • rectangular in shape.

  • There's a base here for an equestrian statue of Trajan.

  • The exedrae on either side, mimicking those of the Forum of

  • Augustus.

  • Colonnades, also on either side, and some additional

  • columns here.

  • And we're going to see that just as in Augustus' forum--

  • another reference back to Augustus--

  • that the columns in this main area are Corinthian below,

  • but in the second tier there are figures --

  • not figures of caryatids, but different kinds of figures,

  • and I'm going to show you those soon.

  • Over here the basilica, which is perpendicular to the

  • forum proper.

  • This is quite different from the Forum at Pompeii,

  • where you'll remember the basilica was splayed off,

  • to the side.

  • Here we have it as a more integral part of the forum,

  • and perpendicular to the main space here.

  • It's a very large basilica.

  • It takes the name of Trajan's family.

  • His family name was Ulpius, U-l-p-i-u-s.

  • This is the Basilica Ulpia in Rome, with a central nave,

  • and side aisles, a couple of side aisles around

  • it.

  • So a veritable forest of columns, and then other exedrae,

  • matching exedrae, or, in this case,

  • apses on either end.

  • Then through here you see the location of the Column of

  • Trajan, in a small piazza, and to left and right,

  • libraries, Greek and Latin libraries.

  • And then at the end, a temple.

  • We don't know what Trajan actually--

  • the northern end of the structure was not completed at

  • Trajan's death, and we don't know if he would

  • have put a temple there.

  • It's highly likely, because what forum have we

  • seen, without a temple at the short end?

  • They all had them.

  • So it's a good guess that Trajan had that in mind too.

  • But the temple that was built there was actually built after

  • his death, by his successor,

  • Hadrian: a temple that Hadrian put up to honor Trajan,

  • and also Trajan's wife, Plotina, P-l-o-t-i-n-a.

  • Now we know quite a bit.

  • A lot of the forum, some of the forum,

  • is still preserved, and we have evidence for other

  • parts of it that are not preserved.

  • This entrance gate, down here.

  • Believe it or not, we have coins that have an

  • entrance gate on them, and nicely they

  • say--fortunately they say, down below, FORVMTRAIAN,

  • Forum of Trajan.

  • So putting two and two together, we have to go on the

  • assumption that what we are looking at here is a rendition,

  • on a coin, of the entrance gate into the Forum of Trajan,

  • FORVMTRAIAN.

  • And if we look at it here, we see some interesting things.

  • We see, first of all, that it has a single arcuation

  • in the center -- so one doorway.

  • It has a series of bays, that have in them what we call

  • aediculae, a-e-d-i-c-u-l-a-e,

  • aediculae, which are little temple fronts

  • that are-- niches with little temple

  • fronts around them, with columns and pediments.

  • And then you can see statuary, inside those.

  • So a series of bays, decorated with these

  • aediculae with statues.

  • Then a series of circles with blobs in them.

  • I think those series of circles with blobs in them are probably

  • portraits represented on shields,

  • because we have remains of actual portraits on shields from

  • the inside of the forum.

  • So that seems to be the case here as well.

  • And then in the uppermost part, we see that the gate looks very

  • much like an arch, in the sense that it supports a

  • quadriga, at the top, and that

  • quadriga represents two people,

  • possibly the emperor--again, we're dealing with blobs here;

  • we have to do the best we can to interpret them--

  • but they seem to be probably the emperor,

  • and possibly Victory crowning him, the way we saw Victory

  • crowing Titus in his chariot, on his arch.

  • Six horses in this particular case, and then on either side

  • trophies, these tree trunks decorated with captured arms and

  • armor.

  • And we're not absolutely sure what's surrounding them in this

  • case, whether they're prisoners or Roman soldiers.

  • So this gives you a very good idea of the entrance gate into

  • this structure.

  • And I also want to point out, if you look very closely at the

  • columns and the elements above them in the attic,

  • you can see that the columns project,

  • and the attic seems to have projecting entablatures.

  • So it looks as if we have the kind of scheme here that we saw

  • in the Forum Transitorium, with that wall decorated with

  • columns that project out of the wall,

  • and that have projecting entablature,

  • giving this undulation--undulating movement

  • from projecting to receding, projecting to receding,

  • across the façade of the entrance gate.

