Prof: Good morning
everyone, and welcome back,
after what I hope was a great
spring break.
This lecture,
that I'm going to deliver this
morning,
has been an inspiration to
students who have selected
Option 3 for their paper topic:
"How to design a Roman
city."
Because this lecture has it all.
 
It has great architecture;
it has an extraordinary patron
-- a man who traveled the
Empire,
to all kinds of exotic places,
some of which we'll be talking
about today and some of which
we'll be talking about in the
future;
a love triangle;
some of the best buildings that
we'll see in the course of this
semester, including the Pantheon
and also Hadrian's Villa at
Tivoli.
 
The patron Hadrian,
whom I show you in a portrait
from Rome, now on the left-hand
side of the screen,
was an extraordinary man.
 
He was born in 76 A.D.,
and he became emperor at the
age of 41, after having served
with Trajan for a number of
years.
 
He was born,
like Trajan before him,
in Spain, not in Italy,
and he also was the most
educated,
one of the most educated,
and most intellectual of the
Roman emperors.
We'll talk about the impact
that that intellect had on his
architecture.
 
I mentioned that he already--he
also liked to travel.
He traveled extensively during
his reign,
had three major trips that had
an enormous impact on his
architecture,
and also on architecture around
the Empire.
 
And it's also important I think
to know that he reversed
Trajan's policy.
 
You'll remember that Trajan's
major political policy had to do
with military conquest,
that Trajan was involved in a
number of very important wars,
and he celebrated those wars,
and he extended the Empire to
its furthest reaches,
reaches that were never gone
beyond for the rest of the Roman
Empire.
 
Hadrian reversed that policy.
 
He was a peace loving man.
 
He had no interest in being
involved in these kinds of
military exploits;
although he had served with
Trajan in some of them,
in earlier years,
he had no desire to continue
that on.
And he was much more concerned
with consolidating and
preserving the Empire,
as expanded by Trajan.
And so one of his greatest
claims to fame is the great
wall,
the famous Wall of Hadrian that
he built in order to separate
the Roman Empire,
the Greco-Roman Empire,
from the rest of the Empire,
this great wall that divided
Greco-Roman civilization from
the barbarian world that lay
outside.
And there are fragments of that
wall, a quite extensive part of
that wall that still survives in
Europe today.
You can see it in Britain,
and I show you an example of
some of those remains here on
the right-hand side of the
screen, that is,
of Hadrian's Wall.
Hadrian was also a great
philhellene, and you notice in
that portrait that I just showed
you that he wore a beard.
And, in fact,
he's the first Roman emperor to
wear a beard.
 
Beards were not worn by Romans
up to this time,
but they were worn by Greeks,
and we believe that he wore
that beard,
in large part,
to look more Greek.
 
We also know that,
although he wore a toga in
public,
he was known for wearing the
Greek himation,
in private, and he did that,
we think,
in large part because of his
love for Greece and for Greek
culture.
He was so philhellenic in his
leanings that he received the
nickname "The
Greekling,"
and we'll see,
as we look at his architecture,
the impact that his love of
Greece had on that architecture.
In fact, what I'd like to do
today is to begin with the most
Greek of Hadrian's buildings,
a building that we think he may
have designed himself,
because we also know that
Hadrian was an amateur
architect;
Hadrian himself was an amateur
architect.
And we think he designed this
very building,
the so-called Temple of Venus
and Roma.
He was also particularly
interested, by the way,
in religious architecture.
 
Most of his public building was
religious architecture,
temples, this being one of
them: the Temple of Venus and
Roma,
a temple put up to Roma,
as the patron goddess of the
city of Rome,
and to Venus as the patron
goddess of the Roman family.
And you'll remember that Venus
was a special favorite of Julius
Caesar,
and of Augustus,
and those two thought of her as
the special patron of the Julian
family.
 
So we also see Hadrian here,
conjuring up,
I think, his connections to the
earlier dictators and emperor
Julius Caesar,
and Augustus,
by his emphasis on Venus.
 
So this Temple to Venus and
Roma.
You'll see that we don't have a
precise date for this monument.
We think it was put up sometime
between 121 and 135.
We know it was dedicated in 135.
 
It seems to have been long in
the making.
So it's hard to categorize it
as either an early- or a mid- or
a late-Hadrianic building,
because it does seem to have
been in production for quite
some time.
I show you two plans of the
Temple of Venus and Roma,
because there's controversy
about which plan most accurately
reflects the original Hadrianic
temple.
Because we know the temple was
-- while it was built under
Hadrian and dedicated in 135,
we know that it burned down in
a very serious fire in Rome,
in the late third century A.D.,
and then was renovated by an
emperor,
whom we'll talk about later in
the semester,
by the name of Maxentius,
M-a-x-e-n-t-i-u-s;
it was renovated by Maxentius
in 307 A.D.
And we think Maxentius kept
quite closely to the original
Hadrianic plan,
but we're not absolutely sure
about that.
 
So that some of the
discrepancies that you see
between these two plans may have
to do with the discrepancies
between the original building
and the eventual renovation.
But you will see that in the
main these two plans--
and the one on the left-hand
side of the screen is the one
that's on your Monument List
that you have in front of you.
The one on the right-hand side
of the screen is the one in your
Ward-Perkins textbook.
 
But if you look at its most
outstanding features,
you will see that most of them
are similar to one another,
that the main features of these
two buildings--
of these two plans--are the
same.
And you should be immediately
struck by these plans,
both of these plans,
and how different they are from
what we have characterized as
the typical Roman temple;
that typical Roman temple,
usually with a single cella,
with a deep porch,
with freestanding columns in
that porch,
with a façade
orientation.
 
This is very different indeed,
no matter which of these two
plans you look at.
 
Because you will see that this
large temple has a double cella,
two cellas, back-to-back--and
you see it in both plans--
two cellas back-to-back.
 
Well the reason for that is
obvious, because it commemorates
two divinities,
Venus and Roma,
and each one needed to have a
cella.
But these are not cellas within
a larger cella,
located side by side,
as in the Capitoline Triad
Temple,
but rather two that are
back-to-back,
two that are back-to-back.
Now what this does is take away
the façade orientation of
the building and give us two
facades, in a sense,
one on either side.
 
So we see that in both of these.
 
We also see that the columns go
all the way around the
structure, and so does the
staircase go all the way around
the structure;
we see that in both plans.
And then there is a large
precinct that also has columns
around it.
 
I can also tell you,
you can take on faith,
that this building also has a
low podium.
So what we see here is a temple
that looks much more Greek than
it looks Roman;
in fact, as I said,
it doesn't look anything like
the typical Roman temples that
we've been talking about today.
 
Why is this?
 
This has to do with the fact
that Hadrian was a philhellene,
that he was enamored of Greek
architecture,
and that he opted,
in this case when he himself
appears to have been the
architect of this building,
Hadrian, amateur architect,
seems to have designed this
building himself.
 
We see that when he was left
entirely to his own devices,
he wanted to build a Greek
temple in Rome,
and that is exactly what he
did.
Now also important
vis-à-vis this temple is
location, location,
location.
This building is located at the
edge of the Roman Forum,
closest to the Colosseum,
and on the Velia;
you'll remember the Velia where
the Arch of Titus is located,
the Arch of Titus.
 
And you'll remember that that
was the area that the Flavian
dynasts chose to build their
buildings on,
in order to raze to the ground
Nero's earlier Domus
Transitoria,
and build their own buildings
in its place.
 
