It's almost a 2-mile walk from either the metro station EUR Magnalia or EUR Firma, with virtually no directional indications for the imprudent tourist who doesn’t have an excellent guide book. But I did want to see the famous model of ancient Rome -- well, fourth century A.D. Rome. Little did I know that I was in for much more.
In fact, the museum displays mostly models or replicas. In the first section, there are models of the kinds of basic huts and altars that existed when Rome was founded. There are other interesting items that are not to be found in Rome but in museums elsewhere in Italy or Europe, which is another reason why this collection is not a bad idea.
The fourth room brings one to the end of Republican Rome. The fifth room is devoted entirely to Augustus. There are replicas of many famous statues of Rome’s first emperor. I was glad to see the replica of a panel of the Ara Pacis depicting the Imperial family in procession.

detail, Ara Pacis, Drusus and his family

Augustus’ face is well-known, but the ‘lesser’ members are not so well known, which is a shame, since Augustus did, I believe, genuinely love his family, even his siblings by adoption.
At the end of the sequence of rooms devoted to the emperors, there is this amazing corridor : the scene-by-scene replica of Trajan’s column. I learned that several attempts had been made to replicate the column over the centuries. Only this one, from the nineteenth century, still exists. Since the cast, time and weather have further worn down the original column. I did not photograph every panel, but perhaps one day I will.

The second section gives one a clearer idea of a Roman citizen’s daily life. Glass display cases show ordinary objects -- glass or metal ones, that is, that have survived two millennia. Coins, rings, kitchen crockery, tables, chairs, beds : they are ordinary in the sense that we use the same objects today, but interesting because they were made differently. One rather large object especially caught my camera’s eye : this funerary urn in the shape of a ship transporting wine ! There is that ancient belief that passing away involves taking a voyage across water to an other world. What I find admirable here is the absence of the usual grieving entourage. This voyage to ‘the beyond’ suggests quite a merry passage !

At last you come to the hall which holds the model of ancient Rome. It lies in a sunken hall. Visitors walk around the model looking from a height of six to eight feet. The stairs leading to the lower hall were cordoned off. Once I saw it, I recalled having read somewhere of how faded and dusty it had become. Alas, it’s true. Yet another instance of the government’s inability to keep up with expenditures for its cultural heritage. It is arguable whether this model deserves spending thousands to keep it looking new. Personally, I would approve the choice not to restore the model... if other places -- Pompeii, for instance -- were maintained. But even Pompeii, even the Colosseum are crumbling. Does Berlusconi give a s*** about any of Rome’s ancient heritage ? I reserve the right to have my doubts.

detail ; in the foreground, the Circus Maximus and Domus Flavia

Latin version of the Olympians : Jupiter,
Pluto, Persephone, Neptune and Amphitrite

But I digress. After the Pantheon, I headed towards the Palazzo Altemps, one of the four sites that make up the Museo Nazionale Romano. It lies north of the Piazza Navona, so only a fifteen-minute walk from the Pantheon. A word about the building : it dates from the quattrocento, when the genius of the Renaissance was puring out of Tuscany. It was designed by the artist Melozzo da Forlì for an influent Roman nobleman whose family later sold it to an Italian Cardinal. It eventually became the property of Cardinal Marco Sittico Altemps, a nephew of Pope Pius IV. This Cardinal was an art collector and bibliophile, and rooms were designed to show off his statues and books. The Holy See ceded the palazzo to the Italian State in 1982. It was inaugurated as a museum in 1997.

This was my first visit to this museum. What a splendid collection it has ! There are exquisite sculptures from the collections of Cardinal Altemps, Kirchner and Count Ludovisi. For example, two larger-than-life of Apollo citharoedus. The one pictured left dates from the reign of Emperor Hadrian, and was restored in the 17th century. Apollo, god of music and poetry, is shown at rest on Mount Parnassus.

About half-way through the ground floor, I was horrified to notice that the batteries of my camera were running low ! I sped upstairs to the first floor. There was Antinous, Aristotle, Hercules, Athena, many ancient Egyptian sculptures - ô despair ! I was never going to get all the photos I wanted.

One of the rooms I lingered in towards the end displayed no sculptures. Instead, one could see what had been discovered during retoration work on the building : vestiges of ancient Rome. The palazzo had been built on top of a Roman domus. Portions of floor and wall could be seen, as well as fragments of fresco work (below). How I would enjoy digging around Rome and coming upon the forgotten home of an ancient Roman ! No matter how dusty and dark, Antiquity is my passion !