  • The figures that were located on the upper tier of the

  • center-- of the main body of this forum

  • again were not caryatids, or female figures,

  • but rather male figures: male figures of captured

  • Dacians, because the war that Trajan

  • had, that enabled him to celebrate and to fund this

  • building, was his wars against the

  • Dacians, D-a-c-i-a-n-s.

  • Dacia, ancient Dacia, modern Romania today.

  • Trajan had two military campaigns there,

  • one from 102 to--excuse me, the first one from 101 to 102;

  • the second one from 105 to 107.

  • He was victorious in both of those, and this forum was built

  • from the spoils of that war, to honor his victory over the

  • Dacians.

  • And we see therefore that the figures that are in the

  • uppermost tier, of the main body of the forum,

  • are depictions of captured Dacians;

  • of Dacian prisoners brought back to Rome.

  • You see two of them here.

  • Here a headless figure, here a much more complete

  • figure.

  • The headless figure still can be seen on the site,

  • and the one on the left-hand side of the screen now in the

  • Vatican Museums in Rome.

  • The one on the left gives you a better sense of what these

  • looked like in antiquity.

  • You can tell that these are not Romans;

  • wearing leggings, a tunic, a fringed mantle,

  • that the Romans did not wear, a long fringed mantle.

  • And then above you see that he has,

  • unlike Trajan's closely cropped Augustan-type hairstyle,

  • you can see he has very long hair, and also a beard,

  • and this identifies him as a very different--

  • sort of boots that seem to be made out of suede or felt of

  • some sort.

  • So a very different kind of image.

  • Clearly these are again the Dacian prisoners,

  • one after another, aligning that second tier.

  • And for any of you interested in the fact that the Romans made

  • nearly exact duplicates of things,

  • mechanical copies, you can see in this particular

  • statue-- we rarely have this preserved,

  • so it's an interesting example of these points--

  • you see these little excess pieces of marble.

  • The Romans had created a kind of pointing machine,

  • which they used to make exact replicas of originals.

  • And they usually, when the statue was done,

  • they would usually obviously take these away,

  • carve them away, which they didn't do.

  • This one probably was not used, for some reason;

  • it was copied and never put up on the building,

  • and so those points still remain.

  • This is a model of the Forum of Trajan, as it would have looked

  • in antiquity, with that convex entranceway;

  • the location of the equestrian statue, the exedrae on either

  • side here.

  • You can imagine the Dacians in the second tier.

  • The roofed Basilica Ulpia here.

  • The Column of Trajan, flanked by the Latin and Greek

  • libraries, and then over here the Temple to Divine Trajan.

  • The plan, again, and here I just want to

  • mention, looking back at that plan,

  • that there was also another elaborate entranceway from the

  • main part of the forum, into the Basilica Ulpia,

  • on its long side.

  • And once again, how fortunate we are that we

  • have coins that say BASILICAVLPIA,

  • Basilica Ulpia.

  • So we can guess, I think quite accurately,

  • that this must be the entranceway to the Basilica

  • Ulpia.

  • Here we see something different.

  • We see three openings, not arcuated openings but

  • trabeated openings, straight lintels above.

  • But look again in the way in which they're represented.

  • It looks like they're quite solid, and that they project

  • into the spectator's space.

  • So again this idea of projection, recession,

  • projection, recession, across this façade.

  • This is very important because, as I mentioned,

  • Roman architecture, using the traditional language

  • of Greek architecture, ultimately developed something

  • that we call a baroque trend in Roman architecture,

  • and you see it happening here, in Rome,

  • based on the experiments of Domitian's Forum Transitorium.

  • And you can see that same, roughly that same scheme here.

  • Up above, once again, a chariot, in this case a

  • four-horse chariot, seemingly with one figure,

  • and a series of standards, being held, possibly by Roman

  • soldiers.

  • The Forum of Trajan has been the professional,

  • the life work of a professor, formerly of Northwestern

  • University, James Packer,

  • who spent a very long time pulling together all the

  • evidence that the Forum of Trajan still provides,

  • to allow a very good reconstruction of what that

  • forum looked like.

  • It's computer generated.

  • I urge you all to look at it.

  • If you just Google James Packer, Forum of Trajan,

  • UCLA--because that's the, or the Getty,

  • either of those two, because UCLA and the Getty

  • supported this work-- you will be able to see

  • computer simulations of his work.

  • There's also a book by James Packer on the Forum of Trajan,

  • that's on reserve for this course.