So we see Hadrian continuing on
in that same tradition,
returning to the Roman people
land that had originally been
theirs,
that had been stolen by Nero,
by building,
in this case,
a religious structure on that
site instead.
So that also extremely
important.
To get back for a moment to the
plan,
we see again the major
difference between these two
versions is that in this case
there is a flat back wall for
each of the individual cellas;
for this one,
a niche on either side,
niches back to back,
almost kissing,
as you can see here.
And then you can also see
another difference is the walls
are very elaborately scalloped
in this plan,
which we can see in the
Maxentian renovation that still
exists;
and I'll show it to you in a
moment.
 
But again, we're not sure if
that was a Maxentian innovation,
in the early fourth century
A.D., those back-to-back apses
and scalloped walls,
or whether they come from the
original--
whether they restore what was
in the original Hadrianic
building.
I tend to prefer the one on the
left because there is every
evidence that we already have
all of these features in Roman
architecture.
 
Think to the Flavian Palace on
the Palatine,
Domitian's Palace,
where we saw the scalloped
walls in the Aula Regia,
and where we certainly saw
these niches with vaults of
heaven,
semi-vaults up above them.
 
So everything was in place to
have that kind of structure;
so it's certainly not
inconceivable in the Hadrianic
period.
 
Here's a view of the Temple of
Venus and Roma as it looks as if
you are standing atop the
Colosseum, and taking a picture
back toward it.
 
And this is very useful,
because it shows you--
this is not a high podium,
this is just the difference in
ground level,
once again--ancient ground
level being lower than modern
ground level--
and some of the structures that
lay below originally of Nero's
Domus Transitoria,
for example,
that this building was built
on.
Here you can actually see the
podium of the temple,
and you can see that it is very
low, compared to what we're used
to.
 
We're looking back at one of
those niches.
You can see the semi-dome here,
as well as the relationship of
it to the Arch of Titus,
and the Velia,
which once again points out the
fact that we are dealing here
with a building that was put on
property that had originally
been the location of Nero's
Domus Transitoria.
Here are three very useful
views, one showing that same
niche closer up,
taken from the Colosseum;
one of those back to back
niches, as it looks today.
And then this one,
over here, which is the other
niche,
which is preserved inside a
later building that was
transformed into a museum of the
Forum Romanum,
at one point.
We see it here,
and you can see in both cases
the semi-dome.
 
You can see the concrete
construction,
faced with brick.
 
In this one,
which is better preserved in
large part because it was in
part indoors,
we can see the columns on
either side of the niche,
and we also see that scalloped
wall that I described before,
just like the Aula Regia,
with niches flanked by columns.
And you can see the beginning
of a coffered vault.
We're not absolutely sure it
was barrel vaulted,
but we think the building was
barrel vaulted.
We also see,
on the left,
I remind you of the octagonal
room designed by Rabirius,
for Domitian's Palace on the
Palatine,
to underscore again the kinds
of experiments that Rabirius was
making,
that had such an impact,
as we shall see today,
on Hadrian and his own
architectural designs.
 
You'll remember that room.
 
You'll remember that it has a
segmented vault.
You will remember that it's
treated very much like
sculpture: that it has niches;
that it has niches within
niches, windows within niches,
doorways within niches;
all of them done in an
asymmetrical way,
that makes the design
particularly interesting.
Rabirius and his architecture,
very influential on Hadrian.
Keep in mind that Hadrian,
once Domitian--
I mentioned this to you when we
talked about Domitian's Palace--
once Domitian built that
palace, it was the palace that
all the emperors,
from that time to the end of
late-antiquity,
lived in.
Hadrian was no exception.
 
When he was in Rome,
he lived in that palace,
and he was therefore seeing and
experiencing the shapes,
the architectural shapes
designed by Rabirius,
on a daily basis.
 
He liked that octagonal room,
in particular,
and the others like it in the
palace, and it clearly had an
impact on him,
as we shall see.
The last point I want to make
about the Temple of Venus and
Roma, by the way,
has to do with materials.
We have been talking about the
increasing use of marble in
Roman architecture:
under Augustus,
marble from Luna or Carrara;
under Nero and the Flavians,
marble from all over the world,
from Asia Minor,
from Africa,
of all different colors.
Hadrian, the philhellene,
returns to using Greek marble
for his buildings,
and the Temple of Venus and
Roma is made of Proconnesian
marble,
P-r-o-c-o-n-n-e-s-i-a-n--I
think I got that right--
Proconnesian marble that comes
from Greece.
It's a blue veined marble.
 
He was particularly fond of it,
and he used it for the Temple
of Venus and Roma.
 
I want to turn from the Temple
of Venus and Roma to the much
more famous temple that Hadrian
constructed.
If the Temple of Venus and Roma
was to two gods,
Venus and Roma,
Hadrian's Pantheon was to all
the gods,
which is what pantheon
means,
to all the gods--a temple to
all the gods that he built in
Rome between 118 and 128 A.D.
You see a Google Earth image of
it here, the Pantheon,
surrounded by modern
structures.
It is one of the greatest
masterpieces of architecture of
all times.
 
In fact, if you were to ask a
group of architectural experts
to make a list of the ten
greatest buildings ever built,
it's hard for me to believe
that not every one of them would
at least list somewhere in that
list of ten the Pantheon;
not only because it's a great
building in its own right,
but because it has had such an
enormous impact on architecture
in Roman times,
as we'll see in later lectures,
but also on architecture in
post-antique times;
an extraordinarily influential
building.
And there are some--and I would
be one of them,
maybe I'd be the only one;
I hope not--who would list the
Pantheon as the greatest
building ever built by man or
woman, of any time,
in any place.
And you can see,
as we look at it together
today, whether you think I come
close or I'm way off the mark on
that.
 
But I believe vehemently that
it was the greatest building
ever built, and it remains an
extraordinary structure to see
and to experience.
 
You see it here--oh,
and by the way,
although I mentioned that
Hadrian was an amateur
architect,
we don't know the name of the
architect for the Pantheon.
 
Do I think it was Hadrian?
 
Absolutely not.
 
Hadrian was not this good.
 
He was an amateur architect,
not a professional architect.
This is an extraordinary work
of art.
He may have had some input,
he undoubtedly did.
Because we're going to see that
the Pantheon is at the same time
complex and simple;
it's also traditional and
innovative.
 
And what we're going to see
Hadrian and his architect doing
here,
and also doing at the Villa at
Tivoli,
is combining,
in an extraordinary way,
traditional Roman and
innovative Roman architecture.
 
Concrete construction,
and the original vocabulary of
Greek architecture,
namely columns,
combined in the same place.
 
And he was highly influenced in
this regard by his predecessor
Trajan.
 
Think of the Markets and Forum
of Trajan,
the way in which we had
combined, in the same complex,
a traditional forum and a very
innovative marketplace.
We're going to see the same
thing in the Pantheon.
We're going to see the same
thing at Hadrian's Villa at
Tivoli.
 
So Trajan exerting--Trajan and
Apollodorus of Damascus,
exerting a very strong
influence, as did Rabirius,
on the architecture of Hadrian.
 
Again this Google Earth image
is useful, because it shows us
the building in its modern
environment.
But it's important to keep in
mind that the Pantheon in Rome
was part of a complex in
antiquity,
as most temples were,
temples that were in
sanctuaries,
temples that were in fora.
We've seen that in the course
of this semester that they
usually did not stand in
isolation, but were part of
architectural complexes.
 
We see that here.
 
