6/6 Train Thoughts

Leaving Rome, I find it appropriate that I’m facing away from the direction the train is moving, looking back on the city that I’ve just spent two of the most interesting, informational, and revelatory weeks of my life in. it’s hard to explain the scope of what I’ve just seen, and to put it into words within a matter of pages won’t do it justice. Yet, as I stare at the beautiful countryside of Italy, I’ve been given some time to think and space for my mind to find the words.

I think that my final impression of Rome is that I appreciate it as a concept, but in its current state of disrepair, construction, and rubble I can’t help but say that what the proceeding generations have done to it is nothing short of a tragedy. A few initial questions come to mind:

1. What would have happened to Rome had the practice of historic preservation been around in the first centuries after the birth of Christ?

2. Is the memory of the thing more important / less important than the thing itself?

3. What is easier to preserve, knowledge or buildings? (This really should be a part of 2)

4. Do I feel more or less of a sense of place than preceding generations considering what has been unearthed and what is still yet to be unearthed?

5. What is the morality of restoring ancient monuments around Rome?

One

Spolio is a term that generally means to take pieces of one building and apply them to new construction. In some of the various churches we visited, this practice was clearly noticeable. The nave of a church would be lined with two rows of columns, each of them having different bases, entasis, capitals, and overall heights. It has come to my attention that the reason for this practice was that after the fall of the Roman Empire and during the Middle Ages, the craft and skill that had been part of the collective consciousness of the Roman people to be able to construct these amazing churches had been lost. Both skilled labor and capital decreased, as did the population of Rome. As such, there was no one around to monitor these existing structures, and no one available to create new ones. Thus a practice was undertaken whereby columns (and other parts of buildings) were stripped from their original location and placed in the nave of some new church. The sight of these colonnades, while quite jarring, is understandable. Other examples include the stripping of the bronze from the Pantheon being used to create the Baldacchino, which sits now under the dome of St. Peter’s cathedral.

The question persists: if the early inhabitants of the freshly fallen Rome had placed as much importance on preserving existing structures for future generations as we do today, would we see the same Rome we see today? Or were the new conquerors of this ancient land so desperate to stamp out this once dominant civilization and was their disdain so great that if they had their way nothing at all would remain? Had there been a sense of conservation would I still be writing about the same feeling of melancholy that I possess now? It’s all a matter of perspective and the subjective experience we each have of the world. My sense is that there were just too few people to keep a city functioning in the years after the fall that had they all wanted to preserve the coliseum, there were not enough resources to do so.

Two/Three

What we have in Rome is a strong dichotomy between those structures that remain and those that remain simply in memory/writing/drawing. The Pantheon is clearly the most well preserved object we have from ancient Rome. But would its memory have survived until today had it been destroyed in, say the 7^th century by invading Barbarians? My guess is yes, although it would have been somewhat muted since all we would have of it in our consciousness is people writing about it and those that drew it when it stood. On the other hand, there are parts of the Forum which are completely destroyed and nothing remains but a few column bases. Yet the memory of these structures still remains because the Italian government has placed special emphasis on this area by charging an entrance fee in order to see them. My point here is that which would you rather have survived to this day: the building, or the legend? As an architect, the answer is easy: I would much rather have the building to look at, stand in, walk around, etc. But for those who are not architects or do not have an appreciation for these structures (which is the majority of people) would it matter to them either way?

If they could simply read about it without coming to Rome, would that satisfy those people?

If they didn’t even have the means to come to Rome, would it matter if the Pantheon existed or not, because they could just read about it and look at pictures of it?

If somehow all of the collective writings and drawings of the Pantheon were lost, but the building still stood, would these same people feel an urge to travel to Rome to experience the thing, since they could no longer simply passively experience it?