  • I send you to it, less for the Forum of Trajan,

  • but for any of you working on city plans, again this could be

  • a very inspiring book to look at.

  • Not that I expect you to come up with something like this,

  • but nonetheless I think it can give you an idea of what one can

  • do as one thinks about designing one's own city.

  • He has done enough research to allow a very accurate

  • reconstruction of what this forum would've looked like.

  • We're looking at the entranceway into the Basilica

  • Ulpia here.

  • We are looking at the marble; you can see real marble and

  • variegated marbles brought from all over the world.

  • So Trajan continues the Flavian tradition of bringing marbles

  • from all over, from places outside of

  • Italy--from Africa, from Asia Minor,

  • from Egypt and so on-- for the decoration of these

  • buildings, and an interest in multicolored

  • marbles as facing.

  • We see also up here the Dacian prisoners, and between them,

  • in this instance, these shields,

  • with portraits on them.

  • We have remains of some of those.

  • So that's an accurate reconstruction,

  • the same sort of thing that we saw on the entranceway.

  • Then up there an inscription, several other Dacians,

  • and some other decoration at the apex.

  • I'm going to show you just a few of these quickly,

  • from Packer's book.

  • You see here a corridor with a barrel vault,

  • stuccoed and painted, lots of statuary.

  • There would have been lots of honorific statuary in this

  • structure.

  • Sometimes instead of the shields, with portraits between

  • the Dacians, we see piles of captured arms and armor,

  • as you can see in that view.

  • Here a couple more, showing again the marble

  • decoration of the walls, varied in color.

  • Here niches with portraits.

  • Over here, more shields with portraits.

  • And here you can see some of the sculptural remains:

  • some parts of a military figure in a breastplate,

  • a man--both of them headless--a man in a toga.

  • And over here part of one of these decorative shields with a

  • portrait.

  • We actually think this is a portrait of Nerva,

  • a portrait of Nerva that would've been placed inside this

  • shield and hung on the upper part of the wall above the

  • columns.

  • And this is important, and on your Monument List.

  • This is a view of the Basilica Ulpia in Rome,

  • what it would have looked like in antiquity.

  • You can see it conforms to basilican architecture that

  • we've looked at before, with a central nave,

  • divided by its two side aisles--

  • in this case, as you'll recall in plan--

  • and those are Corinthian capitals, as you can see down

  • here.

  • You can see also that it's a gargantuan structure.

  • Look at the size of the people, the men in their togas,

  • and the building itself.

  • And it had a flat roof with a coffered ceiling,

  • and you can see that it had a clerestory.

  • We've talked about the clerestory before.

  • We saw it in the House of the Mosaic Atrium,

  • for example, the clerestory,

  • which is the opening up of the wall,

  • in this case through Ionic columns,

  • to see the vistas that lie beyond, and to let light into

  • the structure.

  • And you can see the vista that lies beyond, of the Column of

  • Trajan and one of the libraries.

  • This is a photograph that I'm incredibly proud of,

  • because I took it from on top of the Column of Trajan.

  • It's not that difficult to climb the Column the Trajan

  • because there's a spiral staircase in the center of it,

  • that goes up to the top.

  • The part that's hard is getting permission to get in there.

  • It's always locked, and you have to get special

  • permission to do that.

  • So I did it only once, but it was a great thing to do,

  • and you go way up to the top, and you can look down.

  • You can see fantastic views of Rome.

  • But you can also get a very good sense of what the Basilica

  • Ulpia looks like today: not much.

  • But you can see the central space.

  • You can see some of the columns.

  • We can tell that those columns were grey granite.

  • So again, this interest in contrasting marbles,

  • grey granite with white marble, in the Basilica Ulpia and

  • elsewhere.

  • And you can also see the relationship between modern

  • ground level, which is much higher,

  • and ancient ground level, and the possibilities that

  • still remain, if they want to excavate this

  • part of the city -- what more of the Forum of

  • Trajan may be able to be seen.

  • Some of it can actually be seen under the street,

  • and Packer and others have actually gone in to look at what

  • is there, which is what has enabled him

  • to make the kind of accurate reconstructions that he has.

  • Everywhere in this monument there are references--yes,

  • this is a forum; yes, forums have practical

  • purposes.

  • They're a place for people to meet and to market and to

  • conduct law cases and so on, in the basilica.

  • But this monument reminds you again and again and again and

  • again that it is a monument in stone to Trajan's victories over

  • the Dacians.