This model is very helpful in
that regard,
because it shows us that there
was a rectangular forecourt:
that that forecourt had covered
colonnades on either side;
that there was some sort of
entranceway here,
possibly an arch,
possibly an altar also,
to all the gods,
in front of the temple;
and then the temple itself,
the Pantheon itself.
Now this model is also very
useful in the sense that it
gives you an idea of what you
actually would have seen,
if you had walked into this
complex,
into this open rectangular
space, and walked toward the
Pantheon.
 
What would you actually have
seen?
Well all that you would have
actually seen was the porch,
the porch, which had an attic
behind it,
which screened the cylindrical
drum and the dome from the
viewer.
 
So if you were standing here,
all you would have seen was
this porch.
 
Now this porch is very
traditional.
It looks like other Roman
temples, the fronts of facades
of Roman temples that we've
looked at before.
It looks like other Greek
temples, because what you would
have seen was the pediment,
columns supporting that
pediment.
 
It was a typical Roman temple,
from the front:
deep porch;
free-standing columns in that
porch;
single staircase;
façade orientation.
 
Very different from the Temple
of Venus and Roma;
much more Roman looking.
 
And then a high podium;
a high podium,
which we already mentioned the
Temple of Venus and Roma did not
have.
 
That's what you would have
seen, as you were standing in
front of it.
 
You would have thought,
well this is very much in
keeping with other Roman
temples.
But of course there was a
surprise when one walked through
the doors;
and that is the very essence of
Hadrianic architecture,
the surprise that one gets when
one actually goes from the
outside of the building into the
inside of a building.
 
Before we do that,
I just want to show you the
back of the cylindrical--
because this traditional porch
shielded a very innovative
cylindrical drum,
supported by a hemispherical
dome, as you can see here.
The construction technique the
same,
as we've seen from the time of
Augustus,
from the time of the Temple of
Mercury at Baia,
the use of concrete
construction,
faced with brick.
 
It's more sophisticated here
than it has ever been before,
and we can see that the
architect has relieved the
severity of the structure by
adding three cornices--
you can see two of them at
least here;
there's another one down
here--three cornices.
And you can also see very
interestingly these brick
arches,
which tell us a great deal
about Roman building practice
during this period,
especially obviously for the
use of concrete construction.
Because what those were used
for is to help keep the concrete
from settling.
 
After the wet concrete had been
poured, those arches keep it
from settling,
until it dries.
And then once it dries,
those arches are no longer
needed,
because the building,
the concrete walls support the
building on their own,
and support the dome on their
own.
And they're no longer needed,
but of course they're left
there, and then they have a
certain aesthetic value in the
aftermath.
 
And so you can see very clearly
here,
as you look at what is
preserved--and the building is
extremely well preserved,
the back of the building--you
can see reference to that
construction.
These diagrams,
both the plan of the structure,
the cross-section and the
diagram on the left-hand side,
also give us some very
interesting and important
information.
 
They show us that the circular
drum was internally half the
height of the diameter.
 
You can see that in the diagram
on the left-hand side of the
screen,
of the diameter of the
structure, and that it was
surmounted by a hemispherical
dome,
the crown of which is the exact
distance,
the same exact distance.
So this was very carefully
orchestrated by the architect to
achieve what he needed to
achieve here.
You can also see,
if you look at the plan,
that again the predecessors for
this are clearly the
frigidaria at Pompeii,
the thermal bath at Baia --
this round structure with the
radiating apses,
very similar,
but of course done in much,
much grander scale.
 
Now with regard to--and this is
the façade of the
Pantheon,
of course, as it looks
today--with regard to how they
made this happen,
how they were able to take the
small-scale frigidaria,
the slightly larger Temple of
Mercury,
the larger still Domus Aurea of
Nero,
or the domed room in the Domus
Transitoria,
and turn it into the Pantheon
ultimately,
has to do in part not only with
the skill of the architects,
has to do in part also with the
increasing sophistication that
we've been talking about quite
consistently of the use of
concrete construction by the
Romans,
but also has to do with the
recipe for concrete.
We haven't talked about the
recipe for concrete,
since the time of Caligula,
when we talked about the fact
that he had made some
adjustments.
Well Hadrian made some
adjustments, or Hadrian and his
architects made some adjustments
as well, during Hadrian's reign.
And what they did was they--two
things.
They decreased the thickness,
they decreased the thickness of
the walls,
from bottom to top,
and they also did what Caligula
had done before,
but did it even more so,
by mixing--
using as an aggregate,
at the base of the dome,
they used heavy stone,
a basalt, a very heavy,
thick basalt.
 
But when they got toward the
top, they mixed,
or the idea was when they got
toward the top,
they would mix in as an
aggregate a porous pumice,
which was much,
much lighter,
and that's essentially how they
achieved their goals.
Now before I talk about the
exterior of the structure,
and take you through the
building, I want to mention one
very interesting exchange
between Hadrian and Trajan's
architect,
Apollodorus of Damascus.
You'll remember that I said
that the Temple of Venus and
Roma we think was designed by
Hadrian himself.
And at one point
Hadrian--Apollodorus was still
alive and highly respected--
and at one point Hadrian went
to Apollodorus to ask him for
his thoughts on the designs that
Hadrian was doing for the plans,
that Hadrian was doing for the
Temple of Venus and Roma,
which tells us--if you wondered
where I got--
how we know that Hadrian was an
amateur architect,
it's because of this passage,
because it tells us that
Hadrian was doing some designing
and that he was designing the
Temple of Venus and Roma.
And we fortunately have the
Roman senator of eastern birth,
Dio Cassius--D-i-o,
new word, C-a-s-s-i-u-s,
Dio Cassius,
a Roman senator of eastern
birth--
who wrote a history of Rome in
the third century A.D.,
gives us an account of this
interaction between Hadrian and
Apollodorus of Damascus.
And although I don't like to
read to you,
I am going to read to you from
this quote,
because it is so critical for
our understanding,
both of the Pantheon and for
Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli.
So bear with me as a read this,
a bit longish quote.
So Cassius Dio tells us,
and I quote:
"Hadrian first drove into
exile,
and then put to death
Apollodorus, who had carried out
many of Trajan's building
projects.
The pretext given for Hadrian's
action was Apollodorus had been
guilty of some serious offence,
but the truth is that when
Trajan was at one time
consulting with Apollodorus,
about a certain problem
connected with his
buildings"--
that is Trajan's
buildings--"the architect
said to Hadrian--";
so this seems to have been
before even Hadrian become
emperor.
 
"The architect said to
Hadrian, who had interrupted
them with some advice,
'Go away and draw your
pumpkins.
 
You know nothing about these
problems.'
For it so happened that Hadrian
was at that time priding himself
on some sort of drawing.
 
When he became emperor"--
that is when Hadrian became
emperor--
"he remembered the insult
and refused to put up with
Apollodorus' outspokenness.
He sent him the plan for the
Temple of Venus and Roma,
in order to demonstrate that it
was possible for a great work to
be conceived without
Apollodorus' help,
and asked him"--that is,
Hadrian asked
Apollodorus--"if he thought
the building was well designed.
Apollodorus sent a reply saying
that as far the Temple of Venus
and Roma was concerned,
it should have been placed in a
higher position."
 
It should've had a high podium,
not a low podium,
according to Apollodorus,
who goes on to say,
"'With regard to the cult
images--
'" Apollodorus goes on to
say,
"'With regard to the cult
images,
they were made on a scale which
was too great for the height of
the cella,
for if the goddesses should
wish to stand up and leave the
temple,' he said,
'they would be unable to do so.'
 
