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  • Prof: Good morning everyone.

  • Augustus founded the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

  • The name says it all: Julio-Claudian,

  • Julio for the Julian side of the family, Julius Caesar and

  • Augustus; the Claudian for the Claudian

  • side of the family.

  • That was Augustus' wife from--her side of the family,

  • excuse me, the Claudian side of the family.

  • And there were four emperors in the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

  • These were Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius,

  • and Nero.

  • Every one of them, all four, made an important

  • contribution to the evolution of Roman architecture,

  • and we'll talk about the contributions of those four

  • today.

  • But we'll also see that the single most important

  • contribution, from the standpoint of Roman

  • architecture, was by Nero,

  • the notorious emperor Nero, which is why I do call this

  • lecture "Notorious Nero and His Amazing Architectural

  • Legacy."

  • An architectural legacy that would have been impossible

  • without some of the earlier concrete constructions that

  • we've already discussed, specifically the

  • frigidaria of Pompeii and also the thermal bath at Baia,

  • which I remind you of here.

  • The so-called Temple of Mercury, we see it again with

  • its dome made out of concrete construction,

  • a view from the exterior.

  • And down here, at the left,

  • a view of the interior of the monument,

  • and I remind you of the way in which is that designed so that

  • light streams through the oculus in the dome,

  • down onto the sides of the wall, creating light effects:

  • a circle that corresponds to the shape of the opening above,

  • and then falling initially on the pool of water that would

  • have been located there, as well as across the walls,

  • which probably would have been--

  • that were certainly stuccoed over--and probably would have

  • been covered with mosaic.

  • So a very spectacular interior indeed,

  • and one again that had an important impact,

  • as we'll see, on the architectural designs of

  • the Roman emperor Nero.

  • I want to begin though with the first of the Julio-Claudian

  • emperors, and that is with Tiberius.

  • And you see a portrait of Tiberius now on the screen,

  • just to give you a sense of what he looked like.

  • Tiberius, again the son of Livia by a former marriage,

  • the elder son of Livia by a former marriage,

  • who becomes emperor of Rome right after Augustus.

  • And the portrait that you see here is a marble portrait of

  • Tiberius that is now in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek in

  • Copenhagen.

  • Tiberius was emperor of Rome from 14 to 37 A.D.,

  • and with regard to architecture,

  • he completed projects begun by Augustus.

  • He also was responsible for restoring Republican buildings

  • that had fallen into severe disrepair by his reign,

  • and this included several temples, a basilica,

  • warehouses, and also a theater.

  • Tiberius also initiated some new building projects in Rome.

  • These included a Temple to the Divine Augustus,

  • Temple to Divus Augustus,

  • his divine adoptive father, because Augustus was made a

  • god, as Caesar had been before him,

  • at his death.

  • Tiberius also put up a series of arches to his relatives,

  • and also a camp for the Praetorian Guard.

  • But what we'll see about Tiberius is that his real

  • passion was not the public architecture that Augustus had

  • been so fond of-- think the Forum of Augustus and

  • the Temple of Mars Ultor, or the Ara Pacis Augustae,

  • which were among Augustus' most important building projects.

  • Tiberius was interested instead in private architecture--

  • architecture in a sense for himself and his nearest and

  • dearest-- and he began a palace on the

  • Palatine Hill.

  • He did not think the small, modest House of Augustus,

  • despite the fact that it had those nicely painted walls,

  • he did not think that that befit his own grandeur,

  • and he began a major palace on the Palatine Hill,

  • on the northwest side of the Palatine Hill.

  • And he renovated and built villas elsewhere,

  • outside of Rome, especially on the spectacular

  • Island of Capri.

  • And indeed, during the reign of Augustus,

  • and also the reign of Tiberius, that family,

  • the Augustan and Julio-Claudian family,

  • built twelve villas--count them, twelve villas--

  • on the Island of Capri, one more spectacular than the

  • next.

  • It's worth mentioning, by the way, that Augustus'

  • taste, even in villas, was somewhat more modest than

  • Tiberius.

  • Augustus used to decorate his villa,

  • we are told, with dinosaur bones and things

  • like that, of historical interest,

  • whereas Tiberius spared no expense in introducing every

  • luxury possible into his villas.

  • With regard to the palace on the Palatine Hill,

  • the so-called Domus Tiberiana, I just want to mention it in

  • passing.

  • There's very little that survives of the substructures

  • that Tiberius was responsible for beginning,

  • for that palace.

  • They were made out of concrete construction,

  • and you can see here what's called the Clivus Palatinus,

  • which is a ramp way leading from the Roman Forum,

  • up to the Palatine Hill.

  • And you can see some of the remains of those substructures

  • over here.

  • The ones that we see were probably restored later and may

  • or may not date to the Tiberian period,

  • but they give you some idea of the sort of construction that he

  • began on the Palatine Hill.

  • And I mention this just because we'll see that Caligula and some

  • of the other emperors continued to add to this palace,

  • and then the entire Palatine Hill is redesigned by the

  • emperor Domitian in the late first century A.D.

  • Much more interesting and much more--and there's much more

  • information for us to look at--are the villas on the island

  • of Capri.

  • And I'm going to show you one, the best preserved,

  • from that island, the so-called Villa Jovis:

  • the Villa Jovis, the Villa of Jupiter,

  • which is an interesting name, when you think about it,

  • for a villa for the emperor Tiberius.

  • The Villa Jovis, which was put up sometime in

  • the years in which Tiberius was emperor;

  • that is, from 14 to 37 A.D.

  • It's a spectacular place, beautifully situated.

  • And I'm going to take you there today.

  • Now the only way to get to the island of Capri,

  • which by the way is one of my very favorite places in the

  • world; I don't know how many of you've

  • been there, but it's quite extraordinary--the island of

  • Capri.

  • You can't jet to the Island of Capri,

  • you have to arrive there by boat, and most people take a

  • boat, unless they have a private

  • yacht, but those of us who don't,

  • have to take a boat either from Naples,

  • usually a hydrofoil--although they have larger boats as well--

  • a hydrofoil from Naples or from Positano.

  • And I actually show you--this is a view on the left-hand side

  • of the screen of Positano on the Amalfi Coast.

  • You go down to the beach; there's a place where you can

  • pick up a hydrofoil.

  • It takes a very short time, half an hour or so,

  • less, a little bit less, to get over to the Island of

  • Capri from Positano.

  • So we're sitting on one of those hydrofoils--

  • or at least eight of us are, because that's usually what

  • they fit-- and we're making our way from

  • Positano toward Capri.

  • As you go there, if the weather is good enough,

  • and if the sea is calm enough, they will take you to see the

  • famous grottos, the Green Grotto and also the

  • Blue Grotto.

  • And again I can just give you a little sense here of--in this

  • view--of how blue is blue.

  • I mean, it's really a neon blue, when you go to see the

  • Blue Grotto.

  • It's a spectacular sight and a very special color blue that you

  • really don't see anywhere else in the world.

  • So they'll drive you around in the hydrofoil to see the

  • grottos, and then you eventually get to

  • the dock at Capri, and this is what you see as you

  • get off the boat at the island of Capri: again a very beautiful

  • spot to visit.

  • As you go up, you make your way from the dock

  • up to the funicular.

  • You take the funicular up to the main part of town,

  • and one of the first things you see is the popular Bar Tiberio.

  • I show it to you, not to--it's a fun place to

  • go-- but I show it to you mainly

  • because it's one of these examples of the way in which the

  • Roman emperors have had a lasting impact,

  • even today, that so many of these bars and restaurants and

  • so on are named for Rome's emperors,

  • or for some of the monuments that we've been studying in the

  • course of this semester.