  • And not only do we see those Dacians, as we looked at before,

  • but we see lots of other imagery that refers to military

  • victory.

  • This is a fragment of what we think was a frieze,

  • in the Basilica Ulpia, that depicts victories,

  • female personifications of victory,

  • winged, either kneeling at candelabra,

  • or over here, this woman, kneeling on the

  • back of a bull.

  • You can see that she's winged.

  • She's holding the snout of that bull back.

  • She's got a knife in her right hand, and she is about to slit

  • the throat of the bull.

  • And she is doing this to--not only is victory over the Dacians

  • being marked here, but she is also representing

  • the sacrifice that takes place in honor of that victory,

  • by being shown depicting killing a bull.

  • Back to the plan once again, just to remind you that when we

  • leave the Basilica Ulpia-- a doorway also in its long

  • side--we end up in this small plaza,

  • where the temple--where the Column of Trajan is located,

  • flanked by Greek and Latin libraries,

  • on axis with the entranceway, the equestrian statue of

  • Trajan, the other entranceway,

  • the column, and ultimately the temple,

  • at the very end: the temple ultimately to divine

  • Trajan.

  • This is a model of what we think the library may have

  • looked like, or both of the libraries may

  • have looked like from the outside --

  • fairly smallish square buildings with a portico in the

  • front, and then, most important,

  • a balcony over here.

  • Why a balcony?

  • So that you could come out and look at the Column of Trajan,

  • and read some of the scenes that encircled it.

  • This is a reconstruction, from Packer again,

  • showing what he thinks the interior of one of these

  • libraries might have looked like.

  • It looks larger here than it actually was.

  • But you can get a sense of it, with the reading tables,

  • with the scrolls inside these cabinets here,

  • with the statuary, and in this case he believes

  • that it had a vaulted roof, as you can see on top.

  • The Column of Trajan, you see it here in two views;

  • an extraordinary work of art, extremely well preserved.

  • Why so well preserved?

  • Well likely because Pope Sixtus V, in the Renaissance,

  • used this column, and also the column of the

  • later emperor, Marcus Aurelius,

  • as important nodes in his reconstruction of the city of

  • Rome.

  • What he did, however, at that time,

  • was that he took the statues of Trajan that would've stood on

  • this one, and Marcus Aurelius on the

  • other, and replaced them with statues of Peter and Paul.

  • And it's Peter who's on the Column of Trajan,

  • and Paul who is on the Column of Marcus Aurelius.

  • But you can see how well preserved they are here.

  • The column shaft rests on a base, decorated with arms and

  • armor, Dacian arms and armor,

  • with a statue of Trajan up at the--

  • a bronze statue of Trajan at the uppermost part.

  • But what's particularly interesting is the sculpture--

  • I'm not going to go into that in great detail,

  • but I want you to know about it, because it does tell us

  • something about architecture, as we'll see.

  • It's a spiral frieze, done all in marble,

  • of course, that wraps from the base of the column,

  • all the way up to the top.

  • And it tells, in documentary form,

  • the exploits, the military exploits of

  • Trajan, in his two Dacian military

  • campaigns-- those two campaigns that I've

  • already mentioned-- divided in the center by a

  • Victory writing on a shield.

  • There's been a lot of speculation;

  • there's nothing like this earlier in Roman art quite like

  • this.

  • And so it is a new innovation, probably at the behest

  • of--possibly out of the mind, the creative mind,

  • of Apollodorus of Damascus.

  • And some scholars have suggested, and I think very

  • convincingly, it's an intriguing idea,

  • that because this was located between two libraries,

  • the likelihood--and that the Romans had scrolls--

  • the likelihood is what we are dealing with here is one of

  • these scrolls, sort of wrapped around the

  • column, from base to top, unfurled and wrapped around the

  • column from base to top, with the text removed,

  • with images instead of text.

  • And that makes a lot of sense, again given that you could view

  • it best from the two libraries on either side.

  • A detail of the base, just to show you how very well

  • preserved the sculptural decoration is.

  • This is not a course in sculpture.

  • I'm not going to go into this in detail,

  • but I want to quickly show you some of the scenes,

  • because again they can be revealing,

  • from the point of view of architecture.

  • This is at the very base.

  • We see a personification of the Danube River,

  • in that area up north, in Dacia, where the Romans went

  • to conquer those tribes.