When he wrote all of this so
bluntly, Hadrian was both
irritated and deeply pained,
he had the man slain."
Now the pumpkins--what's
critical about this,
it tells us two things that are
absolutely essential in our
understanding of Hadrianic
architecture:
one,
that Hadrian was doing
designing on his own,
that he was an amateur
architect, and he seems to be
very much involved in the design
of the Temple of Venus and Roma.
 
It also tells us that Hadrian
was making some drawings of
pumpkin domes.
 
What are pumpkin domes?
 
Well pumpkin domes are
undoubtedly segmented domes.
They are just the kind of dome
that Rabirius did for the
octagonal rooms in the Palatine
palace;
rooms that Hadrian was exposed
to by living in that palace
himself, obviously fond of them,
liked them, started to draw his
own pumpkins.
 
And we're going to see that
those pumpkins--well we don't
have a pumpkin dome in the
Pantheon, as we'll see probably
fortunately.
 
But we do have them at
Hadrian's Villa.
And so again very critical for
you to be aware of this
interesting exchange,
very momentous exchange between
Hadrian and Apollodorus.
 
We see here the façade
of the Pantheon,
as it looks today.
 
You have to think away this
very attractive but nonetheless
mars the view,
of the façade of the
Pantheon,
that was put up in the
Renaissance.
 
And you have to imagine the
building now stands in
isolation, without its
colonnades and without its
forecourt.
 
So you have to try to imagine
them.
But you can see how very well
preserved the Pantheon is.
The ground level has shifted,
so we don't see the very tall
podium that was once there,
although there have been some
excavations around it,
that demonstrate that it is
indeed there,
or part of it is indeed there.
But we can see the columns
across the front.
We can see an inscription.
 
We can see the pediment and the
attic.
And this is a good view because
although you see the dome
peeping up a little bit on the
top,
it gives you some sense of when
you stood in the colonnade,
walking toward it,
the forecourt,
walking toward it,
that you would have only seen
essentially the most traditional
part of the building,
and that is the columns
supporting the pediment,
with the dome behind.
 
This is a detail of the
inscription of the building.
We can also see the columns.
 
You can see that they are grey
granite--I've a better view in a
moment--grey granite with white
marble capitals.
The inscription is fascinating.
 
It tells us that M. AGRIPPA,
Marcus Agrippa--that's the
famous Marcus Agrippa,
the childhood friend,
confidant, son-in-law,
firsthand man,
one-time heir to Augustus--
Marcus Agrippa;
L.F., Lucius Filius,
the son of Lucius;
COS, consul;
consul; TERTIUM,
for the third time;
FECIT, made it.
This tells us Marcus Agrippa,
Consul for the third time,
son of Lucius,
made it;
made the Pantheon.
 
What's that all about?
 
Marcus Agrippa lived in the age
of Augustus.
Well we know there was an
earlier Pantheon on this site,
that Marcus Agrippa was
responsible for commissioning.
Marcus Agrippa,
like Augustus,
commissioned a lot of buildings
in Rome.
He also commissioned them in
the provinces.
We'll look at some of those
when we go out to the provinces.
Marcus Agrippa,
a major building program in
Rome, including a pantheon,
a temple to all the gods.
And we don't--that pantheon no
longer exists,
although there have been some
excavations that have discovered
some of it underneath the
current building.
But it stood on this very site,
and we know,
from a literary description,
that it had a caryatid porch,
which is perhaps not
surprising, in the context of
Augustan architecture.
 
You'll remember the caryatids,
in the Forum of Augustus that
we looked at earlier in the
term.
So we know that Marcus Agrippa
actually built Rome's first
pantheon, his first temple to
the gods on this very site.
When Hadrian built his own
pantheon,
on the same site,
he decided to piously reference
the earlier building of Marcus
Agrippa,
telling us that Marcus Agrippa
made this,
made a building that originally
stood on this site,
which he is basically very
modestly saying he restored.
Of course, this building that
he made has nothing to do
undoubtedly with the Pantheon in
Rome;
it's a very different and much
more sophisticated building.
But it was a very modest thing
to do.
But I think there was a method
to his madness in the sense that
he was underscoring,
by so doing,
his relationship once again to
Augustus,
which was obviously very
important for him to do.
But this inscription confused a
lot of scholars for a long time,
who actually called this
originally an Augustan building.
You can see the pediment up
above.
You can see all the holes there;
those are the attachment marks
for sculpture that would have
been located in this pediment
that no longer survives.
 
Here's another view showing the
grey, the light grey granite
columns, the white Corinthian
capitals;
all of these magnificently
carved, very high quality
architects and artisans here.
 
By the way, I forgot to
mention, when we talked about
the Temple of Venus and Roma and
the use of Greek marble,
that Hadrian not only brought
in Greek marble,
but he brought in Greek marble
cutters,
marble carvers,
who were responsible for
working on these.
 
So he wanted the very best,
those who were most familiar
with carving Greek marble,
to be used for his buildings,
and they were undoubtedly used
for this one as well.
And we can see the depth of the
porch, I think also,
from this view of the
Corinthian columns of that
porch.
 
It's very hard in a classroom
in New Haven,
even with outstanding slides,
to be able to give you a sense
of the experience that one has,
of the surprise that one has,
as one walks through the door
of the Pantheon.
We see the doors opened here.
 
They are bronze doors.
 
They are original doors,
from this extremely
well-preserved structure.
 
And the reason that it is so
well preserved is because like
other buildings in Rome,
it was reused in later times,
as a church primarily,
with a wonderful name,
Santa Maria Rotonda;
Saint Mary, the rotund Mary
essentially,
which is perfectly chosen for a
building with a giant rotunda,
with a great cylindrical drum,
that the building has.
 
We see those doors opened up
here,
and as one walks through this
very traditional porch,
through the original bronze
doors, into the interior,
one is struck by the
extraordinary nature of the
interior of the Pantheon,
which you see over here.
And all you're looking at here
is the uppermost part,
with the dome essentially.
 
And the reason is because it is
near--
even the human eye,
both eyes, can't take in the
extent of this interior all in
one glance,
and even if one uses the widest
of wide-angle lenses,
you get a tremendous amount of
distortion,
and you can't really take the
whole thing in at once,
which makes it extraordinary.
 
And one has to rely instead on
this painting by Pannini,
that shows you the grandeur
beneath the dome,
and that gives you a better
idea than any image I can show
you,
however professional,
of what the interior of the
Pantheon actually looks like.
And you can see in this Pannini
painting the wonderful marble
revetment, the marble floor,
the dome, with its coffers.
There are one,
two, three, four,
five rows, yes five rows,
of twenty-eight coffers each;
140 coffers in all.
 
They were likely gilded in
antiquity.
You see that there is an
oculus,
through which light streams
down onto that gilding,
down onto the marble
incrustation.
The marble incrustation,
by the way, extremely well
preserved.
 
This is about our best example
of ancient Roman marble --
not all of it is ancient,
but a good portion of it is,
and it gives you a very good
sense of what some of these
marble buildings would have
looked like in antiquity.
And I show you a detail of some
of the original marble revetment
over here.
 
And this is what those
Pompeians wished their walls
actually were:
beautiful marbles of all
different colors,
brought from all different
parts of the world.
 
So even though Hadrian chose
Proconnesian marble for his
Temple of Venus and Roma,
his Greek building,
which we really need to think
of as a kind of Greek import for
this more Roman building,
he is following in the
footsteps and Nero and the
Flavians,
and using multi-colored marble,
both for the revetment on the
wall,
and the marble pavement down
below.
 