This brings me to my second point: is knowledge or the built environment easier to preserve? I look at knowledge from three different sources: oral traditions, writings in books, and electronic. Are any of these methods easier to maintain than the building itself? Over the years since the fall of Rome we have lost an inordinate amount from both categories. On the one hand, you could say that buildings are easier to preserve than knowledge: in cases where the Christians took over a pagan structure, such as the Pantheon, they were able to maintain it because that religion had the backing of the state, so it was protected in this way. On the other hand, buildings can be extremely difficult to preserve; any number of causes could destroy a building: fire, earthquake, war, material deterioration, etc. And there are certainly more buildings from ancient times which are NOT here than those that ARE here. In terms of the three forms of knowledge that were discussed, I would have to say that oral traditions might be the easiest of the three to preserve. This practice has been around for millennia, passed from generation to generation. There are countless unbroken chains of ancient stories which survive to the present day. Writing seems to be harder to preserve than oral traditions. For the same reasons that buildings could be destroyed, one could say the same for writing. In addition, if one society decides to conquer another and abhors everything they stand for, there is little hope that the writing will survive. We are the ones who cause the destruction of our own culture. I do not believe that enough time has passed for us to accurately gauge whether the electronic media is easy to preserve. Clearly, the infrastructure we have put in place for the internet is of our own creation, and could just as well be destroyed by the same people who created it. It is also easier to make digital copies of books, poems, treatises, etc. and by the time one source has been destroyed/deleted, 10 more have been created to take its place somewhere else in the world.

I guess what I’m trying to get at with this discussion is that civilization is fragile. After the fall of Rome, I do not believe the people who conquered the Italian peninsula knew exactly just what they had “inherited” from previous generations. They did not have the right amount of appreciation for the world that had been in existence for thousands of years. Today, however, we have both the mindset and the technology to be able to preserve these artifacts from the past. There is a rather fine line between survival and ruin. We should do everything we can today to take care of what we have left from the past; it’s not much.

Four

I came to Rome at a specific point in its history. There have been many travelers before me and there will be many more. So what exactly did I experience when I was in Rome? What is Rome? Is it a collection of ancient artifacts? Is it a collection of Classical buildings arranged like in those posters I saw of its recreation? Or is it a modern city that is struggling with its identity? I feel like the answer lies somewhere in the last question. In an effort to both preserve the past and move forward into the 21^st century, Rome is stuck somewhere in between. I do not have the same sense of place looking at ruined columns that were once the Forum of Julius Caesar. I need to be in that completed building in order to fully appreciate it: I think any architect would tell you that. I also do not feel the awe the Romans must have felt during the time that the Basilica of Maxentius was in working order. These buildings are gone now, so should I stand there and simply appreciate their ruins and say, “that would’ve been cool to see completed?” I definitely feel less of a sense of place in Rome around the ancient ruins than the Romans must have felt at the height of their empire. The excavations at the Imperial Forum, Republican Forum, and Palatine Hill just feel like an open air museum, not a cohesive urban design fabric. Therefore, should we restore some of these relics of the past? This brings me to my final point.

Five

What is the morality of restoring the ancient monuments around Rome? There is a debate over the modern street that runs over some of the ancient Imperial Forums. There are more excavations that could be done by removing this street (and possibly finding more evidence to add to the story of Rome), but should this be undertaken at the cost of removing one of the more highly trafficked roads in Rome? Obviously a modern city needs roads to function. They keep the city moving with ideas, people, goods, services, etc. Yet should this service be interrupted in order to potentially dig up a few more ancient column bases? Doesn’t Rome have enough of those already? Morality is a tricky concept, especially in a world today that sees large issues like this as gray rather than black and white. There can be arguments made for both sides that would probably sound equally convincing. Would a potential solution be to augment the city’s streets, close down the Via dei Fori Imperali, and excavate down to see what’s there, restoring the street after a period of years where enough evidence has been gathered that it could be placed back into working order? Could the road remain with it being supported by open-air scaffolding while excavations take place around it? There’s no easy solution. Someone is going to end up unhappy about the results: those archaeologists who want to excavate, or those who want to keep the modern city up and running to its full capacity.