An exhibition about the Aemilii and the Basilica Aemilia called Memories of Rome provided a good excuse to revisit the Forum. I went over one late afternoon. First stop : the site of the Basilica itself (above) in order to get a sense of space and to orientate myself before visiting the exhibition. Turning right just after the entrance on Via San Gregorio, I walked to the northern edge of the Palatine, turned left past ancient housing currently under excavation, then right down to the level of the Meta Sudans, and left again along what used to be the Summa Sacra Via, past the Arch of Titus, down the Sacra Via and into the Forum to the Curia Julia.
First, a word about the Curia Julia or Senate meeting-place of ancient Rome. Literary tradition credits Romulus with the creation of the institution called the Senatus. A rough equivalent in many other cultures is the regular meeting of village elders / wise men with the power to make decisions and thus establish laws. The oldest meeting place of the “Conscript Fathers” was the Curia Hostilia in the north-west of the Forum, so named because it was put up by Tullis Hostilius. That building was destroyed by fire during the riotous funeral of the murdered senator P. Clodius Pulcher. J. Caesar rebuilt it, hence the name Curia Julia. It was rebuilt again by Diocletian in 303 without a change of name. Later it was converted into a church, which meant that much of the original material was preserved. At the end of the 19th century, the church was demolished in order to restore the old Roman Curia building. [See exhibition historical notice here.] On that occasion, a number of statues, friezes and remnants of other stone monuments were discovered. The exhibition (which runs until the 26th of this month) is as much about the Curia Julia as about the Basilica Aemilia, and in fact almost reproduces the arrangement of the discovered pieces as placed in the building almost a hundred years ago.

The sculptures pertaining to the Basilica Aemilia - friezes narrating the legend of Rome’s beginnings - were lined against the wall of the Curia where the senators would have sat. I will pass over the friezes as they merit an article of their own. In the centre were set up podiums and open cases right) pertaining to pieces that used to adorn the Forum. The most important of these were two long slabs with bas-reliefs on both sides. They have been called the Anaglypha Traiani or the Plutei. They commemorate two major acts of Trajan’s reign. One is the creation of a special fund - the alimenta - for the support and education of Italy’s children. The other is the remitting of taxes owed by the provinces and the burning of the tablets on which those debts were recorded. Not the least of the slabs’ interesting points is that they show buildings of the Forum outlined in the background, for example this section showing the Curia itself (left) by which we know that it had a pillared façade before it was rebuilt by Diocletian. On the reverse side of both slabs are depicted a bull (below), a sow and a sheep, the requisite animals sacrificed during a suovetaurilia.

In addition to these bas-reliefs, other sculptures shown were statues of M. Nonnius Balbus and his wife Viciria from Herculaneum, a Julio-Claudian prince, a portrait of Augustus and a statue of L. Calpurnius Piso from Lucus Feroniae and Velleia respectively, a statue depicting Numa Pompilius found in the Forum, and a marble portrait of M. Aemilius Lepidus, son of the consul of 78 B.C. from the museum of Chieti, to name but a few. It is the first time in decades that some of these pieces have been shown to the public. Perhaps there are plans to place them on permanent display somewhere after this exhibition. It would be a shame not to, in my opinion. The title of the exhibition is right : they are memories of early imperial and late Republican Rome. It’s nice to see them more or less in their original positions where they speak more eloquently to the imagination than if they were piled up in hodge-podge manner in a sumptuous Baroque palazzo.

My first impression is that I never wanted to leave this museum, this floor, this room. Time came to a complete standstill. I was in the room of the garden frescoes from the house of Livia (wife of Augustus, for our non-Roman readers) outside Rome. I scrutinised every square cm of Livia’s frescoes and had the room all to myself for 45 minutes - talk about luxury ! Eventually I tore myself away to explore another room : the triclinium, one of the rooms of the ancient Roman domus discovered under the Villa Farnesina in Rome’s Trastevere quarter.

Another 45 minutes studying the finely etched but barely visible architectural drawings on these dark walls. It is presented as a dining room, but I ask myself what the experts really mean by that. The room is too small to have functioned as a banqueting hall. It must have been intended for more intimate dinner parties. Unless it was the breakfast room ? Two tables with their couches would have occupied nearly all the available space, sparing just enough room for servants to bring platters in from the kitchen.
There followed a dimly lit corridor with other faint frescoes. Then I came across two smaller rooms : cubicula, or bedrooms.

Fascinating.Such small rooms too. They are off limits to tourists, all one can do is peer inside from the two arched doorways of each room. That precaution no doubt means to preserve the paintings from the ravages of a build-up of excess body heat. Considering the subject of one panel, I am certain that when the room did use to function as a bedroom, it got hot inside !

I visited the rest of the museum in a state bordering on euphoria. Later, I checked for temporary exhibits in town, and found two that interested me. One was in the Forum, the other at the Capitoline Museum. No way I was going to miss those ! It remained for me to find out how best to use what little free time I had during my stay.

All pictures © Mauricius Fabius, September 2010.