  • And this bar is no exception, and in fact if you go through

  • the doors that lead into the interior of the bar,

  • you will see a portrait of Tiberius etched on the doorway.

  • So Tiberius very much lives and thrives in the center of

  • downtown Capri still today.

  • What most tourists go to Capri to see,

  • besides just to walk around a magnificent island and to test

  • out some of the beaches, which tend to be on the rocky

  • side, is to see the most famous rocks

  • of Capri.

  • And these are the so-called Faraglioni.

  • You see them here.

  • You go up to the so-called Gardens of Augustus,

  • and then up to a spot where you can see these particularly well.

  • They're magnificent.

  • They are the landmark spot on the island of Capri,

  • and they have survived coastal landslides and sea erosion,

  • to look as wonderful as they still do today.

  • And this is, of course, the photo op on the

  • island.

  • I don't think there's anyone who visits Capri who doesn't

  • take a photo or have a photo taken of themselves at the

  • Faraglioni.

  • The villa that I want to show you is again the best preserved

  • villa of Tiberius on Capri.

  • And again I mentioned that it's called the Villa Jovis,

  • and it dates to 14 to 37 A.D.

  • It's a trek to get up there.

  • You have to walk essentially.

  • The streets are such that there are no cabs or cars that can get

  • you there.

  • You have to make it on your own.

  • And there are two paths.

  • I've made the mistake of taking the more arduous path,

  • which looks like this, to get up to the top,

  • but there's another path also that takes you by some very

  • attractive houses and villas, which are fun to see.

  • And you will see the largest lemons--

  • has anyone ever been on the island of Capri?--

  • you'll see the largest lemons on Capri,

  • as well as on the Amalfi Coast in general,

  • that you've ever seen anywhere: gigantic lemons on lemon trees,

  • as you make your way up to the Villa of the Villa Jovis.

  • Now here is a plan of the Villa Jovis, as well as a

  • cross-section, from the Ward-Perkins textbook.

  • And if we look first at the cross-section,

  • at the uppermost part of the screen, you will see the way

  • this building was made.

  • You will see that the architects have taken advantage

  • of developments in concrete construction to create a series

  • of barrel vaults in tiers, and those barrel vaults in

  • tiers are where-- are the cisterns of the villa,

  • where the water was kept to supply the baths and the kitchen

  • and so on, of the villa.

  • You see those there, and in this plan down here you

  • can see the cisterns again and the way in which a pavement has

  • been placed on top of those tiers of barrel vaults,

  • to create a very large court here.

  • The entranceway into Tiberius' villa on Capri was over here.

  • You can see a series of columns, four in total,

  • that you see as you make your way into the entranceway of the

  • villa.

  • Along this side of the villa, which is the southern side of

  • the villa, you see the baths--not

  • surprisingly placed on the southern side--

  • extensive bath structure for the emperor.

  • On the western side you see a series of rooms that are for the

  • entourage of Tiberius.

  • The kitchen is located on this side as well.

  • And then perhaps the most important room of the house,

  • from our standpoint, the hall or the aula--

  • a-u-l-a--the aula of Tiberius' villa at Capri.

  • And you can see the shape of that aula.

  • It's a kind of hemicycle with large picture windows that allow

  • views that lie outside.

  • And it should remind you of the second phase of the Villa of the

  • Mysteries in Pompeii, where we also saw that

  • attractive bay window with the panoramic views,

  • out beyond.

  • The panoramic views were much more spectacular here than even

  • from the Villa of the Mysteries, because as I think you can see

  • also from this site plan, that this is located right at

  • the edge of a promontory.

  • It's in fact 1,095 feet above sea level, and you get some

  • incredible views of the sea and of other islands from this

  • location.

  • On this side, the northern side of the

  • structure, is where the apartments of Tiberius were

  • located; a series of rooms for the

  • emperor himself, and including also an imperial

  • loggia, where he could walk out and get

  • some attractive panoramas privately on his own.

  • You can also see that there is a corridor that leads from the

  • private apartment to this very long walkway,

  • that is located right at the edge of the cliff on this side.

  • This is called technically an ambulatio

  • --a-m-b-u-l-a-t-i-o, an ambulatio--and it was

  • just for that.

  • It was for taking pleasant walks, getting nice views of the

  • sea from there, especially for the emperor and

  • special invited guests.

  • And right in the center was a triclinium--

  • you see it right here--a triclinium or dining room

  • where the emperor could dine and could look out again over views

  • that were possible from this particular locale.

  • This is a view unfortunately in black and white,

  • but it's the only one that I have that gives you a sense of

  • the remains today from above, the extent of those remains.

  • And you can see again the concrete construction I think

  • quite well from this, as well as the fact that

  • although all the foundation walls are there,

  • there's no decoration, the ceilings are missing,

  • and so on and so forth.

  • You see the cistern here, the location of the aula

  • up here, the area for the entourage of Tiberius,

  • and the private apartment on that side.

  • A church and a statue on a base were added later,

  • and so of course you need to think those away.

  • This is a view of some of the remains as they look today,

  • just to give you a sense that when you're actually up there

  • and wandering around.

  • The walls don't go up all that far,

  • but you can also see that they do preserve the entire plan of

  • the structure, which is why we have such a

  • good idea of what it looked like in antiquity and how all of

  • those pieces fit together.

  • You can see that the construction is concrete and the

  • facing is stone, irregular stonework,

  • the kind of opus incertum work that we've

  • seen elsewhere in Campania.

  • Because remember this is an island, but it's off the coast

  • of Naples, Pompeii and Oplontis; it is in that same general area

  • of Italy.

  • And this is one view and one--I have many more spectacular ones

  • than this one-- but this is one that gives you

  • a sense of the sort of thing you can see.

  • This one I took right from, I think from near the

  • aula; just to give you an idea of

  • what you see from there.

  • Beautiful views of the sea.

  • In some areas you can see the rocky outcroppings as you look

  • down, and then views of some other islands in the area,

  • for example Ischia, and so on.

  • The successor to Tiberius was a man by the name of Caligula.

  • Caligula became emperor at the death of Tiberius.

  • And we see a portrait of him here, on the right-hand side of

  • the screen, just again to give you a sense of the man.

  • He had a very short--he was very young when he became

  • emperor of Rome--he had a very short reign, only three years.

  • And he was somewhat unbalanced, and it was not long after he

  • became emperor--oh, by the way, he was very popular

  • when he was a boy; he was a prince, very popular.

  • He used to run around the military camps with his family,

  • in a little military costume, and he wore these distinctive

  • military boots called the caliga,

  • c-a-l-i-g-a; which is how he got the

  • nickname Caligula, from those boots.

  • He was extremely popular with everyone, and everyone was quite

  • excited when he became emperor of Rome.

  • But his power went to his head.

  • He became a despot, and he spent most of his time

  • cavorting with his three sisters.

  • I show you them here on a coin, and they're all named:

  • Agrippina, Julia, and--Drusilla was his

  • favorite, so of course she's in the

  • center there-- Drusilla.

  • And he also did strange things like conduct faux wars

  • essentially, faux wars with faux enemies: for example,

  • his war against Britain, so to speak.

  • And he also spent a good deal of time trying to work it out so

  • that his horse, Incitatus, could become a

  • senator.

  • So this gives you some idea of the kind of man we're dealing

  • with here.

  • He was occupied with all of that and really not that much

  • with architecture.

  • And again, he was only emperor for a very short time,

  • so there was a limit to what kinds of architectural

  • contributions he could make.

  • But he didn't make none.

  • I mean, he made some, and in fact one of them is

  • particularly important, and I want to emphasize those

  • to you here.