And what about those monuments which do not interfere with today’s modern city. The Forum, for instance, is replete with these types of structures. Should they be restored to what they previously looked like in ancient Rome? Should these buildings remain purposely functionless for an indefinite amount of time? If Rome attempted to restore them, would there be a political outcry from those who would deem restoration unnecessary, as the city and country have bigger problems to worry about? I ask these questions not necessarily seeking answers, but posing them to get myself thinking about these issues in terms of not only Rome, but other cities around the world that have ruins. I’m sure that when I get to places like Greece and Turkey, I will be debating these same issues.

6/3 Baroque Churches

Today we visited the church of Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, the one with the spiral tower. By now I should be expecting such a unique structure from Borromini, and he does not disappoint here. The twisting, corkscrew-like spire is completely different from the towers or domes we have seen previously, and it is no surprise that it can be categorized in the Baroque style. He employed many curvilinear features in his buildings, curved facades and of course this one-of-a-kind tower. I wonder what the ancient Romans would have thought of this structure. They concerned themselves primary with inventing structures based around the arch and its spatial implications. I do not think that they could have imagined that the elements they started to use would have been morphed into these configurations. The ancient Romans made great strides to revolutionize construction processes. I suppose, therefore, that they would have been pleased with the notion of innovation, if not this exact structure. The building is now used as the state archives.

Another aspect to the building that was heavily lectured on today was the ground plane in front of the church. While it is comprised of two squares which each receive an equal amount of rain water drainage, the main focus was on the figure/ground relationship to the building. (Note: this subject has been covered before at the Campidoglio, but bears repeating) Often times in Modern architecture, the building was treated as an object on a plane with no relation to its siting. Why should this be? The foundation and substrate touch the ground and should therefore receive an equal amount of design consideration. When this building was designed in the 17^th century, the architects DID consider the ground plane just as much as the building. The courtyard which fronts Sant’Ivo is sunken 5” below the surrounding loggia, which gives it importance by raising it up slightly on a plinth. Careful consideration was given to the design of the drainage system. I shall reiterate: when is it appropriate to either attach or disengage the ground plane from the building? If you’re designing the building to be an object in a field, maybe you do want the ground plane to remain relatively obscure and not detach from the importance of the building. However because we live in a world of green architecture at the beginning of the 21^st century, ground plane design is essential for a building to be considered sustainable (and garner those all-important LEED points). I would think that we should move in the direction toward this kind of total design of a building, instead of letting someone else worry about drainage. Yes, the architect is not completely responsible for considering the ground plane – today this is left up to the civil engineer and landscape architect. Nevertheless it is incumbent on the architect, I think, to be at least competent in this area so that a basic knowledge can be applied, perhaps making the design process that much easier.

Location: Sant’Andrea al Quirinale

Commissioned in 1658 and built by Bernini, this church is yet another exquisite example of Baroque architecture with its odd curvilinear portico announcing to the world its intentions not to be just your average church. No, Bernini designed this particular structure with an oval floor plan with chapels placed around the perimeter of the interior. It has none of the typical elements found in Classical or even Renaissance churches, as its floor plan is neither a Greek nor Latin cross.

This fact leads to an important discussion: where is the focal point of this church? When you enter the church, where do you go? What is the processional nature of the building and how does it function like a church without those axes to guide its pilgrims and congregation members? I suspect that upon entering the church during Sunday services, one would simply sit in the only space allotted to church-goers: the entire middle of the floor plane. It sort of democratizes the process and makes everyone feel as though they’re on the same playing field when there is no separation between members of the congregation. If everyone is seated in the same area AND the priest is level with them as well, it reinforces the idea that the Christians have of everyone being God’s children and able to receive the same message.

Location: San Carlo alle Quatro Fontane

Squeezed into a rather tiny intersection halfway between Santa Maria Maggiore and the Spanish Steps, sits the Church of the 4 Fountains, designed by Borromini in 1634. Given the compact footprint with which he had to work, Borromini again succeeds in capturing the essence of Baroque architecture: a dramatic, undulating, curvilinear façade that defies the imagination as to how he went about designing the face of this church which completely breaks from all Classical conventions. None of the Corinthian columns are facing the same way; they all seem to radiate outwards from an internal central point. The upper part of the façade is simply unrecognizable from anything I have seen to date on this trip: the cornice is broken by a large oval-shaped projection (assumedly in its cleaner days held representatives of either the patron of the church or its martyred saint), there is no semblance of a pediment as the façade appears to stop before one could have been created, and the overall composition is both divided and held together by the sensual cornice in the middle.