Most of this building--again,
it's very well preserved--
is the original structure:
the original columns,
the original pilasters,
still extremely well preserved
in the Pantheon.
 
Because it was used over time
as a church,
there are lots of accoutrements
that one would expect in a
church: various saints and
niches and so on and so forth.
So much of the sculpture is
from a later period.
And it even has served as a
burial place for famous
Italians,
not the least of which was
Raphael,
the famous Renaissance painter,
who you'll remember left a
graffito,
when he went down into the
subterranean chambers of Nero's
Domus Aurea.
 
He was buried here,
and his tomb is one of the high
points for most visitors to this
structure;
you see it here.
 
It dwarfs, to most people's
minds, the Tomb of Victor
Emmanuel, whom you see over here
on the left-hand side of the
screen.
 
But note all of that Roman
symbolism: the eagle with
outstretched wings and the
Amazonian pelta and so on,
all of those symbols of Roman
power,
still very much used by
dynasts, modern dynasts,
like Victor Emmanuel.
 
The dome of the Pantheon had
the largest diameter of any
dome, up to this point.
 
We know that it was--the
diameter of the Pantheon is 142
feet.
 
And if we compare it to the
other large dome in Rome,
that of St.
 
Peter's, we find that the
Pantheon dome still surpasses
St.
 
Peter's.
 
St.
 
Peter's is 139 feet in
diameter;
so just a bit smaller.
 
Now any of you who have been
both in the Pantheon and in St.
Peter's will probably say to
me: "Wait a minute here,
the dome of St.
 
Peter's actually looks larger,
when you stand underneath
it."
 
And I show you a view of that
dome here.
The reason it does look a bit
larger is the dome of St.
Peter's is taller.
 
So volumetrically it looks
bigger, and visually it looks
bigger, but it isn't in terms of
its diameter.
In diameter the dome of the
Pantheon is still the largest
dome in the city of Rome.
 
And as you look at this dome,
and compare it to St.
Peter's, one can't help but
think--and think back to
Domitian and his dominus et
deus, and his vaults and so
on and so forth;
the whole idea being having the
dome of heaven over one's head.
 
I think one can't help but
think, when one looks at this,
that there may be some
reference here,
both to the orb of the earth
and to the dome of heaven.
And it is certainly an
appropriate symbol for a
building that honors all the
gods.
I think it's important to,
at this juncture,
to say something about,
or to compare,
the most important Greek
temple, the Parthenon,
on the Acropolis in Athens,
with the most significant Roman
temple,
the Pantheon,
to see that we have really come
from an exterior to an interior
architecture,
that in the case of the
Parthenon, fifth century B.C.,
Athenian Acropolis,
they are thinking primarily of
a building that interacts with
the rock of the Acropolis and
with the urban landscape,
and in other contexts these
Greek buildings interact
directly with nature.
 
That's the way the Greeks
thought about their buildings,
essentially as an exterior
structure.
And we see the Romans following
suit in their emphasis on
façade,
the façade of temples in
their own religious
architecture.
But with the Pantheon,
that changes.
Yes, it does have a pediment in
the front, it does have a
traditional porch.
 
So that's a nod to traditional
temple architecture.
But once you go through that
porch,
into the structure,
and see that great cylindrical
drum,
the hemispherical dome,
the light streaming through,
you're in this totally new
interior world that has no
precedent in early Roman
architecture.
 
And that had a huge impact on
later Byzantine architecture,
Medieval--especially Byzantine
architecture.
And particularly go to Istanbul
and see Hagia Sophia,
or the Blue Mosque;
they owe everything to the dome
of the Pantheon.
 
So we see this final,
this real transition here;
a transition also in building
materials, from stone to
concrete construction.
 
A few more views of this,
of the interior of the dome of
the Pantheon.
 
These are very dramatic in
black and white,
and you can see it's just--if
you're in Rome and have the
time,
it's a great deal of fun to go
and look at the Pantheon at
different times of day,
because the light has such an
impact on what the interior
looks like.
 
And you go in there in the
morning, take a look;
then go out,
have a long lunch,
a glass of wine;
come back later and see what
has happened.
 
And it's also fun to be there
when it rains;
it's interesting to just have
the rain come down and collect.
There is a drain,
but it doesn't always work all
that well.
 
So see water collecting on the
edges of the floor,
in this extraordinary building.
 
One last view.
 
I love taking views of the--I
have zillions of images that
I've taken,
including this one of the
interior of the Pantheon,
at all different times of day.
But I think it behooves us to
notice and to say that in this
kind of new interior
architecture,
this architecture of interior
surprise,
it's not only the vault itself,
it's not only the concrete
construction,
or the marble revetment,
light plays a very important
role.
We've seen light playing a very
important role from the times of
the Domus Italica,
and the Sanctuary at Terracina,
for example,
up to where we are today,
but never more important than
here;
light that streams through the
oculus,
light that is used not only to
illuminate this building,
and illuminate it extremely
well, but also to create drama,
to create drama.
 
And you have to imagine it even
more dramatic when the coffers
were gilded and when the marble
down below may have been even
brighter still.
 
The marble pavement,
by the way, which I didn't show
you, is also extremely well
preserved.
So this light plays a very
important and dramatic role in
this new, highly developed
interior architecture.
And I personally know of no
other building that one can
visit and experience that gives
you a better sense than this one
of the divine presence on earth.
 
Whether it's one god,
multi gods, as were honored
here,
you really get a sense of
spirituality when you stand in
this extraordinary temple,
and really do get a sense of
the divine presence,
I think, on earth.
 
I mentioned that the Pantheon
has spawned--
lots of buildings have been
cloned from the Pantheon,
both in ancient times--and I'll
show you a couple of examples
later in the semester--
but also in more modern times
there are lots of examples.
 
Woolsey Hall,
for example,
here on campus is a kind of a
pantheon.
But look at--the most obvious
example,
in the United States,
is not only Monticello,
but also Thomas Jefferson's
University of Virginia,
the Rotunda at the University
of Virginia,
which you see here is clearly
based exactly on the Pantheon.
Thomas Jefferson,
a great fan of ancient
architecture.
 
His library,
his personal library,
has lots of books on Roman
architecture.
When you look at a view of the
Rotunda and the Lawn at the
University of Virginia--I
taught, my first teaching job
was at UVA;
I taught there for three years.
But when you look at this
building,
the Lawn at UVA,
with the Rotunda,
you can't help but wonder if
Thomas Jefferson didn't know
that the Pantheon in Rome had
that forecourt,
because--the Rotunda faces the
wrong way,
it faces this way.
 
But nonetheless he's got behind
it,
in his own design,
this extraordinary rectangular
court,
that does conjure up exactly
what the Pantheon looked like in
Rome.
A few very quick views of the
Pantheon.
I just hate to let it go,
but some quick views of the
Pantheon.
 
One of the best ways of seeing
it, it's surrounded by not only
a wonderful piazza,
which is a great place to eat
gelato or have a glass of wine,
but there are--you can
encounter it from a number of
narrow streets,
and that whole element of
surprise is still there.
You're walking along the street
and wow, all of a sudden,
there it is in front of you.
 
And you can see that very well
here, as you begin to get a
glimpse of it.
 
With regard to eating around
the Pantheon,
I recommend one of my absolute
favorite restaurants in Rome,
which is easy to remember
because it's Fortunato al
Pantheon;
you see it over here with its
wonderful outdoor space and its
white umbrellas.
Right across from the Pantheon,
directly across,
is a McDonald's.
 
