ANCIENT ROMAN BUILDINGS

The emperor Augustus boasted that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble.

The Romans had earlier imported marble from Greece, but newly discovered quarries in northern Italy gave the emperor an abundance of gleaming white stone. His sculptors and architects observed Greek models and then borrowed elements to develop their own Roman-style buildings.

As the empire grew, it required extensive new public construction. When the old Roman Forum could no longer cope with the commercial and political demands of the growing city, for example, Augustus constructed the adjoining Forum of Augustus and decorated it with sculpture and inscriptions honoring great Romans of the past. Architects used Greek columns, but adapted them to enhance a distinctly Roman architectural setting.

In the 1st century AD the Romans made greater use of concrete. Roman architects molded arches, vaults, and even domes from concrete, faced with bricks for added strength and decorated with an exterior layer of marble or stucco. After Nero's death, his successor, Vespasian, constructed a great amphitheater on the ruins of Nero's official residence as a palace for the masses.

The building, called the Colosseum, took its name from the 120-foot colossus, or statue, of Nero as a sun god. Concrete enabled the architects of the great amphitheater to build tunnels that allowed easy access for spectators. This feature is still included in the design of modern football stadiums.

The use of concrete also allowed the Romans to enclose larger spaces for their baths and other rectangular structures called basilicas. Emperors from Augustus to Constantine built new forums or added basilicas to existing forums to provide space for the public and private business of a growing empire. During his reign, Trajan (AD 98-117) constructed vast markets for distributing food. The vaulted hall in the Forum of Trajan continues today as a site for special exhibitions. The Romans built to last. The greatest tribute to Roman engineering is that so many buildings, roads, bridges, and aqueducts remain in use after 2,000 years.

The Romans also built some strikingly beautiful structures that have influenced architecture throughout the centuries. Hadrian probably designed the temple that he erected between AD 118 and 128. This magnificent building was called the Pantheon because it was dedicated to "all the gods." It is considered by many to be the greatest of all Roman temples.

Its consecration as a church in the early 7th century allowed it to survive intact, though the external marble facing is now gone. The bare brick exterior gives no sense of the interior space capped by a large dome, which later became an important feature in Byzantine, Islamic, and Renaissance architecture. The center of the dome is pierced with a 27-foot-wide opening called an oculus that floods the building's interior with natural light.

Roman public buildings were usually decorated with elaborate relief sculpture that often introduced divine elements into specific historical scenes. In the Altar of Augustan Peace, now reconstructed beside the Tiber River, scenes of Roman gods and mythic characters such as Mars, Venus, and Aeneas accompany a procession of the entire imperial family. Greek workers carved these sculptures, but the themes of myth, family, fertility, and religious devotion are purely Roman.

The most elaborate Roman historical relief is the 700-foot frieze that winds around the ten-story Trajan's Column.

Military architects drew detailed pictures of Trajan's conquest of Dacia, which sculptors in Rome recreated in marble. The 2,500 figures in the frieze are extraordinarily exact, and excavations have also confirmed the accuracy of barbarian costumes and buildings.

The armies are shown fighting battles, building camps, and besieging cities, while the emperor encourages his troops. Several divine figures also appear in this otherwise realistic depiction: The river Danube, portrayed as a person, stares at the ships, and Victory brings a storm to save the Romans from defeat. Trajan's Column still stands in Rome, topped by a statue of Saint Peter where the original image of Trajan once stood.







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