The interior is no less exciting or genre-defying as the exterior. The line of the projecting cornice on the outside continues on the inside, as it snakes along a rather peculiar floor plan. It is more or less oval in shape, but to accommodate for various chapels that intersect the overall geometry, the floor plan and subsequent cornice are bulged out to receive these protrusions, further allowing the complex geometry to express itself in ways I have never seen before. To further accompany the geometries of the floor plan and chapels is another unique feature: its geometrical pattern ceiling. Crosses are mixed with hexagons are mixed with octagons that are fully integrated into one another, whereby the pattern doesn’t seem forced at all.

Rather, it feels as though these 3 shapes were somehow meant to coincide with each other at this particular church. Also, nearly the entire interior of the church is one color: columns, ceiling, cornices, etc. have all been given a whitewash that, coming from the darker tones of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale and Sant’Ivo, seem at first blinding to the eye. Perhaps, though, the architect wanted the room to fill with as much light as possible given the cramped spatial conditions. When the sun shines in this particular church, it seems brighter because of the reflectance of the materials. This feature could also have spiritual implications as well, because the different ways in which churches utilize light all seem to refer to Biblical narratives of Jesus being the light, way, and truth. A different story is woven here, therefore, one in which the architect invented new spatial configurations in combination with a specific color palette in order to express a certain feeling about the religion which was different from those which had previously been attempted.

6/2 Villa Guilia

Compared to the scale of both Hadrian’s Villa and the Villa D’Este, the Villa Giulia is quite small, partially due to its proximity to the city of Rome and the amount of land they had available to build on. It is categorized as a Villa Suburbana, one which is closer to the city and used for short trips to get away from the urban center. It had no bedrooms, which immediately says that it was used for social gatherings only. Built around the 1550’s by the architects Vignola and Vasari (and some contributions by Michelangelo), it hosted parties for Pope Julius III, art exhibitions in its gallery, and other private gatherings. One thing that struck me just looking at the façade was the almost complete difference in styles from the lower to upper levels. While the Renaissance architects sought harmony through the complete design of a structure and its part to whole relationships, as you move further into this period you begin to see more Mannerist attempts at art and architecture.

The part to whole relations here are not completely ignored, but are interpreted in a very different way. Rusticated and bulky on the bottom, yet smooth and carefully rendered on the top, the façade of the building is playing tricks with your typical expectations of what a Renaissance building should look like. The façade is still symmetrical and each lower pilaster/column matches one on the upper floor, so those elements are still remaining from the Renaissance period. Even in the interior courtyard, the columns are vertically aligned but are rendered in different orders, breaking cornices, and always changing scales. What ties the entire structure together is its axial condition, again keeping in line the idea of symmetry, yet one has to exit this axis in order to get to the lower grotto once you reach the inner loggia. This constant playing games with your expectations is what makes this villa unique, along with its representation of the underground world (via the grotto) accessed from paradise (upper loggia). In this underground world a nymphaeum holds various caryatid statues along with two statues of the river gods of the Tiber and Arno.

I was also surprised to learn that the grass we were sitting on in the inner courtyard was in fact a feature of this villa which made it one of the more lavish in all of Rome. Because mechanical mowing hadn’t been invented until the 19^th century, workers here had to cut the lawn by hand, a price that the owners were willing to pay to impress their guests and patrons. To think of lawn being a luxury is completely a foreign concept to me. I’ve taken for granted by whole life the fact that my house in the US has a large front lawn that we cut every once in a while in the summer. While a chore, I can’t imagine cutting that amount of grass by hand, given the poor implements they must have used. Being able to mow your lawn brings up all kinds of interesting topics such as the rise in popularity of lawn sports during the 19^th century, and the fact that all grass apparently is not native to the US at all but had to be imported. The expansion in the amount of leisure time people had because of the Industrial Revolution must have been quite an amazing time for those who had the opportunity to enjoy and take advantage of it. Both football and baseball two of the mega institutions in terms of sports in the US, have to seem improbable to those of the Renaissance time, due simply to the amount of grass they have to continually manicure, cultivate, and maintain.

