Layers of History

I figured it was about time I actually wrote something about Rome, since all I've really talked about was my traveling adventures outside of Rome. As much as Oktoberfest was amazing, I don't want to look like a crazy alcoholic. Anyway, our architecture classes here are really starting to get us walking around the city and seeing how much it really has to offer. In cartography, Allan is teaching us how you can understand Rome's history just by reading maps and being able to read building language. We're learning how to identify papal coats of arms and periods of architecture so can we easily date buildings and the surrounding area. Its amazing how much he can talk about an area just by looking at a building for a few minutes. In our analysis and studio classes, we're learning how to translate ancient architecture to modern-day, which honestly, is pretty useful being that I've found most of our architectural history classes kind of pointless up until now. We've been learning about the Renaissance, and how we can apply the same techniques they did in their buildings, and apply it to a modern style. We're using this idea in our studio projects as one of our major goals is contextualism in an ancient Roman urban fabric. We're also doing a competition for the first phase, so our professors want our projects to have a lot of thought behind them. The competition is called the Arturbain competition, and its a French competition. If we win, we would win some money and a trip to Paris. I'm not expecting anything, but our site is pretty challenging and interesting to work with. I also really enjoy the juxtaposition between modern architecture and ancient structures, so I'm excited to see where all of our projects go.

Main nave of San Clemente

We've had quite a few walks throughout Rome the past few weeks. Last week we walked down one of the old salt routes and found some of the ancient aqueducts that still exist in Rome today. The one we looked at empties into the Trevi fountain, which is one of the major landmarks in Rome. This past Wednesday, we went to San Clemente, a church near the Colosseum. The nave was very ornate, and clearly Baroque in the main area. Funnily enough, knowing the ceiling was Baroque won me a free cappuccino from my professor. It was worth it. The detailing in the church was very beautiful. The church was done with a technique called spoglia, which is essentially taking materials from several places and using them to build a new structure. If you look closely, this church has a lot of random bits of marble and other materials that are clearly from other ruins.
We weren't supposed to take pictures, but I decided I wanted to anyway. I figured as long as I wasn't making noise or using the flash that I wasn't really hurting anything (and I didn't see any scary Italian guards either...). We also visited the 4th century mausoleum that is under the nave of the church. It was much more basic down there, and the architecture was completely different. We're all realizing how you really can tell a building's story from looking at its architecture. So many buildings in Rome have been partially demolished and have had parts added and subtracted dozens of times. If you look closely enough, we can tell what happened when, and sometimes even why. It's a pretty fascinating thought.

Trajan's Markets

We also visited Trajan's Markets and Forum, which was quite a change of pace from San Clemente. The architecture here is clearly ancient, but its easy to tell what used to remain. They've transformed some of the main areas into a display for modern furniture. It was rather strange seeing such modern material in an ancient space, but the contrast was also pretty interesting. The bottom half of Trajan's markets is from ancient times. However, there is an entire layer that was built on top in medieval times. In Rome, it seems that builders usually just built on top of what remained instead of demolishing or reusing what already had existed. Its probably why Rome has such a dense culture and is such a unique city. Nothing looks the same, and most of the time, buildings don't match, and usually they had an entirely different look and function hundreds of years before.

Morning light

We had another walk today, and it was for cartography where we were following one of the prehistoric paths of Rome, defined by the seven hills. First we went into Santa Maria Maggiore, a huge church at the center of a piazza near where our route was. It was one of the pope's favorite churches and was near his villa, so the church got its own piazza. Its beautiful inside and outside, so I guess I can't blame him. We went to Santa Maria Maggiore early in the morning, so the light was coming through the stained glass windows perfectly on all of the marble columns. It was truly a beautiful sight, and its easy to see why so many of these church spaces are considered heavenly or ephemeral.

Our walk led us through some of the less pretty parts of Rome. Some of the streets were really worn down. A lot of the buildings in this area have a lot of history. You see where windows were filled in, and new windows were erected in a different place, or indentations where stairs once were, and a random opening that used to be a door. There are so many ways to be able to tell how Rome once was, whether its clues in the architecture or clues in the papal stone carvings or the detailing. I guess I'm starting to understand why they have us study in Rome. We'd never be able to do anything like that back in the United States. Our architecture just isn't old enough.

Nave of Basilica Santa Prassede

We went to another Basilica along the way on our walk. Its called Basilica di Santa Prassede. It ranged from having a medieval style to having Renaissance paintings and a Baroque baldacchino. The paintings were very ornate with a lot of Christian symbolism, ranging from the Holy Mother to the twelve apostles, to the evangelists. There was a service going on while we were in there, in one of the smaller rooms off of the main apse. They were singing, and for some reason, the sound was truly beautiful. I don't know if I just liked the song, or thought it sounded really nice in such a grand space. We also saw one of the smaller prayer rooms that were totally covered in mosaics. I've never seen mosaics that were so intact before, let alone an entire room of them.

This basilica was also a spoglia church. The floor was made from stolen columns, and a lot of the entablatures didn't match either. Though its not perfect, I feel that having such a random selection of material gives the space more character, and shows how much history is truly there.

I think that's all for now. I enjoy seeing so many types of churches. I hope we get to see more. We're visiting Rome's original port, Ostia Antica, tomorrow, and I should be visiting France next weekend. It all should be a lot of fun, and it should all be really interesting to see.

Ciao, a presto.