  • So again, Caligula was emperor between 37 and 41 A.D.

  • He had little public building.

  • Again, he continued the tradition of Tiberius,

  • and that is in having much more interest in private villa

  • architecture than in public architecture.

  • But again it's only fair--as we judge him in terms of his

  • architectural contribution, I think it's only fair to

  • remind ourselves that again he was only emperor for three

  • years.

  • If he had been emperor longer, perhaps his contribution would

  • have been greater.

  • He did finish several buildings, begun by Tiberius--

  • and we're going to see this as a pattern,

  • that is, emperors coming to the fore and completing buildings by

  • their predecessors.

  • And he did build a couple of new things, including two new

  • aqueducts and a circus located near what is now Vatican City.

  • He thought the Domus Tiberiana was a terrific idea and

  • consequently he added to that palace;

  • that's the palace that Tiberius began on the slopes of the

  • Palatine Hill.

  • But his main interest was villas outside Rome.

  • He built a number of those.

  • I'm not talking about Capri now, those were already built,

  • and he could go down and enjoy those as emperor of Rome,

  • but he wanted to ring Rome with a series of villas,

  • and he began that work.

  • And later on, according to Pliny the Elder,

  • Rome was ringed with the villas, not only of Caligula,

  • but also of Nero.

  • So these were going up apace around the city of Rome itself.

  • The single most important contribution though that

  • Caligula made, and it is very significant,

  • is to alter-- it was during his reign,

  • during his brief reign, that the recipe for Roman

  • concrete construction was altered.

  • What they did was make the decision to lighten it up,

  • and they did that by taking the stone rubble that had been used

  • in the mixture of concrete for some time,

  • taking that stone rubble and dispensing with it,

  • getting rid of it, because it was too heavy,

  • and mixed the liquid mortar instead with a very porous,

  • yellow tufa, and also with pumice,

  • which is a soft light stone resembling cork.

  • So when you think of replacing heavy rubble with something that

  • resembles cork, you get the sense that that is

  • going to lead to lighter domes; lighter domes are going to lead

  • to domes that are able to span greater spaces.

  • So this is no small accomplishment.

  • This is very, very significant.

  • It happens during the reign of Caligula,

  • and we'll see already today that the so-called Golden House

  • or Domus Aurea of Nero, would not have been possible,

  • the span of that dome would not have been possible without this

  • change in the recipe in concrete that happened under Caligula.

  • The other development under Caligula that I want to make

  • reference to really has more to do with religious practice,

  • but it also has an important impact on architecture,

  • and that is the impact of mystery cults on Roman religion.

  • I think I've mentioned to you already that the Romans

  • practiced a state religion, and that state religion was

  • considered the religion that everyone should adhere to.

  • But over time, because of Rome's connections

  • to other parts of the empire, especially the Eastern Empire,

  • a whole host of different kinds of religions,

  • mystery religions, exotic religions,

  • began to infiltrate Rome.

  • They came back through the army, they came back through

  • commerce, to Rome.

  • And initially they were not accepted.

  • You were not allowed to practice these openly.

  • And so we saw an example with the Villa of the Mysteries where

  • the woman of the house created a special room,

  • room number five, for the celebration of the cult

  • of Dionysus, because that was considered a

  • secret religion at that particular point.

  • But these mystery religions, Caligula himself showed some

  • interest in them, and it began to look as if

  • perhaps they would be able to begin to come up from

  • underground.

  • They didn't during his reign, but I think again his

  • contribution in that way was also an important one.

  • They did continue to have to meet in secret.

  • And one sect in particular I want to make reference to today,

  • the so-called Neo-Pythagorean sect,

  • because we'll see in the next monument that I want to show

  • you, that it was that sect that was

  • celebrated in a very interesting underground basilica that I want

  • to turn to now.

  • It doesn't date to the time of Caligula;

  • in fact, it's a little bit later, in the reign of Claudius.

  • But I want to show it to you here,

  • because again it was Caligula's beginning to be more accepting

  • of these kinds of things that led in part to their

  • proliferation, initially underground and then

  • above ground as well.

  • This is the so-called Underground Basilica,

  • because it is located underground.

  • It dates to around A.D. 50.

  • And you can see from this site plan its location.

  • You can see it marked "basilica"

  • up there, and you can see that it's near

  • a street we've already talked about,

  • the Via Praenestina in Rome, which you'll remember is one,

  • along with the Via Labicana, that came and converged on the

  • Tomb of the Baker that we looked at last time.

  • In fact, if you look at this site plan, you see the

  • trapezoidal plan of the Tomb of the Baker right here.

  • And when we discussed the Tomb of the Baker,

  • I made the point to you that it was located,

  • or it was sited, in front of a great gate,

  • the so-called Porta Maggiore, or the great gate that spanned

  • two aqueducts.

  • And I said to you, I urged you to think away that

  • great gate because it was built later.

  • It was built, in fact, during the reign of

  • Claudius.

  • We're going to look at it momentarily.

  • So you see the great gate here, and you see the Tomb of the

  • Baker, and that gives you a sense of

  • the location of the basilica, the Underground Basilica of 50

  • A.D.

  • If you look at that basilica, you see the plan is exactly

  • like the basilica in a civic context--

  • the basilica at Pompeii, for example--

  • with a central nave and two side aisles,

  • divided by that nave, that central space,

  • through architectural members, in this case through piers

  • rather than columns; and then at the end,

  • to give some emphasis to one short side of the space,

  • an apse, that you also see there.

  • This underground basilica was used for religious worship.

  • So we see once again what I've referred to as the

  • interchangeability of form: the idea of creating a certain

  • building plan for a civic center,

  • the law court or basilica, and then using it in other

  • ways.

  • We already saw the basilican plan being used in house design

  • at Herculaneum as a banqueting hall,

  • and here we see it as a religious, a place for religious

  • worship underground: a basilican form being used for

  • religious worship underground.

  • The Underground Basilica is miraculously preserved.

  • Why?

  • Because it's underground and it didn't--it consequently was kept

  • in very good shape over time.

  • It's very difficult to get permission to go down and see

  • it, but it is a marvel, as you can see from this image

  • here.

  • How did they create this Underground Basilica?

  • How did they make this building underground?

  • Well they cut trenches in the tufa rock, in the tufa rock;

  • remember we've talked about how ubiquitous tufa rock was in

  • Rome, both on the hillsides, like the Palatine,

  • and elsewhere.

  • So they cut trenches in the tufa rock,

  • and then they poured concrete into those trenches to create

  • the walls and also the barrel vault that you see so well here.

  • And once that concrete had dried, they cut it out in such a

  • way as to create the piers that you also see very well in this

  • structure.

  • So we're looking at that central space;

  • we're looking at the piers, the arches above those piers,

  • and then that's supporting a barrel vaulting ceiling,

  • as well as a semi-vault in the apse of this structure.

  • Another view gives you a sense of the relationship of the

  • central space to the aisles.

  • It's a fairly small structure but nonetheless it is quite

  • light and airy, as I think you can see here,

  • as we look from the central nave toward one of the side

  • aisles.

  • You can see the piers and the arches above those piers,

  • and you can also see the way in which the walls are decorated.

  • They're made out of concrete but they're stuccoed over and

  • divided into a series of panels that are decorated with pretty

  • strong resemblance to Third Style,

  • and that resemblance becomes even clearer as we look up to

  • the vault above.

  • This is how we surmise that this building was put up to the

  • Neo-Pythagorean cult, because of the figures that we

  • see floating in the central panels here.

  • Those who have a good understanding of the

  • Neo-Pythagorean cult have suggested that these track

  • extremely well the beliefs of this particular cult.