While I haven’t studied many of the theories behind landscape architecture, I found the discussion on gardens quite fascinating. What was particularly interesting was the contrast between the objective, manicured, garden world and the subjective, wild outside world. Our ability as a civilization to conquer that wild world is fully realized in the gardens we make and their enclosures. Inside the garden space, where the material reality of cultivated greenery is manifested through our knack for juxtaposing different kinds of flowers, plants, and tightly controlled spaces, our imaginations can run wild with ideas for organizing what once was “out there” beyond the walls into a highly structured zone that may sometimes remind us of what was once rural but is now ours to manipulate.

On site at the Villa Giulia is a 20^th century representation of an Etruscan temple – an excellent example of the type of structure that is now extinct to the modern world. It has a highly decorated pediment with rudimentary-looking Doric columns, terra cotta tiles attached to the wood substrate, and Acroteri – angel figures capping the roof tiles on either side. Along with this temple there exists within the Villa Giulia a museum filled with Etruscan artifacts. Out of all of the artifacts that remain from this time period, a stunning 40% of everything from that world exists within this building. I find this mere fact to be stunning because we have so much from the Roman and Greek worlds but little from the Etruscan world. What remains, however, are excellent examples of the level of craftsmanship they had attained working with gold. Somehow, the Etruscans were able to atomize gold and produce pieces of jewelry with exquisite detail and exacting precision.

Location: Piazza Navona

After meandering through the Villa Borghese we eventually made it to the presentation at the Piazza Navona. I particularly enjoy this piazza, but for completely different reasons than why I like the Piazza del Popolo. This piazza is filled with life. Every available square foot is taken up by venders selling all kinds of tourist-y items such as paintings, food, postcards, statuettes, toys, etc. It sometimes features live concerts, street performers, musicians, all existing within the fabric of the piazza in harmony with each other and with the three fountains spaced out along the length of the piazza. Originally a Roman circus that would hold as many as 30,000 people, the piazza has been through a variety of uses over its long history. For around 400 years it was used as a market place and is one of the primary sources of attraction for tourists today.

For me, the most attractive feature of the piazza is the Fountain of the 4 Rivers, designed by Bernini and built in 1651. According to the available knowledge of the time, it represented the 4 largest rivers on each of the 4 continents: the Danube, Ganges, Nile, and Rio della Plata (the latter being in Venezuela as the Italians had no knowledge of the Amazon). Punctuated by an obelisk atop the sculpture, which was brought from Egypt by Pope Innocent X, each of the 4 fountains is anthropomorphized by a human statue. They are shown in different poses; one which faces the Church of St. Agnese has his arm covering his face. Legend has it that because Bernini and the designer of the façade of the church Borromini had such a great rivalry, Bernini subtly used this pose to represent his supposed hostility toward his contemporary adversary.

The Church of St. Agnese is an interesting case study in Baroque architecture. Carlo Rinaldi was the original designer of the church in 1652 but failed to complete it, leaving the exterior to be finished by Borromini. Standing in front of the church, the two bell towers appear to be taller than the dome itself. The cornices that line the exterior of the building are broken, twisted, bent, curved, pushed, pulled and relentlessly toyed with. The Corinthian columns on the first level seem to be engaged. A closer look reveals that the façade has been pulled back ever so slightly from the columns, a new trick that I had not seen before. I have a different appreciation for Baroque architecture than I do for Classical architecture. Borromini’s designs are very unique and give a new variation to the old styles. When I design a building in studio I try to come up with an aesthetic that has never been seen before not just to be different but to not fully duplicate what has come before me. Obviously, the individual parts that Borromini employs are not new per se, he just uses those parts in a different way to make a cohesive whole. His work conveys a tremendous amount of emotional depth, as I was quite amazed to see such a unique structure.