The golden arches are really
very much like a Roman aqueduct,
don't you think?
 
So references--I told you there
are resonances everywhere of
Rome.
 
Don't eat--you can eat at
McDonald's anytime;
go to the other one,
much more interesting.
And it has the best--I've never
had this anywhere else--
it has a veal scaloppine al
gorgonzola,
with gorgonzola,
a very thin layer of
gorgonzola: delicious.
 
I also told you I was going to
keep you abreast of the latest
on gelato in Rome.
 
We've talked about Tre Scalini;
so I just wanted to show you
Della Panna .
 
If you're standing at the
Pantheon restaurant,
look to the right,
you're going to see Della
Palma, P-a-l-m-a.
 
Of the four best,
actually I think it's the
fourth.
 
It's not my absolute favorite,
but if you like--it's a little
bit more Americanized,
as you can see from this
selection.
 
Notice there are Mars bars,
specialità,
as well as some of their other
flavors.
My favorite,
personal favorite,
is zabaglione,
which you see over here.
But just to whet your appetite
early in the morning.
I want to move,
in the twenty minutes or so
that remain, I would like to
move from the Pantheon in Rome
to Hadrian's home;
not his home in Rome,
which as we've mentioned was
the Palace of Domitian on the
Palatine Hill,
but his Villa at Tivoli.
Tivoli, ancient Tibur;
we've talked about Tivoli many
times before,
where the marble,
the travertine quarries are
located.
Tivoli is about a,
well I don't know,
forty minute drive from Rome
today,
kind of a high speed drive from
Rome today,
but in antiquity longer,
obviously,
but not inaccessible from Rome.
 
Hadrian obviously had no
problems getting there in
ancient Roman times.
 
It's an extraordinary place,
and Hadrian--
it was a place that Hadrian
used as a kind of incubator for
his architectural ideas,
and it's highly likely that
many of the buildings that we
see there were designed in part
by him,
especially those famous pumpkin
domes,
because we're going to see that
a number of these buildings do
indeed have pumpkin domes
designed under the influence of
the architecture of Rabirius.
It's an amazing villa.
 
It is the most extensive villa
preserved, from the Roman world,
and likely the most grand of
all the Roman villas.
And if we think back to Nero's
Palace in Rome,
what made Nero's Palace in Rome
so scandalous was the fact that
it was located in downtown Rome.
 
But if you compare Nero's
Palace to Hadrian's Villa at
Tivoli, there's no comparison
between the two.
Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli is
much more extensive.
It has much more extraordinary
buildings,
from the architectural
standpoint, and it was decorated
even more opulently,
with a wide variety of
sculpture, mosaics and
paintings.
It was clearly an extraordinary
place.
And if Trajan's Forum was in a
sense a microcosm of the extent
of the Empire under Trajan,
I like to think of Hadrian's
Villa as the Empire under
Hadrian,
the Empire that he traveled
around so many times.
And I show you in the upper
right a map of the Roman Empire.
All of that orange area is the
area that was under Rome's aegis
at the time of Trajan and into
the years of Hadrian.
And if you look closely,
you will see three colored
lines;
a yellow, a blue and a red line.
Those are Hadrian's travels
around the Empire,
and it shows you how extensive
they were.
He went everywhere.
 
Why?
 
Because he loved to travel,
he just loved to travel.
But he also went in order to
take a look at provincial
affairs at first hand.
 
Now everywhere he went,
he either--he himself paid for
buildings that were erected,
or, more often than that,
buildings were put up by local
magistrates and so on,
local cities,
in honor of Hadrian,
in order to try to get a favor
out of him,
or just to honor him on his
visits.
Some of these were rushed,
put up in a rush job in order
to be there when he arrived on
the scene.
So we see this incredible array
of building activity during this
period.
 
And we will see that reflected
as we make our way,
beginning already next week,
make our way into the
provinces.
 
We will begin to see some very
interesting Hadrianic buildings
in those provinces that reflect
what he was doing elsewhere,
or in Rome.
 
But what we see here,
what we see at the villa is
fascinating.
 
Because all of us,
we're just back from break;
some of you did some traveling.
 
We know that traveling expands
all of our horizons.
We go someplace;
experientially we're different
than we were before,
by what we see and what we
experience.
 
And we also--maybe not in this
new economic climate,
but at least in the past,
we all tended to pick up
souvenirs;
a T-shirt here,
and a whatever there,
a handbag there,
and we bring those back,
to remind us,
and make us have memories of
the wonderful trip that we took.
Well Hadrian did that as well.
 
He collected souvenirs.
 
But because of his own wealth,
and because he had the imperial
treasury behind him,
he could collect buildings,
as souvenirs essentially.
 
So when Hadrian traveled and
saw what he liked,
what he did was he came back to
this laboratory,
this architectural laboratory
that he had at Tivoli,
and he either created--some of
these were probably designed by
him,
others by his architects--he
created a series of buildings
that were in a sense souvenirs
of his travels,
either exact duplicates of
things he saw,
or variations on those themes.
And it makes these buildings
particularly fascinating to look
at.
 
The Villa of Hadrian had
essentially three building
phases: an early,
a middle and a late.
They spanned the entire reign
of Hadrian.
This villa was clearly
Hadrian's hobby,
as well as his home,
and if he hadn't died in 138,
he would've undoubtedly
continued to build here.
So these buildings go up
throughout the course of
Hadrian's reign.
 
I show you a view from the air
of the villa as it looks today.
You can see that there are a
series of very attractive pools
of water, interspersed with
architecture.
If we look at a plan of the
villa,
you will see that it is
different than any other villa
we've seen before in that these
buildings are actually kind of
casually,
almost in an ad hoc way,
arranged around nature,
to interact with nature.
We don't see the axiality and
the symmetry that is so
characteristic of so much of
Roman architecture.
They kind of meander along,
as you might expect
architectural experiments to
meander.
And it has everything there;
not only pools but a wide
variety of buildings that I'm
going to show you fairly
fleetingly: this great island
villa over here;
the Piazza d'Oro or the Golden
Plaza;
the two sets of baths,
a large bath and a small bath.
You also see a stadium here,
hairpin shaped,
that I'm not going to return
to.
The Canopus: another pool.
 
This was so complete that it
even had its own Hades,
its own Hell,
in the villa.
Everything was here.
 
Hadrian left no stone unturned.
 
I want to show you,
in fairly quick succession,
examples of the most
interesting buildings,
of these tourist souvenirs,
that Hadrian brings back from
his travels.
 
The first I'd like to show you
is the so-called Temple of
Venus, which belongs to the
latest building phase at the
villa: 133 to 138.
 
This is Hadrian the
philhellene, once again,
just as we saw him at the
Temple of Venus and Roma.
He goes to the Greek island of
Knidos,
K-n-i-d-o-s,
the Greek island of Knidos,
on which there was the most
famous round Temple of Venus,
with the most famous Greek
statue of Venus,
a statue by the great Greek
sculptor Praxiteles.
Lots of people went to see it,
and interestingly enough it was
this temple and the statue,
excavated a number of decades
ago by a woman,
a female archaeologist with the
perfect name,
Iris Love, for the goddess of
love --
and that was really her name,
destined to go excavate the
Temple of the Goddess of Love on
the Greek island of Knidos.
 
Hadrian goes there.
 
He's enraptured by what he sees.
 
He builds at his villa an exact
replica, an exact replica of
this Greek round temple.
 