  • But interesting for us is again the close resemblance of this to

  • Third Style Roman wall painting.

  • It's done in stucco.

  • The stucco is painted, but you can see it's divided

  • into a series of panels with floating mythological figures,

  • or floating religious figures in this case,

  • inside the panels.

  • And look then very carefully at some of the floral decorations,

  • which you will see also resemble very closely the flimsy

  • candelabra and so on that are characteristic of Third Style

  • Roman painting.

  • This shouldn't surprise you.

  • The date of 50 A.D.

  • is still well within the Third Style.

  • We've talked about the very long life of the Third Style,

  • that it was used already in the late first century B.C.,

  • but that it didn't really go out until about 62 A.D.

  • So 50 was still in that period of the Third Style;

  • it doesn't surprise us to see decoration like this,

  • in this very interesting Underground Basilica.

  • Caligula was murdered in 41, and his wife and daughter--he

  • had one daughter--were also murdered at the same time.

  • He had no family member to succeed him, and his uncle

  • Claudius was chosen as the next emperor of Rome.

  • Many of you may know the interesting story,

  • quite captivating story, of how Claudius was chosen as

  • emperor.

  • He was someone who was not highly respected by his

  • family--and I'll say more about that in a moment;

  • no one ever thought he was going to amount to anything.

  • And when, after Caligula's death, Claudius was such,

  • kind of timid, that he hid behind a curtain.

  • But as the Praetorian Guard wandered through the palace,

  • trying to figure out who in the world they were going to appoint

  • as Caligula's successor, they saw a pair of feet

  • underneath a curtain.

  • They pulled open that curtain and they saw Claudius,

  • and they thought, "Well he's going to be no

  • trouble at all.

  • No one thinks much of him.

  • We're going to be able to get everything we want if we appoint

  • Claudius as emperor."

  • And so they did, they bowed down,

  • and they said, "You are now--",

  • or they put him up on their shoulders,

  • "You are now emperor of Rome."

  • Well Claudius surprised them because he was a very smart

  • individual indeed, as we shall see.

  • This is a cameo, a famous cameo that represents

  • Claudius, just for you to get some sense

  • of what he looked like, over here on the left,

  • with his wife, and then possibly--these two

  • figures over here are controversial--

  • possibly with Tiberius or some other member of the imperial

  • family.

  • This is blown up into colossal size.

  • It's a fairly small but very beautiful cameo,

  • and these cameos were used as presentation pieces in ancient

  • Roman times.

  • Claudius was emperor of Rome between A.D.

  • 41 and 54.

  • I mentioned that his family did not have much respect for him.

  • They thought he was weak and sickly, and they thought he was

  • dim-witted.

  • And the only reason they thought he was dim-witted,

  • because the poor fellow stammered, and they thought that

  • that reflected an undisciplined mind.

  • Not at all, he was very, very intelligent indeed,

  • and he surprised them.

  • He surprised not only the Praetorian Guard but also his

  • family, when he became emperor.

  • He turned out to be a unique individual with a predilection,

  • as we shall see, for an entirely new kind of,

  • and very distinctive form of architecture,

  • and one that I believe--and I'll try to make the case to you

  • today-- reflected his very distinctive

  • intellect.

  • We need to know therefore something about him and how he

  • came--how he had trained himself intellectually before he became

  • emperor of Rome.

  • He was fifty-years-old when he became emperor.

  • He had been, in the years prior to that,

  • a scholar, an historian, an antiquarian,

  • a linguist.

  • He wrote a history of Rome by himself--it was not

  • ghostwritten--and he wrote several volumes,

  • also on his own, on the Etruscans;

  • he was particularly interested in the Etruscans.

  • We know he added a few letters to the Latin alphabet to give it

  • more range, and he was the last Roman,

  • as far as we know, to be able to read and also

  • write Etruscan.

  • This gives you a very good sense of the man.

  • With regard to architecture, he rejected categorically the

  • interests of Tiberius and Caligula in villa architecture,

  • and he returned to the construction of public

  • architecture-- he looked to Augustus as a

  • model for this-- and especially to public works.

  • Let me show you one example.

  • You see on the screen a site plan of the port of Rome.

  • I've already mentioned the fact that the port of Rome was

  • located at Ostia, Ostia the city at the mouth of

  • the Tiber River.

  • We saw the plan of Ostia, a colony already founded in the

  • mid-fourth century B.C., in around 350,

  • and it grew over time and it had its efflorescence,

  • as we'll see in a later lecture, in the second century

  • A.D.

  • Here the plan of Ostia over here.

  • The Tiber River, and then at the mouth of the

  • Tiber River, at a place that we call Portus,

  • a location that we call Portus or Porto--

  • it's on the Monument List for you--the actual harbor itself.

  • What we're looking at above is a coin of the emperor Nero.

  • You see Nero on the obverse and on the reverse a representation

  • of what we think is the port built by Claudius.

  • We have a description of the port of Claudius by Suetonius in

  • his Lives.

  • Suetonius tells us that the port had curving breakwaters,

  • curving breakwaters.

  • And if we look at this coin of Nero that was struck by the

  • emperor between 64 and 68 A.D., we see on the back what is

  • clearly a port, with curving breakwaters.

  • So we believe that this must be a depiction of the port built by

  • Claudius sometime during his reign, that is,

  • between 41 and 54.

  • What does that coin tell us about what that port must have

  • looked like?

  • We can see that there is a large statue in the upper

  • center.

  • There is a river god reclining below, probably the Tiber

  • himself, to locate this port, and also a series of boats in

  • the center.

  • But most important again are the curving breakwaters,

  • which you can see are made up of a series of columns;

  • they look like colonnades, one on either side,

  • curving colonnades.

  • This plan down here shows us the likely plan of the Claudian

  • harbor, roughly circular,

  • again with breakwaters on either side,

  • with columns on either side.

  • This area was added to by the emperor Trajan,

  • in the early second century A.D.

  • He added a five-sided port as well, and you can see that here,

  • in this plan as well.

  • But think that away for now.

  • All that would've been there was Claudius' port with the

  • curving breakwaters.

  • This is a painting of both of those ports, that's on the wall

  • in the Vatican.

  • I've walked by it many times and only recently really noticed

  • it and took a picture of it, and I think it'll be helpful to

  • you today because it gives you a sense of what this port looked

  • like in antiquity.

  • We see the later port of Trajan over here.

  • But again think that away for now and concentrate on the

  • curving breakwaters of Claudius' port.

  • You see here this colossal statue, possibly of Neptune,

  • over here, a lighthouse, over here, and the boats in the

  • center of this.

  • But most important for us again are those curving breakwaters

  • and the fact that they were made up of columns.

  • The columns are all that survive today,

  • and what a set of columns they are.

  • I show a detail of some of them to you here.

  • And you should be struck by these columns,

  • because these are columns unlike any other columns that we

  • have seen in the course of this semester.

  • If you look at these columns very carefully,

  • you will see that the capitals on the top,

  • which are very severe--they're not exactly the Doric order but

  • they resemble the Doric order-- very severe,

  • and they are finished; you can identify them as

  • capitals.

  • And the bases, I'll show you a view of the

  • bases in a moment, the bases, as we'll also see,

  • are also finished with very nice moldings down below.

  • But in between the bases and the capitals,

  • we see something again that we've never seen before,

  • and that is a series of drums, of column drums,

  • piled one on top of another.

  • But those drums are not finished, or they're left in a

  • rough state -- one or the other.

  • They have either been deliberately left in a rough or

  • rusticated state, or they were unfinished.

  • Why might they have been unfinished?