The interior of the church conveys this same sense of newness about the space. As the plan of the church is a Greek cross, the twist that Borromini employs is that the main axis is 10% shorter than the transverse axis. In addition, the pendentives and dome are richly decorated, drawing your eye upward and stretching the space more so even than St. Peter’s. Where the Vatican dome has a well-proportioned circular dome, this particular one employs unique geometry and you almost feel pulled upward when you stare at the dome and become an active participant in the space. The Baroque period featured a concept called vacui, or fear of empty space. Therefore, most all of the work exhibited during this time is filled with statues or artwork: none of the space is left empty. I can understand the feeling of being afraid of open space, but of empty space? This is perhaps why the piazza features 3 fountains instead of the 1 in the center. The attitude that purveyed the church was one of rich emotion, so perhaps this is one reason they filled every space with something. The designers of these types of churches certainly could pull from enough Biblical material with which to create dynamic artwork. You compare this period of rich decoration with the exact opposite side of the spectrum in Modern architecture where NO surface is decorated. The change made in society within a mere 300 years is quite stunning, and it goes to show how each of our subjective perceptions of reality inform how we interpret this world and represent it in three dimensions.

6/1 Campidoglio

Known as the Capitoline Hill in other areas of the world, the Campidoglio dates back much farther than its redesign by Michelangelo in 1536. Located in an area between two ancient temples (one of which was the Temple to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, the other being the Temple to Juno Moneta) known as the Asylum, the Campidoglio had been the area where in ancient times Romulus invited all the Latin and Sabine tribes during the formation of the city. It is also the home of the record-keeping building of Rome known as the Tabularium, the building which is on axis with the entry stairway today. Before its redesign in the Middle Ages, the area was in much visual disarray, as the buildings which had previously occupied the space were arranged in a haphazard way, similar to most of the building arrangement schemes in that time period. The Medieval world was more or less a building-by-accretion phase, where much of the construction was done by individual land-owning lords – a microcosm of the condition Italy was in during that time as well, much of what is currently Italy being divided up into smaller city-state-like divisions. During the Renaissance when much of the focus was on piecing back together the ancient world and recreating the glory of past days, this area of Rome became a major focus of reconstruction because of its location and importance to the heart of the city. Michelangelo was tasked to redesign the area, and the objectives he sought to accomplish were the following:

1. Organize the façade and elevation of the Palazzo del Senatore

2. Clear out all of the useless buildings on the site

3. Reconstruct the Palazzo de Conservatori

4. Build a new palace in the Capitoline Museum in order to balance out the axis of the site

5. Construct a new stairway up to the Piazza

6. Place the statue of Marcus Aurelius in the center as a focal point

What he set out to do, Michelangelo accomplished with a masterful architectural touch. The entire ground plane of the piazza is designed such that 1) the buildings will be raised on a slight plinth to give them more importance and 2) the water will slope away from the central statue and away from the buildings as well. Because the site was trapezoidal in shape, a bulging oval needed to be placed around Marcus Aurelius instead of the typical Renaissance circle. In Modern architecture, we tend to think of the ground plane as something absent or unnecessary from the design of the building, as if it were floating above some surface that was a mere presentation element instead of something to be fully integrated into the design. Why have we moved away from designing the ground plane as such? This answer is extremely complex and can’t be dissected within a matter of paragraphs. The important aspect to focus on here is how well THIS design was executed, and since it has been placed in the canon of outdoor space designs, how should we attempt to get back to this quality of workmanship so that all of our outdoor spaces can be as pleasant, and proportionately pleasing to the eye as this one.