  • And this is very important, because we know that

  • Apollodorus of Damascus was responsible for building a

  • bridge over the Danube River.

  • It was one of his great engineering feats.

  • And you actually see that bridge located here,

  • which even increases the likelihood that Apollodorus of

  • Damascus was the designer of this particular structure.

  • You see the Roman soldiers have gotten off boats.

  • They're walking through an archway.

  • Here you see the Roman soldiers.

  • The Roman soldiers did not only do battle, but they also

  • Romanized the areas that they went.

  • We've talked about this a lot: the colonization of the Roman

  • world, Trajan extending the borders to their furthest most

  • points.

  • The Romans get there, what do they do?

  • They start to build architecture.

  • They start to build walls with headers and stretchers.

  • They start to build forts and city walls, in which they put

  • buildings with Roman amenities.

  • Remember, after the war is over, they're often given land

  • by the general, or the emperor -- it becomes

  • theirs, and where they can live from

  • that point on.

  • So they had every reason to want to fill these towns with

  • Roman amenities.

  • And we see the Roman soldiers building cities in many of these

  • scenes.

  • This is the most famous scene from the column,

  • in which we see a battle between the Romans,

  • inside one of these forts that they've built.

  • They are all with helmets and shields.

  • They have their hands around something;

  • we think these were probably spears that were added in metal,

  • originally.

  • The Dacians down below.

  • You can identify them by their leggings and tunics and scraggly

  • hair and beards, here.

  • They are attacking the camp.

  • The Romans are, of course, going to be

  • victorious, but the Dacians are shown as

  • heroic and valiant, and enemies who are pretty much

  • the equals of the Romans in strength,

  • which only underscores that the Romans were stronger still,

  • to have conquered them.

  • And then over here, if you've ever wondered where

  • the term 'battering ram' came from,

  • you can see it right here--I told you the Romans invented

  • everything-- you can see it right here:

  • this pole, with a ram's head at the end,

  • which is serving again as a battering ram,

  • as they try to tear down the walls of the Roman fort.

  • Perhaps the most poignant and interesting scene happens way up

  • at the top of the column, where the leader of the

  • Dacians, Decebalus, D-e-c-e-b-a-l-u-s,

  • is shown kneeling, almost like one of those

  • Victories, on the bull.

  • He has a knife in his hand.

  • What is he doing?

  • He is kneeling here.

  • He has decided--you can see the Romans;

  • he's got Romans to the left of him, Romans to the right of him.

  • He's about to be taken prisoner by them and paraded in a

  • triumphal procession in Rome, in honor of Trajan.

  • He doesn't want to do that, so he heroically,

  • valiantly, takes his own life.

  • He is about to plunge that knife into his heart,

  • so that he doesn't have to be taken by the Romans.

  • It's very interesting to see them depicting,

  • the Romans depicting, the Dacians in such a heroic

  • way on this column.

  • I mentioned the museum in Rome that is located in EUR,

  • the Museo della Civiltà Romana,

  • the Museum of Roman Civilization,

  • that has casts and models.

  • I mentioned that they had casts of all the scenes from the

  • Column of Trajan.

  • I show you a view that I took in that museum,

  • just to give you a sense of how one can see those,

  • and how one can see those at eye's level,

  • to get a good sense of them.

  • In antiquity they would have been harder to read.

  • But I should point out that the background was likely painted

  • blue, and there probably would have

  • been some additions, like the metal spears,

  • that might have made it easier to read--

  • almost like Wedgwood--might have made it easier to read in

  • antiquity.

  • And I also thought I would mention--

  • I'm sure all of you have been down to Ground Zero,

  • but if you go a block or two away from Ground Zero itself,

  • there's the Fireman's Memorial there,

  • that was put up to many of the fireman who sadly lost their

  • lives fighting those fires in the Twin Towers.

  • We see this here: "Dedicated to those who

  • fell and to those who carry on" here.

  • And what's interesting about this,

  • if you look, if you Google this and look at

  • the website for the Fireman's Memorial in New York,

  • you will find out that the designer for this talks

  • unabashedly of his admiration for the Column of Trajan in

  • Rome, and that he used,

  • as an artistic model, for the way in which he massed

  • figures here, showing them in relationship to

  • buildings, he used, as his model,

  • the figures on the Column of Trajan,

  • in Rome.