You can see it's the Doric
order.
You can see it supports
triglyphs and metopes,
and then in the center a statue
of Venus, unfortunately now
headless and armless.
 
That's a cast.
 
The original is in the museum
on the site.
You see it in the museum on the
site, over here,
based on Praxiteles' earlier
statue.
There are lots of copies of
this famous Praxitelean statue.
We see another one here in the
Vatican, that's more complete,
gives you a better sense of
what it looked like.
But again, here are the Doric
columns and the triglyphs and
metopes.
 
So the most important point for
you, an exact replica,
in this particular case.
 
The most extraordinary of these
sort of architectural conceits,
these giant tourist souvenirs
that Hadrian brings back from
his travels to his villa at
Tivoli is the so-called Canopus
at Hadrian's Villa,
my personal favorite,
the Canopus,
at Hadrian's Villa,
which you see on your Monument
List,
also dating to the latest
period, 133 to 138 A.D.
It is meant to conjure up,
in this case,
not Greece but Egypt:
a canal, the Canopus,
in Egypt, that was a tributary
of the Nile.
And we know that you could
travel from Alexandria to a
small town called Canopus by
means of this canal.
And that is what is meant to be
conjured up here.
The city of Canopus had in it a
temple to the Egyptian god,
Serapis, S-e-r-a-p-i-s,
Serapis, who was the healing
god,
and people came from all around
the world to be healed at the
Temple of Serapis.
It was also well known as a
place with a wonderful amusement
park,
and we think that although
Hadrian seems to have gone
there,
in part, to go to the Sanctuary
of Serapis,
he also appears to have gone
there because it was also an
amusement park,
and this is where we get into
the personal love triangle of
Hadrian.
Hadrian was married to a woman
by the name of Sabina;
a very beautiful woman,
but she does look kind of dour
in this portrait on the right
hand side of the screen.
So perhaps we don't blame him
for taking up with what must
have been the most beautiful boy
in all of antiquity,
a youth by the name of
Antinous, A-n-t-i-n-o-u-s,
Antinous, whom Hadrian met on
his travels in Asia Minor,
smitten with the boy,
and they became constant
companions thereafter.
 
But unfortunately Antinous,
while still very young,
died by drowning,
where else but the Nile,
in Egypt, also on these
travels.
They went to Canopus together,
by the way, to the amusement
park, but poor Antinous died by
drowning in the Nile.
No one knows exactly what
happened.
Was it an accident?
 
Some say that he may have given
his life to save Hadrian's.
We don't really know.
 
That's never been sorted out as
to exactly what happened to this
wonderful and beautiful young
man.
But he died by drowning in the
Nile, which made the Nile a
particularly poignant spot for
Hadrian, who appears to have
recreated it here at his villa.
 
He also went on to found--this
is one of the reasons this has
inspired so many design-your-own
Roman cities projects;
not only the relationship
between Hadrian and Antinous,
and this love triangle with
Sabina,
but also because Hadrian went
around the Empire and founded
one Antinoopolis after another;
there were tons of
Antinoopolises all around Rome .
 
And he put up statues of
Antinous in every possible
guise,
of every possible god:
the major Roman gods and some
of the--
and all the minor Roman gods as
well.
And there are lots of statues
of Antinous.
This is another one that was
found at the villa,
not at this pool,
although it might have been,
given that the inspiration was
Egypt.
This shows him in Egyptian
guise with the Egyptian
headdress and covering all that
wonderful curly hair,
for which he was so well known.
 
But nonetheless,
Antinous as a pharaoh,
from Hadrian's Villa.
 
Back to the Canopus,
you see the pool.
You see it has columns on one
side.
These columns had sculpture
interspersed.
And here Greece comes back to
the fore, because many of these
statues here were also based on
ancient Greek prototypes.
So we see this interesting
eclecticism here:
a pool based on Egypt,
with some Egyptianizing
statuary, but also interspersed
with Greek statues,
based on famous Greek
prototypes.
Most important to us,
from the architectural
standpoint, the straight lintel
and the arcuated lintel,
used here for the Canopus.
 
We saw that in Second Style
Roman wall painting.
We're beginning to see it now
in built architecture.
It becomes a particular
favorite of Hadrian's,
and we're going to see it
elsewhere in the Roman
provinces, under Hadrian.
 
The influence again of Egypt,
and also in this case also of
Rome: two river gods that seem
to have decorated the Canopus,
this one leaning on a figure of
a sphinx,
so this is clearly the Nile
River.
This one leaning on the
she-wolf, suckling Romulus and
Remus;
clearly the Tiber.
So once again,
very eclectic sculptural
program.
 
The caryatids were there too,
lining one side of the pool of
the Canopus.
 
You see them over here,
now in the museum -- extremely
well preserved,
based on the original fifth
century B.C.
 
caryatids on the Acropolis.
 
So Hadrian's philhellenism
coming to the fore again.
You'll remember,
Augustus copied these same
caryatids for his forum,
reduced scale.
Hadrian's are in full length,
full scale,
same scale, as those in Greece,
and the major difference
between Hadrian's caryatids,
and Augustus',
Augustus', like the
Erechtheion,
with the original Porch of the
Maidens,
is in a public building.
 
In the case of Hadrian,
a private villa -- using these
caryatids at a private villa.
 
Here you see them lining one
side of the Canopus,
flanked on either side by
satyrs, the same kinds of
fellows we saw in the Dionysiac
mystery paintings.
And then, just so that we don't
forget Egypt,
this wonderful representation
of a statue of a crocodile that
was surely placed in the center
of the pool,
peeping out of the water,
just so that we make sure we
remember it's the Nile.
 
And I can trace my whole
professional career sitting on
this crocodile because every
time I'm there,
including even now,
I pose on that crocodile.
But I do it in part because I
think it's fun,
but also to encourage--there
are two pictures that I really
like students to send me when
they travel to Italy.
One is of them sitting on the
crocodile at Hadrian's Villa,
and another is them on the
stepping stones at Pompeii.
So I hope if you do go,
that you will do that.
My favorite one--and I can't
find it unfortunately,
because this was
pre-digital--was a student who
sent me himself on this,
with his shades on.
But then he had put a cigarette
in the mouth of the crocodile,
unlit cigarette--it was really
a cool picture;
I've got to find that some day.
 
The plan of the Canopus,
over here, shows us what we've
looked at: the straight and
arcuated lintel here;
the crocodile on this side;
the caryatids on that side;
and then over here,
at the end, the Temple of
Serapis,
because they were trying to
recreate again this canal that
led from Alexandria to Canopus,
and at the end of course,
the Temple of Serapis,
the healing god,
that was located at Canopus.
But you can see as well as I,
by looking at the plan,
this curved structure over
here, which we'll see is made
out of concrete.
 
But this is no Egyptian
building, this is a very modern
Roman-looking building,
and I show it to you here,
on the end of the canal.
 
This is called the so-called
Serapeum, or the Temple of
Serapis, and you can see it has
one of Hadrian's pumpkin domes.
It is very likely that it was
designed by him,
by Hadrian, and we see it made
out of concrete.
We can see it has niches.
 
It actually served as a
fountain, with very deep niches,
from which there would have
emanated a water display.
And then you can see a concrete
dome,
up above, with those segmented,
flat and concave,
alternating flat and concave
segments that look like a gourd
or a pumpkin dome,
probably designed by Hadrian
himself.
 
Here's a closer view showing
you the same.
Baths, there are two baths at
Hadrian's Villa.
One of them--I show you only
the Large Baths here,
of Hadrian's Villa,
which dates to the early phase
of 125 to 133.
 