  • They might have been unfinished because the project was late,

  • they were rushing it, they wanted to get it done,

  • they needed to use the harbor, and so they said,

  • "Look, to save time just put those columns up the way

  • they are and don't bother finishing the drums of the

  • column."

  • Or one could argue that it might have had to do with

  • expense, that it was getting too

  • expensive, and that they decided not to finish the drums for that

  • reason.

  • Or it might have been deliberate, or it might have

  • been deliberate: the idea to leave those drums

  • rough, to make them look rusticated.

  • I'm going to make a case today that it's the last,

  • that this was a deliberate move on Claudius and his architects.

  • And one of the main reasons I can make that--

  • if this is all we had, if we had only this port of

  • Claudius, only these columns in this

  • style, it would be very difficult to make the case.

  • But as we're going to see, when we move from this to that

  • great gate, or the Porta Maggiore,

  • which was put up under Claudius,

  • and then not today but next time, to a building that was put

  • up in Claudius' honor after his death,

  • we will see that all three of those have these rusticated

  • columns or piers in common, which suggests to us--it

  • suggests to me for sure-- that these are--that leaving

  • them in this rusticated state was deliberate on the part of

  • the patron and his architects.

  • And I'm also going to suggest that it had to do with Claudius'

  • peculiar personality, and especially his interest in

  • antiquarianism, in the past,

  • in the history of Rome, and the history of the

  • Etruscans, and so on.

  • Here's another detail of one of the columns over here,

  • where you can see the rough drum, and then down below the

  • base on which that sits, a molded base,

  • very carefully molded.

  • The architects, the designers,

  • the artisans could finish these columns perfectly well if they

  • chose to.

  • They did it on the base, they did it in the capitals,

  • but not in between.

  • Here's another one where you can see a series of columns

  • engaged into a wall, and again you can see the rough

  • or rusticated drums.

  • Then down below the molded and finished bases.

  • So this difference between what we call finished masonry or

  • dressed-- d-r-e-s-s-e-d--dressed masonry,

  • or rusticated masonry: masonry that is deliberately

  • left rough.

  • Again, in order to underscore this point,

  • I want to turn now to the great gate or the Porta Maggiore in

  • Rome, also built by Claudius between

  • 41 and 54 A.D.

  • You already know its location, near the Tomb of Eurysaces,

  • near the Underground Basilica that we also discussed today.

  • And I had mentioned to you already that the purpose of this

  • gate was to serve as a crossing point for two aqueducts:

  • aqueducts that had been begun earlier,

  • were worked on by Caligula, and then completed by Claudius.

  • And there were two of them that crossed at this very point,

  • and they needed something to mask that crossing,

  • and so they built this great gate, the Porta Maggiore.

  • If you look at this general view of the Porta Maggiore,

  • you will see much of what I have already described.

  • It has two open archways.

  • The uppermost part, which is the attic,

  • which has an inscription--it's a three-tiered attic,

  • as you can see, and if you look carefully you

  • will see it has an extensive inscription,

  • making reference to Claudius and to the aqueducts and so on.

  • Down below we see a series of smaller arcuations,

  • surrounded by columns on either side, supporting pediments

  • above.

  • If you look closely you can see that the pediments are finished,

  • the pediments are finished, the lintels are finished,

  • the capitals are finished, but the blocks of the column

  • and the blocks of the rest of the structure are left in a

  • rusticated state.

  • They are not finished, and we see that very stark

  • difference between the rusticated masonry and the

  • finished masonry: the smooth masonry,

  • the dressed masonry and the rough masonry in this structure.

  • This gate, by the way, is made out of

  • travertine--travertine cut stone construction.

  • Here's another view that I think shows you better the way

  • in which this gate masks the crossing of those two aqueducts.

  • You can see two channels there, and one would have had pipes

  • running through it one way and the other would have had pipes

  • running through it the other way,

  • and that's how they crossed in antiquity.

  • And I'll show you a model that may make that even clearer in a

  • moment.

  • You can also see the location of the Tomb of the baker

  • Eurysaces right next to the so-called Porta Maggiore.

  • Here's the model that I showed you when we looked at the Tomb

  • of Eurysaces, the way in which the

  • Praenestina and the Labicana come into Rome and converge at

  • the façade of that tomb.

  • Here you see the great gate or Porta Maggiore behind it.

  • And this is the best illustration I can give of the

  • way in which those two, the pipes of the two aqueducts,

  • cross behind the attic of the gate,

  • which is one of the reasons it had to be as tall as it did,

  • and one of the reasons it had to have tiers was in order--

  • because it was separated behind.

  • You can see that very well here, as well as the rusticated,

  • the contrast between the rusticated masonry and the

  • finished masonry of this great gate.

  • This combination of the two is a very mannered thing to do,

  • and it's interesting that later Renaissance architects in

  • Italy-- and for those of you who are

  • aficionados of the Renaissance, you may know the work of an

  • architect by the name of Giulio Romano who created the famous

  • Palazzo del Te in Mantua.

  • And I show you a detail of the Palazzo del Te,

  • just to make the point, the more general point--

  • you don't have to worry about Giulio--

  • but just to make the general point that these Renaissance

  • architects, like Giulio Romano,

  • looked back to buildings like the Porta Maggiore in Rome when

  • they also conceived of buildings in which they contrasted

  • rusticated masonry with smooth masonry,

  • as you can also see so well.

  • And here are two last details of the Porta Maggiore,

  • and I think these show you, almost more than anything else

  • I have thus far, this incredible contrast

  • between the finished and the unfinished masonry,

  • between the smooth and the rough.

  • And here you see, you can see a detail of the

  • pediment, of the smoothness of that;

  • of the lintel down below; of the capital,

  • which is completely finished; and then even of the uppermost

  • part of the column.

  • And this is a particularly interesting detail,

  • I think, because it gives me the sense,

  • as I look at it, that what the patron and

  • architects are trying to do is give us a sense that the column

  • actually lives inside the rusticated drums.

  • I get the sense as I look at this that this finished column

  • is just--is very anxious to bust out of the rusticated masonry in

  • which it is confined; it's very anxious to emerge

  • from that rusticated masonry.

  • And I can't help but think of the Renaissance again,

  • and especially of Michelangelo.

  • For any of who've seen his slaves in the Accademia in

  • Florence, the slaves that seem to--he

  • took these big blocks of Carrara marble,

  • and he represents the slaves as if they are still immersed in

  • that marble, but trying to break free from

  • that marble, as if these images of human

  • beings were somehow located inside that marble and just

  • waiting for the genius Michelangelo to free them from

  • that marble.

  • It's the same sense that I get here when I look at this,

  • and it makes me think again that a very intelligent,

  • a very refined mind is behind sorting out this kind of thing,

  • and conceiving of something of this nature.

  • And given the education and the bent of Claudius,

  • he is just the kind of man who might have done that.

  • And I think we need to see the architecture of Claudius,

  • this rusticated architecture of Claudius,

  • which is contrasted to the smooth and finished

  • architecture, at the same time,

  • as something that really is reflective of the peculiar

  • personality of this man.

  • I think it's also important to say though that this kind of

  • architecture, at this time,

  • is very old-fashioned.

  • The whole idea of using cut stone travertine construction,

  • after what we've seen is going on in concrete construction,

  • is a very old-fashioned thing to do,

  • and again shows us a man who is looking to the past,

  • who's looking to the history of Rome,

  • to the history of the Etruscans, perhaps rather than

  • to the present.

  • But, on the positive side, one could also say that what he

  • is doing here, he is using stone construction,

  • but he is using it in a very different way,

  • and indeed an almost anti-classical way,

  • to the way in which Augustus used it.