  • At the end again, the column, surrounded by the

  • Greek and Latin libraries, the temple over here at the

  • end.

  • You can see it's a conventional Roman temple:

  • deep porch, freestanding columns,

  • staircase, one staircase, façade orientation,

  • just as we saw elsewhere.

  • Here we see an engraving showing the spiral staircase

  • that leads from bottom to top.

  • And over here, that the staircase also goes

  • down below, into a burial chamber.

  • Two urns were found in that burial chamber;

  • the urns of Trajan and Plotina, which tells us,

  • of course, that this also served as Trajan's tomb.

  • So a victory, not only one of his great

  • victories, military victories, but also victory over death.

  • And then at the apex, we see a good view of the top,

  • with a statue of St.

  • Peter; but we have coins depicting

  • Trajan on-- depicting the original

  • statue--the base, the shaft, a portrait of

  • Trajan, a naked portrait of Trajan,

  • a heroicized portrait of Trajan, depicted after death,

  • divinized at the apex of the column.

  • And if you read the inscription on the coin, you see it refers

  • to Trajan as Optimus Princeps.

  • Trajan received many titles.

  • One was Dacicus, D-a-c-i-c-u-s,

  • for his victories over the Dacians;

  • but at the end of his life Optimus Princeps,

  • the greatest princeps of all time.

  • The implication: greater than Augustus.

  • And it is arguable, I think probably correct,

  • that Trajan was the even greater of the two.

  • This is a restored view, a spectacular restored view,

  • of the building complex, where you can see again the

  • entranceway over here, the equestrian statue,

  • everything that we've described.

  • But I think it's interesting, if you think of yourself having

  • entered into this forum, standing here,

  • looking back at the basilica bearing Trajan's name,

  • looking toward the column and the temple.

  • What you would have likely seen when you stood here was only the

  • uppermost part of the column; because most of it would have

  • been blocked by the very tall Basilica Ulpia.

  • So it's a very theatrical representation,

  • in the sense that you would be standing here with Trajan,

  • during life, looking back toward that

  • column, looking back at the

  • divinization of Trajan, a bronze statue,

  • which would have seemed as if it was floating on top of the

  • Basilica Ulpia.

  • This is a very dramatic tableau, created here by

  • Apollodorus of Damascus.

  • And I think it was not equaled until the seventeenth century by

  • architects like Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who also created such

  • spectacular tableaus.

  • Just to show you again the location of the Markets of

  • Trajan, in relationship to the Forum of Trajan.

  • While the forum was the Romans imposing a rectangular plan on

  • nature-- remember, they have to cut back

  • the hill, to make way for it--the markets

  • are something quite different.

  • They are the Romans accepting the shape of the remaining

  • Quirinal Hill, and allowing the shape of that

  • hill to determine the irregular shape of the markets.

  • The markets, unlike the forum that is made

  • out of marble, for the most part--as we've

  • seen, variegated marble-- the markets are made out of

  • concrete, faced with brick:

  • a very different material, but a material that is

  • absolutely appropriate, when you want to cover a

  • hillside with tiered buildings, looking back very much to the

  • spa at Baia, looking back to Fortuna

  • Primigenia, at Palestrina.

  • The same idea, to turn this hill,

  • what remained of the Quirinal Hill, into essentially the

  • precursor of the modern shopping mall.

  • You have shopping--there are 150 shops in the Markets of

  • Trajan.

  • All of these things date, by the way, to the same period,

  • around A.D.

  • 113, the forum and also the markets.

  • We see 150 shops here, on a variety of levels.

  • This is the bottom level, that is located where the

  • exedra, the first exedra is, on the right side.

  • A great hemicycle, with shops.

  • Here, a street, called the Via Biberatica;

  • that name is on your Monument List.

  • And then a covered bazaar up here.

  • All of this on different levels; all of this done in a very

  • innovative way, with concrete faced with brick.

  • You can also see here the very large windows;

  • the semi-dome, that I'll show you in detail in

  • a moment.

  • These large windows indicate to us that the architects are real

  • masters of the concrete medium here,

  • able to de-materialize the wall, by putting up these very,

  • very large windows.

  • That's how good they were in building this,

  • at this point.

  • The building block here is essentially the taberna:

  • not unlike what we saw in Pompeii,

  • this small space with a barrel vault,

  • an attic window above, and in this case with a post

  • and lintel scheme, made out of travertine,

  • to mark the entranceway into the shop.