I'm not going to say too much
about these.
I'm not going to show you the
plan.
But just to make the point that
the villa has,
not one, but two baths,
and they are gargantuan.
Look at the size of this.
 
Look at the tourists here in
relationship to the so-called
Large Baths.
 
This is a private bathing
establishment,
but it shows you that Hadrian
has learned well from Trajan.
If Trajan's Forum was the
mother of all forums,
this is the mother of all
private bath buildings that we
see at Hadrian's Villa.
 
And we also see the expert way
in which these architects used
concrete construction.
 
It's extraordinary.
 
Look at these vaults,
vaults that are springing,
just as they did in Hadrian's
market hall,
in the Markets in Rome,
springing from--
groin vaults that spring from a
bracket,
rather than from a column or a
pilaster.
And look at the way in which
they've been able to open up
this wall,
dematerialize the wall with
very large windows:
very sophisticated use of
concrete construction.
 
Here a detail of the groin
vaults springing from the
bracket, with the stucco
decoration that you can also
see.
 
Very quickly I also want to
show you the so-called Piazza
d'Oro,
or the Golden Plaza,
which dates also to the early
phase of the Villa of Hadrian at
Tivoli, 125 to 133.
 
You can see just by looking at
its plan that it's interesting.
It was used as an audience hall
when Hadrian greeted important
visitors at the villa.
 
If you look at the entrance
vestibule,
it's octagonal,
just like the octagonal room of
Rabirius,
with a pumpkin vault,
then a great open rectangular
space,
fairly traditional,
surrounded by columns.
And then over here,
the audience hall or
aula, a-u-l-a,
itself.
This is an amazing structure,
and what makes the aula
particularly interesting and
important is like the Pantheon
it combines traditional and
innovative architecture;
it combines concrete
construction with traditional
vocabulary of Greek
architecture,
namely columns.
 
There is an annular vault over
here.
You can see that the walls of
this structure undulate,
but this undulation is
particularly interesting because
the walls are not made out of
concrete;
we'll see that the walls are
made out of columns.
Here I show you a cutaway,
axonometric view of the
aula,
where you can see these
undulating walls,
making a kind of cruciform
shape, but you can see that they
are supported by columns.
So again this fascinating
bringing together of the
traditional vocabulary of Greek
architecture,
namely columns,
with a concrete pumpkin dome on
top: use of innovative,
of the traditional vocabulary
of architecture in an innovative
way.
One might even call this an
example of the so-called baroque
trend in Roman antiquity,
which we'll be talking about
increasingly,
and I want you to be aware that
it happens here.
 
Just very quickly,
the very sculptural vestibule
entranceway,
so inspired by Rabirius,
of the Piazza d'Oro,
showing this concrete
construction with a pumpkin
dome,
and then a detail of some of
the columns along that
undulating,
that curved or undulating wall,
that are still preserved in the
aula.
I want to show you also lastly
at Hadrian's Villa the so-called
Teatro Marittimo,
the Maritime Theater,
which dates to the very
earliest of the phases,
118 to 128.
 
This was the building--Hadrian
started with this first,
because this is what he wanted
most of all--
which was an island villa
within a villa,
a place where he could really
go if he wanted to be alone,
even at his own villa.
 
And one can imagine him
escaping here,
with Antinous by his side.
 
We see that island villa here.
 
It's a round structure.
 
In order to protect himself,
once he crossed the drawbridge,
he has placed a moat around the
island villa within a villa.
But if you look at the plan of
that island villa,
you would think that Rabirius
was still alive,
in the sense of that compass
work that we saw Rabirius doing
in the private wing of the Domus
Augustana,
playing off convex against
concave.
But the difference between this
and what Rabirius did is this
combines, in this very exciting
way, concrete walls and concrete
domes with columns.
 
We see that same combination
here.
Here's a view of what the
island within the Teatro
Marittimo looks like today.
 
Here's the island,
surrounded by the moat.
And you can see this wonderful
combination of brick-faced
concrete construction,
with columns,
but if you look at the columns
you will see that they follow
the curvature of the foundation
of the wall.
So this again,
a combination of traditional
and innovative architecture.
 
Another view of the moat,
of a colonnade with Ionic
capitals that surrounds the
hall,
and then another view of the
island part,
with this wonderful interaction
of columnar and concrete
architecture.
 
Lastly, I just want to show you
the Tomb of Hadrian,
and make a very few points
about it.
The Tomb of Hadrian,
the famous Mausoleum of
Hadrian,
better known as the Castel
Sant'Angelo in Rome,
was put up at the end of
Hadrian's reign,
between 135 and his death in
138, and consecrated by his
successor,
Antoninus Pius.
 
It is located in the part of
Rome that we have not explored
thus far, because very few
ancient buildings survive from
that part of the city.
 
We are looking at an excellent
Google Earth view of the Tiber
River.
 
You will notice the Piazza
Navona over here,
the great stadium over here,
and we should be able to see
the Pantheon,
but it may be cut off,
in this view,
as is the Tomb of Augustus,
which is located over here.
 
But we can see well the Castel
Sant'Angelo of Hadrian's
Mausoleum, fronted by a bridge
over the Tiber.
And that's the Vatican,
Vatican City,
up right above.
 
So Hadrian chose a location
across the Tiber,
where there were some imperial
gardens, for his tomb.
Here you can better see,
also Google Earth,
a view of the Castel
Sant'Angelo as it looks today.
The walls and the watchtowers
were added later,
because this served as a
fortress for the popes,
in the Vatican.
 
The popes, in bad times,
they had an underground
passageway that they could
scurry from the Vatican to this
fortress,
where they could be protected,
and that's when the watchtowers
and so on were added,
as you can see here,
fronted by a bridge.
This is the famous Ponte
Sant'Angelo, designed by
Bernini, the great
seventeenth-century architect
Bernini, with a series of
angels.
And here another view of the
Castel Sant'Angelo,
with Bernini's angels on the
bridge.
The most important point for
us, as you can see,
that although tombs,
round tombs were no longer
au courant in the second
century A.D.;
they had gone out of fashion.
 
Remember, Titus buried in his
arch, Trajan buried in his
column.
 
They really weren't doing round
tombs, at the extent that they
had been doing earlier.
 
Hadrian chooses this.
 
Why?
 
Because the great Mausoleum of
Augustus was a round tomb.
He wants to associate himself
with Augustus,
and he wants to create a new
tomb for a succession of
dynasties.
 
Nerva was the last to be buried
in the Mausoleum of Augustus;
Hadrian the first in this
mausoleum, which continued to be
used in the second century.
 
And so it uses the Mausoleum of
Augustus and the Caecilia
Metella tomb as models.
 
We have seen this model here,
of the Tomb of Hadrian.
It's round, made out of
concrete, placed,
as the Caecilia Metella tomb
was, on a podium,
a very tall podium,
probably a tumulus on top,
earthen tumulus,
like Augustus' tomb.
We don't know what happened at
the very apex,
whether there was a statue of
Hadrian or a temple-like
structure, as you see here.
 
But the most important point
for us is that at the end of his
life Hadrian is continuing to
connect himself to Rome's first
emperor,
to Augustus,
both of them in perpetuity
philhellenic emperors with
philhellenic leanings,
but in the case of both of
them, and particularly Hadrian,
he combines it with this new
concrete architecture in a very
special,
very distinctive way,
that will have a lasting impact
on architecture in the Roman
Empire.