  • Think of Augustus' Ara Pacis.

  • Think of Augustus' Temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum of

  • Augustus in Rome.

  • Both of those marble buildings, in that case Luna or Carrara

  • marble, based on ancient Greek prototypes.

  • This is also stone architecture,

  • and in that sense again old-fashioned,

  • but it's travertine, not marble.

  • But it is anti-classical in its use of this rusticated,

  • as well as smooth masonry.

  • So I do want you to ponder this architecture of Claudius and

  • think for yourselves about whether you think again it is

  • due, the form that it takes is due

  • to the very interesting and unusual personality of this one

  • man.

  • From Claudius, I want to turn to the notorious

  • Nero, and his amazing architectural legacy.

  • And you see a portrait of Nero here, on the right-hand side of

  • the screen, and a coin with his mother on the left.

  • The mother of Nero was Agrippina the Younger.

  • Agrippina the Younger was the last wife of Claudius,

  • and it was rumored that Agrippina the Younger murdered

  • Claudius with a bowl of poisoned mushrooms.

  • We don't know if that's true or not, it may be just rumor

  • mongering.

  • But it's perfectly conceivable because she certainly had a

  • motive, and that is she thought she

  • would have more power if her teenage son--

  • because he was only about 17-years-old at the time--

  • was on the throne of Rome, instead of her older husband.

  • And this coin that you see on the left-hand side of the

  • screen, of the young Nero and Agrippina I think says it all;

  • I mean, mother and son almost nose to nose.

  • This gives real meaning to being 'in your face';

  • as you can see here, Agrippina is certainly in the

  • face of Nero on this coin.

  • And she was with regard to his life, dominating him in the very

  • early years of his reign.

  • Nero was born in A.D. 37.

  • He was emperor between 54 and 68.

  • At his death, his murder--he was forced to

  • commit suicide actually in 68-- he suffered a damnatio

  • memoriae, which was a condemnation by the

  • Senate of him, a damnation of his memory;

  • and an attempt to destroy his portraits,

  • and also his architectural monuments,

  • followed that damnatio memoriae. Nero was the last

  • of the Julio-Claudian emperors.

  • He was the adoptive son of Claudius, and as I've already

  • mentioned the real son of Claudius' last wife,

  • Agrippina the Elder .

  • I mentioned already that Agrippina--or I gave you the

  • sense--that Agrippina was a quite aggressive woman who

  • aggravated Claudius and Nero both.

  • We talked about the poisoned mushroom stories,

  • and the fact that when her son became emperor,

  • she received, at least for a while,

  • enhanced power in Rome.

  • But Nero eventually paid his mother back by having her

  • murdered in A.D.

  • 59.

  • He also got rid of his wife Octavia, a beautiful young girl

  • whom he had murdered in 62.

  • So by the age of 25, Nero had gotten rid of the

  • women, the two women,

  • who had dominated his youth, and his much-touted madness--he

  • was not unlike Caligula in some of the wild things that he did--

  • his much-touted madness began to appear.

  • That said, despite his madness, he was absolutely adored by the

  • populace.

  • It was a great show to watch Nero, and people liked seeing

  • what he would do next.

  • He was adored by the populace.

  • He was however hated by the aristocracy and in 68,

  • he was hunted down by his enemies and he was forced to

  • commit suicide.

  • I would call Nero a patron of architecture extraordinaire.

  • His contribution to the development of Roman

  • architecture is indeed extraordinary.

  • He had a passion for the arts, which undoubtedly led to his

  • devotion to building.

  • He wrote and he sang poems.

  • Nero was a musician.

  • He collected Greek works of art.

  • He traveled to Greece to participate in the Olympics.

  • Whenever he did that, they were always fixed in his

  • favor.

  • When he traveled around Greece and Asia Minor,

  • he stole--if he saw a work of art he liked,

  • he stole it, and he brought it back to Rome

  • to display.

  • He interwove his life with his art, in the same manner as

  • Claudius did.

  • He took advantage of that very famous fire in Rome,

  • which took place in 64 A.D., to--legend has it that he

  • fiddled while Rome burned.

  • He wasn't fiddling actually but he was participating in some

  • sort of musical performance; we know that.

  • And after the fire raged through the city and caused

  • incredible havoc and great destruction,

  • what Nero did was instead of rebuilding the land for the

  • people of Rome, he just expropriated 300 to 350

  • acres of prime real estate in downtown Rome,

  • and he used it to build his own villa,

  • his own palace, in the center of Rome,

  • the famous Domus Aurea or Golden House,

  • because it had a gilded façade.

  • Nero's architecture was intimately bound up with the

  • vicissitudes of his life and his distinctive, if not warped,

  • personality, as we shall see.

  • Nero built two palaces in Rome, and I'd like to begin with the

  • one--I'd like to deal with those in consecutive order.

  • The first of these, as you can see from the

  • Monument List, is the so-called Domus

  • Transitoria-- the less well-known one and

  • less well-preserved one-- the Domus Transitoria in Rome

  • that was built sometime before the fire,

  • before A.D.

  • 64, because it was very significantly destroyed in that

  • fire of A.D.

  • 64.

  • I'm showing you a Google Earth image of the part of Rome in

  • which this building found itself.

  • We are looking down--we've seen this one before--

  • we are looking down at the Roman Forum,

  • the Colosseum in the uppermost part there,

  • the Palatine Hill over here.

  • And if we follow the Roman Forum toward the Colosseum and

  • toward the later Arch of Constantine,

  • we will see that there is a spur hill over,

  • and that spur hill is located between the Palatine Hill and

  • one of Rome's other hills, the Esquiline--E-s-q

  • -u-i-l-i-n-e--the Esquiline Hill.

  • Nero's dream was to link the buildings that were going up on

  • the Palatine.

  • We've already talked about the Imperial Palace,

  • begun by Tiberius, continued by Caligula.

  • Claudius had no interest in that.

  • But then Nero returns to it, and he's continuing to build

  • this palace on the Palatine.

  • But his dream is to link that with property that he also owns

  • on the Esquiline Hill, and to make one truly grandiose

  • palace that links those two hills,

  • across a spur hill called the Velia,

  • V-e-l-i-a, which is in this uppermost part of the Roman

  • Forum, closest to the Colosseum.

  • That was his dream, and he began to try to realize

  • it prior to 64 A.D.

  • The building is called the Domus Transitoria because it

  • served as a point of transit between those two hills,

  • between the Palatine and the Esquiline Hills.

  • Again, because it was so seriously destroyed in fire,

  • and also because it was deliberately destroyed by later

  • emperors who were following the damnation,

  • the damnatio memoriae, the damnation of Nero's memory,

  • and felt that it was their right, in a sense,

  • to destroy his buildings.

  • So those two things together, deliberate destruction plus the

  • fire, essentially destroyed most of the Domus Transitoria.

  • But a couple of sections are preserved underground,

  • and they're very important for us to look at because they give

  • us insight into the later Golden House or Domus Aurea.

  • I want to show you the two sections that are still

  • preserved in restored views that you will find in your textbook,

  • in Ward-Perkins.

  • One of these is located beneath the--

  • while this is still on the screen, if you look at the

  • Palatine Palace here, just a little bit up beyond

  • where my finger is, there is the dining hall of the

  • later first century A.D.

  • palace that we'll look at soon, next week.

  • You see it there.

  • And one of the buildings, a fountain of Nero's Domus

  • Transitoria, is located under that.

  • And then over here, this temple that you see right

  • close to the Colosseum, is a later Hadrianic Temple of

  • Venus and Roma.