  • They took this individual motif, and they replicated it

  • throughout this building, over and over and over again,

  • offering 150 possibilities.

  • Here you see a series of these in a row,

  • a series of these tabernae,

  • with their attic windows, with their travertine

  • decoration, with their sidewalks --

  • a kind of mini city within a city.

  • And then over here the polygonal masonry of the

  • streets, looking very much like streets in Rome.

  • Here is a view of the great hemicycle, down on the first

  • story.

  • We see the shops again.

  • What's interesting here is in the second story you see

  • arcuated elements.

  • You can see the facing with--the brick facing,

  • although we do believe this was stuccoed over,

  • in this case.

  • Here, pilasters.

  • But look very carefully.

  • You'll see these pilasters support,

  • in the center, an arcuated pediment,

  • and then on either side these broken triangular pediments,

  • as if the pediment has broken, been broken,

  • to allow the arcuated pediment to show through.

  • We have never seen that before.

  • Yes, we saw it in the paper topics, but that stuff is later.

  • We have not seen that, up to this point

  • chronologically, in built architecture.

  • We have seen it in painting--Cubiculum at the Met,

  • over here, for example--this breaking the triangular pediment

  • to allow something else to show through.

  • This is the beginning of this experimentation that ultimately

  • leads to this baroque element in Roman architecture that I'm

  • going to talk about.

  • Behind the hemicycle, annular vault,

  • with an additional set of shops, and attic windows there

  • as well.

  • This is the most famous street, from the Markets of Trajan.

  • It's an incredible place to wander, by the way.

  • And they have just recently, in the last couple of years,

  • opened an entirely new museum here,

  • which has a lot of remains from the forum,

  • from the markets, and a great deal of very useful

  • information: an absolute must-see for anyone going to

  • Rome.

  • This is the famous Via Biberatica of the Markets of

  • Trajan, where again you get the sense,

  • once you're in here that you're in a kind of city within a city,

  • but with all these wonderful shops.

  • You can see how skilled they are in using ramps,

  • with polygonal masonry, as well as sidewalks and

  • stairs, so that you can make your way

  • up with either alternative here.

  • Again, the tabernae on either side;

  • the opening up of the walls, with these incredible windows

  • throughout.

  • A restored view of what the whole thing looked like in

  • antiquity: the hemicycle; the decoration here of the

  • central arcuated pediment; broken triangular pediments

  • over here-- a very interesting space,

  • that I'm going to show you in a second--

  • vaulted with a semi-dome, done out of concrete,

  • with very large windows opening up the space.

  • The Via Biberatica, that we already saw here,

  • and then the covered bazaar up there.

  • A quick view of the semi-dome, made out of concrete.

  • It doesn't have an oculus,

  • but otherwise it looks kind of like the dome of the Temple of

  • Mercury at Baia, as you can see.

  • And over here, this wall that I've already

  • described, that shows you how well the

  • Romans can work concrete, now enabling them to open up

  • the wall, much more than they've been

  • able to do so before, and allow even more light into

  • the structure.

  • The greatest part, perhaps, of the Markets of

  • Trajan is this building here.

  • It's the covered bazaar, and it really is a market

  • bazaar, on two tiers.

  • You can see in this restored view, this series of

  • tabernae down below; the attic up above.

  • You can see that groin vaults are used here,

  • in an incredible way.

  • I'll show you in a moment how.

  • A second story up here, with additional

  • tabernae, opened almost completely to the

  • sky, an incredible feat on the part

  • of Apollodorus of Damascus, assuming he also designed these

  • markets.

  • Here is the market hall, as it looks today.

  • What is its ancestor?

  • The Ferentino Market Hall that we saw way back when,

  • with its single barrel vault; or some of the

  • cryptoporticuses that we also saw, with their barrel

  • vaults.

  • It's that idea, that market hall idea.

  • But look how sophisticated the Romans have become in their use

  • of concrete faced with brick.

  • They have realized that they don't even need a wall,

  • to support vaults.

  • They can lift their vault on top of individual piers,

  • as they have done so spectacularly here;

  • lift them up.

  • I described this, I think, in the introductory

  • lecture as in a sense opening up a series of umbrellas over the

  • space.

  • They have opened it up so that light can flow in from the

  • sides; light can flow in from either

  • long end, just flooding the whole system with light.

  • Down below, again, the typical markets,

  • with their attic windows above.

