a bit of new

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Archeology, Augustus, Mausoleum, Restoration, Rome

I received an email today from one of the many sites I follow in Rome on museums and new exhibits. Since 2009 I have been following developments around the restoration of the Mausoleum of the first Emperor, Augustus whose life and reign influenced so much our world to this day. The Mausoleum which is in the centre of the city can be missed easily if you don’t look for it, despite the fact it is gigantic.

The mobile phone company TIM is investing some 4 million Euros in archeological work of restoration and consolidation of this ancient monument built some 2026 years ago for the first imperial dynasty, the Julio-Claudian. This dynasty gave us Octavian later known as Augustus, his adopted son Tiberius, his nephew Caligula, his other nephew Claudius and finally the adopted son of Claudius, Nero. The line then dies out and is replaced by the next dynasty the Flavians, with emperors Vespasian, Titus, Domitian who built the Colosseum and much of Rome after the many fires under Nero.

Augustus died at Nola at the age of 77 after eating far too many figs which he loved in 14 AD. His wife Empress Livia will take the body back to Rome in a grand procession which will take 14 days to reach the city. After several days of Funeral games and oration, his remains will be cremated and entered into the Mausoleum. The building itself stood as a Mausoleum until the fourth century and many other relatives of Augustus where also interred buried inside. In the centuries to follow it will be used as a fortress, a bullring, a theatre and opera house. In 1928, Prince Francesco Boncompagni Ludovisi as Governor of Rome proposed that the Mausoleum be returned to its original function and presented as an ancient ruin.

I witnessed the first clearing around the Mausoleum around 2009-2010 it was very interesting to see the soil at the base being cleared. The Mausoleum today stands below street level or at the level of the ancient city.

This link: http://www.mausoleodiaugusto.it/en/  will give you the complete history and what is now going to happen to create a new museum and green area around the building.

The Mausoleum of Augustus as it appeared in Antiquity

The Mausoleum as it appears today, it is next to another famous building of the era of Augustus, the Ara Pacis, which is splendidly well preserved and housed inside its own museum building.

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Something different if you are into Academic discourse

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Augustus, Roman Forum, Rome, Titus, Trajan, Vespasian, Via Alessandrina

I am itching to write something about the idiotic discourse in Canada at the moment based largely on ignorance on Niqab, Hijab and what else or on the Federal Election Campaign with the depressing campaign theme of Fear, Vengeance, War and Xenophobia but I won’t, I remember the words of my late mother who use to say to us children that in life when confronted with this sort of unpleasant dish it was better to take the high road. Though I would like to know when did ignorance become a virtue?

So let me talk instead of a very interesting discussion going on right now in Rome about a short bit of roadway called Via Alessandrina. The blog Roma Archeologia which reproduces articles in Italian and sometimes in English, explains the debate amongst archeologists and academics who study Roman ruins and the area of the Roman Forum, the old original centre of the Eternal City. The Roman Forum we see today with all the ruins of the ancient city is due to the political program of Il Duce Benito Mussolini who wanted to resurrect the glory of Imperial Rome in modern times. So dig and dig it up and that is what he decreed. This old centre had been buried for centuries and new neighbourhood had grown above it at the end of the Middle ages around 1400. So the old ruins took on an added importance as symbol of the greatness of Rome and Western civilization. Via Alessandrina was a street in a neighbourhood built around 1500 which also marks the renaissance of the City and the re-building of many churches in a Renaissance or Baroque style and of the Basilica of St-Peter, the original one was simply demolished.

In 1930 Mussolini wanting to re-model the centre of Rome and celebrate the Roman Emperors had the whole neighbourhood around the Via demolished only Via Alessandrina, the street, remains, but the demolition uncovered the Forum of Julius Cesar, Forum of Trajan and the Forum of Augustus and Nerva, Archeologists knew it was all there but had no means to get to it. This was very significant politically for Mussolini and in 1934 he organized huge celebration to mark the 2000 year of the birth of Emperor Augustus by having his giant Mausoleum renovated and the museum of the Ara Pacis built.

The round structure in the picture is the ancient mausoleum in the old Fields of Mars in Rome.

So we come to today and our modern preoccupations with history and what to do with the legacy of Mussolini. For the last 30 years there has been talk about closing the  street Via Alessandrina and removing it all together so that the different Fori could be explored fully and freed from this obstacle restoring them to their original land size. Every year more and more artefacts are unearth and  this has excited many archeologists to the potential of the area. The main road which was built by Mussolini for his military parades the Via dei Fori Imperiali is also another sizeable problem open to discussion it runs parallel to Via Alessandrina and it much wider, longer and bigger. It runs from Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum and at the moment the Mayor of Rome Ignazio Marino will have it closed to car traffic several weeks of the year and every Sunday. There has been an enormous amount of excavations going on in and around the Roman Forum in the last 15 years and our understanding of this area has much improved.

Via Alessandria and the partly demolished neighbourhood in 1932. Via dei Fori Imperiali is on the bottom left under construction.

What it looks like today as it cuts in two the Forum of Trajan

What you see now, the ground level corresponds to the late second century AD, meaning that if you are looking for ruins from the time of Julius Cesar 44 BC they are about 4 meters below ground level. It is difficult for a visitor to Rome who may not know much about the ancient structures what they are looking at or what it all means. But with the announced plans to raise the 7 pink granite columns of the Temple of Peace built by Vespasian to celebrate the victory of his son Titus over the Jews and the final destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, you can see continuous changes in the Forum.    https://www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/sets/72157600215755762

Despite opening up more and more space to walk around in the Forum, you are still restricted to a path mostly the Via Sacra which is the old parade route through the Forum and side streets connecting the various antique temples and buildings. It is all fragile and too often mass tourist movements are simply not sensitive enough to what they are looking at. However if you steal an artefact or deface a monument the fine is $28,000 dollars and one month in jail, yes it is enforced.