  • The domed room that I'm going to show you, is under that.

  • So both of these are underground, beneath later

  • structures.

  • This is a restored view from Ward-Perkins of the fountain,

  • the fountain court of Nero's Domus Transitoria,

  • and we see a number of important features.

  • We see an open court with a pool, with columns around it.

  • On the northern wall over here, we see the fountain itself.

  • We see that what the architects have done is create,

  • using a niche, a place in that niche,

  • a series of other niches, that served as the location of

  • the actual water from which the fountain emerged,

  • and the water would cascade over this wall down here,

  • and then end up in a long basin in front of it.

  • The wall is what's most interesting.

  • If you look at it, you will see that it is

  • essentially scalloped, with columns in the front and

  • then additional columns in the receding bays,

  • creating a kind of in-and-out effect,

  • very similar to theater architecture,

  • and I show you a restored view of a typical theater,

  • of earlier date, just to give you a sense of

  • what this is based on.

  • You can also see that opening up off this central court,

  • screened by columns, are barrel-vaulted rooms on

  • either side.

  • These were used as special dining areas;

  • so special dining areas with beautiful views out onto this

  • fountain court on either side.

  • And then this restored view also gives you a sense that the

  • pavements were variegated, were done in different designs.

  • And we know that these pavements were made out of

  • marble and that the walls were revetted with marble.

  • This isn't the faux marble of the First Style,

  • this is real marble, and it's our first example in

  • Rome of a room that was revetted with marble,

  • brought from all parts of the world: marble brought from

  • Africa, marble brought from Egypt,

  • marble brought from Asia Minor and also from Greece,

  • in various colors, to decorate the fountain court

  • of Nero's Domus Transitoria.

  • The other room, and perhaps the more important

  • of the two, is the domed room--definitely

  • more important of the two-- the domed room in the Domus

  • Transitoria of Nero.

  • And you see a restored view of it here.

  • What are we dealing with?

  • We are dealing with a structure that is clearly based on the

  • thermal bath at Baia and the frigidaria of Pompeii.

  • It is a concrete structure.

  • It looks as if it's round.

  • In fact, you can see a circle inscribed in the pavement,

  • down here below.

  • The structure is made out of concrete.

  • It has a dome and an oculus.

  • But even though it is inscribed in a circle,

  • if you look carefully at the walls,

  • you will see that although they are curved--

  • they follow the curvature of the circle--

  • there are eight sides to this wall.

  • So the architect is starting to explore the idea of an octagon.

  • This is not an octagon--it's a circle inscribed in an octagon,

  • in a sense--but it is an exploration into an eight-sided

  • form, that we're going to see is

  • very, very important for a later development in the Golden House

  • of Nero.

  • Also what we see here that's very interesting,

  • that's a further development of the frigidarium and

  • thermal bath idea, is instead of this circular

  • structure and an octagon ending with these radiating apses,

  • the four radiating apses that we saw at Baia,

  • for example, we see that they extend into

  • corridors on either side, which expands the space in a

  • way that we have not seen before.

  • You see, they don't end on either side with these apses

  • with walls, they expand into these long

  • corridors, as you can see,

  • creating a kind of cross shape, and certainly adding to the

  • interesting spatial relationships and spatial

  • possibilities, and the use again of vista and

  • panorama, as we've seen.

  • We see here also, on either side here,

  • a series of columns with metal grills on top:

  • so wonderful views through those columns to what lies

  • beyond.

  • And then on this side, a small pool that had white

  • marble and then colored marbles around that.

  • So you have to imagine again the overall appearance of this

  • in antiquity, when light would have streamed

  • through the dome of the central space,

  • onto the walls that probably had mosaic on them,

  • through the grills and the columns,

  • onto the water of the white pool here,

  • which was also surrounded with variegated marbles --

  • these same marbles brought from all over the world.

  • The view must have been quite spectacular.

  • This is certainly again a form of ostentatious palatial

  • architecture that Augustus eschewed,

  • but was becoming of increasing interest to the likes of

  • Tiberius, Caligula, and ultimately Nero.

  • And again, just to make the same point again,

  • we can trace this back to the experiments of the

  • frigidaria at Pompeii: that's the Stabian Baths too,

  • the thermal bath, the Temple of Mercury at Baia.

  • But look at the difference that it makes when you extend those

  • apses into corridors, creating a much freer spatial

  • situation and adding to the vista and panorama idea that has

  • been so popular, as we've long seen,

  • with the Romans.

  • In the time that remains, I want to turn to Nero's most

  • important architectural commission,

  • and I can't over-emphasize the significance of this structure

  • that I'm going to show you now, the so-called Domus Aurea or

  • the Golden House of Nero, again because of its gilded

  • façade.

  • We've already talked about the fire that raged through Rome in

  • 64, and that when that fire,

  • when the smoke from that fire died down,

  • that Nero expropriated 300 to 350 acres in prime downtown

  • Rome, for his own use,

  • for a private palace, the so-called Golden House.

  • We see a site plan here, also from Ward-Perkins,

  • where you can get a sense, not only of the extent of

  • this-- look how it covers ground from

  • the Circus Maximus, all the way across,

  • to the Esquiline Hill, as you can see so well here.

  • So the Palatine Hill, the Esquiline Hill,

  • and also even the Caelian Hill over here.

  • He dug an artificial -- or he had his architects dig an

  • artificial lake in the center of this, as you can see here.

  • And the Golden House was very extensive.

  • There's only one part of it that remains today,

  • under the--or as part of the Esquiline Hill in Rome,

  • and we therefore call it the Esquiline Wing of the Domus

  • Aurea of Nero.

  • This palace had an incredible set of gimmicks,

  • gimmicks that were so noteworthy that the names of the

  • architects have come down to us, the architect and engineer who

  • are responsible for this.

  • And I think it is largely they came down to us largely because

  • of these incredible gimmicks that they created for this

  • structure.

  • Their names were Severus and Celer;

  • Severus and Celer.

  • And I believe I have put their names on the Monument List for

  • you.

  • Yes I have, underneath the plan of the Esquiline Wing.

  • So Severus and Celer; their names suggest to us that

  • they were Roman architects, in fact.

  • And these gimmicks included a 125-foot statue of Nero himself,

  • a colossal stature--or the Colossus,

  • as it is designated here--a colossal statue of Nero

  • assimilated to the sun god Sol, S-o-l, the sun god Sol,

  • and it was done in bronze and it was done by a famous artist,

  • whose name we also know, Zenodorus--

  • I've also put his name on the Monument List for you--

  • Zenodorus, who was a very famous bronze caster.

  • So Zenodorus' Colossus, the gilded façade.

  • And what were some of the gimmicks that Severus and Celer

  • added to this palace?

  • When you ate in the dining hall, if you were invited as a

  • special guest to eat with Nero, while you were eating the

  • coffered ceilings of one of the dining rooms would drop on you

  • all kinds of wonderful fragrances and flower petals,

  • while you ate.

  • There was also a bath that gave you a choice of sea water and

  • salt water and water from the sulfur springs of Tivoli;

  • you had your choice, if you were bathing at Nero's

  • Domus Aurea.

  • And most spectacularly of all, and I think what Severus and

  • Celer had particular fame for, was they created a banqueting

  • room that had a revolving ceiling,

  • supposedly, a ceiling that revolved with the heavenly

  • bodies.

  • So an incredible array of gimmicks,

  • as I said before, in this extraordinary palace,

  • but all of them clearly possible vis-à-vis

  • architecture at this time.

  • I'm showing you here a plan of the Esquiline Wing.

  • This is the one part of the palace that survives today.

  • We'll talk about what happened to this palace in a later

  • lecture, but you can see it here.