  • But this is a real tour de force, probably the greatest --

  • certainly the greatest vaulting that we have seen thus far,

  • and again a test to just how far the Romans have come from

  • this to this, by the time of the emperor

  • Trajan.

  • And any of you headed to San Francisco,

  • if you go to the Marketplace there,

  • you will see that that owes so much to Roman antiquity,

  • with all the tabernae-like structures

  • on either side; the vaulting.

  • I mean, this sort of thing absolutely presupposes this kind

  • of architectural development.

  • In the one minute that remains--and that's all I need

  • for this-- I just want to show you one

  • last monument, and make one basic point about

  • it, that really has more to do with the transition from Trajan

  • to Hadrian, than anything else.

  • An arch went up, not in Rome,

  • but in a place called Benevento, which is about an

  • hour's drive from Naples, in the south of Italy,

  • in Campania; a place called Benevento.

  • An arch went up between 114 to 118, honoring Trajan,

  • and all of Trajan's accomplishments.

  • You can see it's covered with sculpture, and each of those

  • scenes represents one of the accomplishments of Trajan.

  • It was put up on the so-called Via Traiana,

  • taking Trajan's name, a road that was built from Rome

  • to Benevento, and was opened during Trajan's

  • reign, and again, a compendium of all

  • his accomplishments.

  • You can see very clearly that it is based in general form on

  • the Arch of Titus in Rome: a single central arcuated bay;

  • the pedestals supporting double columns on either side;

  • the inscription at the top; the receding panels on either

  • side of that inscription.

  • The major difference, of course, between the two,

  • that this has sculpture only on the inside,

  • and sparingly in the center and around the frieze,

  • and this has much more sculpture, again telling us in

  • much greater detail a list-- or describing a list of the

  • great accomplishments of Trajan.

  • The main reason that I show it to you today,

  • besides to show that the Flavians again served--

  • Flavian architecture served as an important model for Trajanic

  • architecture, is that a couple of the scenes

  • in the attic above are very interesting,

  • and tell us something about the succession.

  • Hadrian does not appear in the lower part of the arch,

  • in any of the scenes, but he appears in two of the

  • scenes in the uppermost part, which has led scholars,

  • I think rightly, to conclude that the arch was

  • finished up to the attic before Trajan's death,

  • and that Hadrian finished it.

  • And what did he do?

  • He put his own portrait up there, with Trajan's.

  • Why was he motivated to do that?

  • Well he had an ego, as we'll see when we talk about

  • Hadrian's architecture.

  • But more than that, it had something to do with the

  • succession.

  • We know that Trajan died on August 8^(th) in 117 A.D.

  • We know that on August 8^(th) he had no successor officially

  • chosen.

  • Plotina, his wife, was--she had no children of her

  • own; she was crazy about Hadrian,

  • very much his sponsor, and wanted to see him succeed

  • Trajan.

  • It's likely that Trajan had the same idea in mind,

  • but it's a little strange, because wouldn't he then have

  • adopted him before his death?

  • Why would he have waited?

  • But Plotina decides--she consults with advisors.

  • She says: "We're not going to announce Trajan's death.

  • We're going to keep it a secret.

  • Tomorrow we're going to announce that Trajan has adopted

  • Hadrian."

  • That happens on August 9^(th).

  • And then it was only on the 11^(th), the 11^(th) of August

  • that Trajan's death was announced to the public.

  • So some hanky-panky was going on behind the scenes.

  • But whoever made the choice, whether it was Trajan himself

  • or Plotina, they made a great choice: Hadrian,

  • an extraordinary emperor as well.

  • And the one point that I want you to hold,

  • and keep with you over break, and bring back when we get back

  • together and talk, when we get back together,

  • about the Pantheon and Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli,

  • the main point that I want you to keep in mind is what we

  • learned from the Forum of Trajan,

  • and that is that Trajan combined, in an incredible way,

  • with the help of Apollodorus, traditional architecture in the

  • form of the Forum, with its marble columns and the

  • like, and innovative Roman

  • architecture, in the form of the brick-faced

  • concrete market, brought those together in one

  • building, in a way that is very different

  • from anything we've seen up to this point.

  • And we're going to see that Hadrian keeps that tradition

  • alive, not only in the Pantheon, but also in his Villa of

  • Tivoli.

  • Take care.

  • Good Spring Break to everybody.

Prof: Good morning all.

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