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Ancient Mediterranean + Europe
Course: Ancient Mediterranean + Europe > Unit 9
Lesson 2: Beginner guides to Roman architecture- Roman architecture
- Italo-Roman building techniques
- Roman domestic architecture (domus)
- Roman domestic architecture: the villa
- Roman domestic architecture (insula)
- Forum Romanum (The Roman Forum)
- The Roman Forum: part 1 of Ruins in Modern Imagination
- The Roman Forum, part II
- The Roman Forum, part III
- Views of past and present: the Forum Romanum and archaeological context
- Imperial fora
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The Roman Forum: part 1 of Ruins in Modern Imagination
The Roman Forum, the cultural and administrative center of ancient Rome, evolved over centuries. It witnessed the settling of Romulus and Remus, the reign of emperors, and the shift from pagan to Christian Rome. Modern archaeology reveals the layers of this historical site. Ruins in Modern Imagination: The Roman Forum (part 1), an ARCHES video. Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- How long is a millennium?(1 vote)
- A millenium is 1000 years.
A century is 100 years.
A decade is 10 years,(2 votes)
- why are Rome being ruined?(1 vote)
- the ottoman empire was better(1 vote)
- All hail the ottoman empire!(1 vote)
- ok, why do they need to restore, like its more fun/important/ good to think of what it was in the past u get me, thus imagining a hole roman City, ya not to many people are up for that challenge. so, tell me w-h-y?(0 votes)
- There are many things "behind" a restoration. Some involve preserving a bit of the past so that it can be appreciated by contemporary people and our posterity. Others might have to do with spending money to employ many people in what is, essentially, a public works project. A related question might be, "What would you like to see being done with this land in the middle of a major European city?" Perhaps a Grand Prix auto race track. Perhaps high-end apartment buildings for rich people. How about shelters for the homeless?(2 votes)
Video transcript
(lighthearted music) - [Steven] We're in Rome on
a glorious sunny December day standing on the capital line
looking across the Roman Forum. - [Beth I think today for most visitors, this is a very overwhelming place. It's hard to piece together what's here we see ancient stones,
rows of ancient columns, some buildings intact,
monumental, triumphal arches, the Colosseum in the distance. - [Steven] I think many
visitors to the Forum come and in their minds try to reconstruct what this would have looked
like when Rome was an empire. - [Beth} When we look at the fragments, we clearly understand those as ruins but we don't realize that many
of them have been restored have been re erected. We also see arches like the Arch of Titus, and it's very easy to
imagine that we're looking at the arch as it stood in antiquity. And the long passage of
more than a millennium and a half vanishes. - [Steven] So when we
walk through these ruins, what we're seeing are reminders
not only of antiquity, not only of the later
Medieval, the Renaissance and the Baroque, but
also the interventions of modern archeology. And one of the things we
wanna do in this video is to identify the way that
this space has been understood and used over the years. - [Beth] A place we need
to begin is to understand the critical importance of this site for ancient Rome itself. This is where Romulus and Remus settled where Rome built their
temple to their supreme god, Jupiter Optimist Maximus
on the Capitoline Hill. We can look over at the Palatine
Hill where the Emperor's built their palaces and then this valley that was this critically
important central civic space for ancient Rome for hundreds of years. - [Steven] This Valley
was the administrative and cultural center of the city of Rome and the city of Rome,
in turn was the center of the Roman Empire. And so there is no more important site. - [Beth] So we're talking about
one of the greatest empires the world has ever
known one that stretched from England to the Levant, North Africa embraced so many different peoples, and that grew over centuries. So starting at the small city, and eventually conquering
much of the Mediterranean. - [Steven] If we look to our left, we can see the reconstructed Senate. This is a reminder of
Rome before the Empire when Rome was a republic behind that, are the Imperial Fora, where emperors created
spaces to honor themselves at a time when there was
no more room to build here. - [Beth] And so the Forum
as a place where the Civic and religious life of the
ancient Romans came together, there were spaces dedicated to emperors dedicated to their favorite
gods, there were places to offer sacrifices
that the far eastern end is the ruins of an enormous structure that we know is the Basilica
of Maxentius and Constantine, important administrative building. This is not a site that was built at once and then stayed the same. But that evolved over centuries, as emperors wanted to
identify with the space, and they built around it
and continue to expand it. - [Steven] And so this was
under continuous renewal in the ancient world, but
change didn't stop then. Slowly over time, Rome
became a Christian city. By the fourth century, CE, we see a dramatic change, from
the pagan to the Christian and the Emperor who's most associated with that is Constantine,
who according to tradition, converted to Christianity on his deathbed. - [Beth] And ultimately, by
the end of the fourth century, Rome becomes officially Christian. And so buildings that were once Hagen become reused as Christian spaces. - [Steven] And this is
important because this preserve those ancient buildings. Ancient buildings were often pillaged, were often dismantled for
their high quality stone and reused unless they happen
to be reused as churches. And in that case, they were preserved. - [Beth] We can think of the
church of Santa Maria Antigua, so we're looking at pagan Rome, but we're also looking at Christian Rome. There's also the church of
saints Cosmas and Damian, which was built from pagan remains. - [Steven] And it's important
to remember that it was during the reign of Constantine
that Rome lost its status as the capital of the Empire. The capital was moved far to the east to the city that was
renamed Constantinople, which we now call Istanbul. So the Roman Empire then had two centers. It had this new administrative
and political capital in the east and it had this
historical capital in the west. - [Beth] But importantly here in the West, in the early fifth century,
the city of Rome was invaded and conquered, Italy itself was overrun by people we call the
Ostrogoths and the Visigoths and ultimately caused the dissolution of this once united Empire. - [Steven] And after the fourth century, the Roman Empire really only
continues to exist in the east. - [Beth] The Christian
buildings in the Roman Forum remain in use. Pilgrims come from all over to visit Rome to visit the church
that Constantine created on the other side of the Tiber River, the Church of St. Peter's. - [Steven] And it was
during the Medieval period that Rome experiences an
enormous drop in its population what was once an enormous
Metropolitan center becomes largely emptied
out and in fact, the Forum gains a new nickname, The Cow Pasture. It is a largely abandoned space where animals now were grazing. - [Beth] The idea of
the Forum as overgrown with vegetation as a place that was ideal for grazing animals is hard
to imagine for us today and in some ways was probably
very beautiful with all of this natural overgrowth
over these beautiful ruins. - [Steven] Well, we can get
a sense of how different the Forum looked before the modern era if we look at the Prince of Piranesi. One of the first things we
notice is that the ground level was much higher than it is now. Over time debris accumulates,
soil accumulates, the churches that were built on the Forum were built with their
entrances 20 feet higher than the present ground level. And so what we're seeing in the modern era is the result of modern excavations. - [Beth] The result of
centuries of archeology and archeology that at various
times had different goals. So in the 18th century, the
goal was different than it was, for example, in the early
20th century with Mussolini and modern archeologists
today have different values than the archeologists of the past. Today were more reluctant
to dig all the way down to the classical remains. We're also concerned
about the medieval era. But there was a time
when all that mattered For example, in the 18th
century, in the 17th century were those classical remains. So let's talk about that rediscovering of classical antiquity, this new interest in what was here that began
in the 14th and 15th century in the beginnings of the Renaissance. (lighthearted music)