  • Dozens and dozens of rooms around a five-sided court,

  • as you can see at this location.

  • And then here, what is the so-called octagonal

  • room of Nero's Domus Aurea, which is a remarkable room.

  • And I think it's fair to say the single most important room

  • that I will have shown you thus far this semester is the

  • octagonal room of Nero's Domus Aurea.

  • And you see it here.

  • You can see the plan of the octagon, and then the radiating

  • spaces out from it.

  • I'll return to that plan in just a moment.

  • Just to mention though, by using Google Earth again,

  • I can show you the particular location of the Esquiline Wing

  • on the Esquiline Hill today.

  • What happened to it eventually--and again I'm not

  • going to go into the details now but I will in the future--

  • after Nero's damnatio memoriae,

  • some of this was destroyed and much of it was incorporated into

  • later buildings.

  • Eventually a bath of the emperor Trajan ended up on this

  • site, and the emperor covered over

  • what remained of Nero's Domus Aurea,

  • what hadn't been razed to the ground,

  • and incorporated some of it into his later bath.

  • And, in fact, this hemicycle of Trajan's

  • Baths is actually the entranceway today of the Domus

  • Aurea.

  • You can see it right here, and you can see that the other

  • remains of both Trajan's Baths and of the Domus Aurea have been

  • incorporated into a modern garden,

  • a very attractive garden where you can wander and see some of

  • the remains of both.

  • And actually what you see here--it just shows how amazing

  • Google Earth is-- this circle that you see here

  • is actually-- it has a grate on top

  • today--but it is actually the oculus of Nero's

  • octagonal room, which is down below,

  • which is located underground.

  • So if you visit the Domus Aurea, which is,

  • as you can see, right near the Colosseum,

  • you go into the entranceway through the hemicycle of

  • Trajan's later baths, and you find yourself in a

  • series of corridors.

  • We've talked about these corridors before,

  • because we talked about the paintings that Fabullus did,

  • for Nero's Domus Aurea; first the Third Style paintings

  • and then the Fourth Style paintings.

  • And you'll remember that the Domus Aurea was described as

  • Fabullus' prison, because there were so many

  • rooms and corridors that it would take a whole lifetime to

  • paint them.

  • And you see some of those here: barrel vaulted corridors,

  • stuccoed over, and then painted in the Third

  • and Fourth styles.

  • Another gimmick that you see throughout the Domus Aurea are a

  • series of bridges that are built to carry water from one part of

  • the palace to another.

  • Another view here showing one of the corridors,

  • and what you see here is something that we have not

  • discussed yet, but is the wave of the future,

  • and that is concrete faced with brick.

  • After the fire there was realization--

  • the fire of 64--there was realization that stone burned

  • too easily, it was not an effective facing

  • any longer, and that they needed to come up

  • with something else.

  • Brick worked better with fire.

  • So the decision was taken to move--and this is not the tile

  • brick in Pompeii, this is real brick--and the

  • decision was taken to begin to use brick-faced construction for

  • these buildings.

  • At this time it was stuccoed over, as you can see here:

  • stucco, and then painted on top.

  • So you wouldn't have actually seen the brick in antiquity,

  • but we'll see it was not long until the Romans recognized that

  • brick was a very attractive material in its own right,

  • and began to leave it exposed.

  • But we're not there yet.

  • The paintings, the Fourth Style paintings of

  • Fabullus.

  • You'll remember this one that we've already looked at,

  • with the reintroduction of architectural fragments and the

  • architectural cages in the Domus Aurea.

  • This is the single--as I've already said--

  • the single most remarkable and important room that I've shown

  • you thus far this semester, the octagonal room in Nero's

  • Domus Aurea.

  • You see this cross-section plan, an axonometric view from

  • Ward-Perkins here.

  • And you can get a very good sense of this.

  • This is truly an octagonal room.

  • The experiment in the domed room, where they had inscribed a

  • circle into an octagon, gave them the idea that they

  • were going to try to make an actual octagonal room out of

  • concrete, and they succeed here.

  • You can see the eight sides of this room.

  • You can see it has a series of radiating alcoves,

  • but much bigger alcoves than we saw in the frigidaria at

  • Pompeii, or in the thermal bath at Baia,

  • and differently shaped ones-- not all the same,

  • but a couple are cross-shaped and others are rectangular--

  • different shapes.

  • And then the axonometric view shows you that within those

  • alcoves there are additional niches in some of the walls that

  • give more of a sculptural quality to this than has been

  • the case before.

  • And this again was no small feat on the part of these

  • architects.

  • Why is the Domus Aurea so important--excuse me--the

  • octagonal room of the Domus Aurea so important?

  • The octagonal room of the Domus Aurea--

  • and I've given you a number of bullet points here--

  • represents a break from the tyranny of the rectangle,

  • the tyranny of the rectangle that we know from Greek and

  • Etruscan architecture.

  • It enables vistas to be created in every direction,

  • and you know the importance to Romans of vistas and panoramas.

  • It creates one continuous envelope around an interior

  • space.

  • It fully realizes--this development has been long in

  • coming but we're finally there-- it fully realizes the technical

  • and expressive potentiality of Roman concrete construction.

  • It represents a switch of emphasis from solids to voids --

  • from walls and roofs that we saw in such buildings as the

  • Temple of Portunus, to the insubstantial space that

  • they enclose and shape.

  • It is the interior space, not the walls that matter now.

  • And in this new interior architecture,

  • light plays a key role: natural light that creates

  • drama, as well as illuminates.

  • The importance of the octagonal room of Nero's Domus Aurea

  • cannot be overstated!!!

  • The octagonal room heralds the Roman architectural revolution

  • that we saw already beginning at places like Palestrina,

  • but it is finally here, in its full-blown form;

  • whereas I said the potentiality of the expressiveness of Roman

  • concrete is fully realized.

  • This is the room itself, as it looks today.

  • We can see the octagon, we can see the dome.

  • We can see the way in which the octagon becomes the dome,

  • the eight sides and the way it is shaped to become the dome

  • above.

  • We can see some of the niches here.

  • We can see the way in which the spaces expand from the central

  • space, and we can see niches within those,

  • to give a greater sculptural quality to it.

  • And you can get a little bit of the sense of the light here.

  • This would have been elaborately decorated in

  • antiquity.

  • I show you a restored view.

  • All of those same marbles, from Egypt, from Africa,

  • from Asia Minor, from Greece,

  • all brought together here; lots of different colors.

  • This is what those Pompeians wished their walls actually

  • looked like.

  • But you see real marble revetted walls,

  • marble pavements, and then up above --

  • in all kinds of colors -- and then up above the ceiling

  • stuccoed over and also painted.

  • One can only imagine Nero entering into this octagonal

  • room, and how he must have felt.

  • And, in fact, we have a quote from Nero,

  • in which he says that when the Domus Aurea in Rome was

  • finished-- or he's reported to have said,

  • when the Domus Aurea in Rome was finished--

  • he's reported to have said, and I quote:

  • "At last, at last, I am going to be able

  • to be housed like a human being."

  • That was the way Nero thought about this.

  • He achieved his goal, undoubtedly,

  • at least for a short period of time before he died in 68.

  • And I believe--and I'm sure you agree with me--

  • I believe that it is for the Domus Aurea,

  • especially for the octagonal room of the Domus Aurea,

  • that Nero would have liked to be remembered,

  • and indeed he achieved his goal.

  • Thank you.

Prof: Good morning everyone.

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11.悪名高いネロと彼の驚くべき建築遺産 (11. Notorious Nero and His Amazing Architectural Legacy)

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    Sofi に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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