To speak of the quality of this outdoor space is to also talk about the statue of Marcus Aurelius, positioned rightly in the center of the piazza and facing northwest away from the Forum and the Coliseum and toward the people of Rome. This may seem to contradict some notion of Imperial power, as one would think that the statue should be facing toward the Forum, which would therefore connect Marcus to the political history of Rome. Instead, Michelangelo chose to face the statue in the opposite direction, a move which I think represents the fact that he was an extremely popular emperor with the people, which reinforces that relationship. We also have another example in the Marcus Aurelius statue of one aspect of Rome which permeates many other societies and cultures. Virtually all of the statues in modern times that we see with a heroic man sitting on a horse have derived themselves from this particular work of art. Of course each successive government/political body wants their heroes to be represented as fearless and intrepid conquerors of some past evil, and the statue at the Campidoglio perfectly represents these ideals. Of course it is fortunate to have survived this long, because if the inhabitants of Rome after its fall had realized who was atop the horse instead of mistaking it for Constantine, it probably would have been melted down and destroyed along with countless other fragments of the past.

It is quite amazing what has survived to this day and what has not. The countless volumes of books, statues, carvings, paintings, mosaics, etc. that have been destroyed or lost probably far outweigh those that have survived. To think that a building like the Pantheon has stood the test of time but others are in ruins is remarkable; to think that Vitruvius’ Ten Book on Architecture have survived while other historical treatises from famous writers have not is startling. We have tried over the years to piece back together the flotsam and jetsam remaining from the ancient world back together, and what has survived has given us a picture of ancient Rome which we currently all accept. But what if more of it had survived? What if all of it survived completely intact? Would we have the same picture of Rome as we do today? If some important historical text that told us about ancient Rome had survived, would it have changed our view of these ancient people? My guess is yes, because as archaeology is a branch of scientific endeavor, the result of discovering new evidence about a particular subject forces us to change our minds about something. When a new detail emerges about the ancient world, we alter the image we have to fit what actually occurred, not just what we have conjectured. I suppose that we will continue to uncover new secrets about the ancient world. I hope that a clearer picture emerges from the rubble of the past, because the only ways we can determine what happened is through the written and material records.

Location: Piazza del Popolo

The plan that Pope Sixtus V used to organize Rome’s 7 pilgrimage churches starting in 1585 through a series of connecting streets and obelisks is no more evident than in the Piazza del Popolo, located to the north of the city just inside the ancient Aurelian Wall. Sixtus is considered by many to be the forefather of urban design, as the implementation of the streets (as lines) and obelisks (as points) was inherent to his vision of recreating Rome as a center for travelers to both visit and find their way easily around the city. For at least 300 years, the influence that this plan had on other cities across Europe and the United States was profound. Paris, Washington DC, London, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Versailles all take cues directly from this plan and incorporate it into their cities. The Piazza’s 3 main features are its radiating streets (Via del Corso, Via Babuino, and Via Ripeta), its red granite obelisk (brought here by Augustus Caesar and 1 of 4 set up by Sixtus) placed in a most conspicuous location, and the two “twin” churches (Santa Maria di Montesanto and Santa Maria de’Miracoli) that are placed at the space created by the streets as they exit the piazza. I put the word twin in quotation marks simply because there are subtle differences between the two structures. Each of the church’s bell towers that face one another are completely different, as well as some of the cornice work and exterior inscriptions. I also found it strange to have two churches at this point of a city. They seem to be more like place markers, like the obelisk, than a focal point that receives pilgrims. In Medieval times the church would be the absolute focus of a town or city, with parvis in front to denote that this building is the one that principal ecclesiastical structure. However, if you entered the city from the northern gate after these churches were built, which church would you go to? Perhaps it wasn’t the point of their construction to tell pilgrims that you should go to this church or the other. Perhaps these twin churches serve as a kind of sign or billboard announcing to visitors “we are Christian and welcome to Rome” or something to that effect.

The obelisk’s position allows anyone who stands at its base and looks down the three streets to see completely to the end of each without anything interrupting visually. I would have to say that out of all of the places we have visited so far, this is my favorite “view”. You can look all the way down each of the three streets and the visage is both startling and amazing at the same time. It’s almost as if the view was created from some kind of 360 degree perspective and flatted out in front of you. It’s hard to explain the feeling that you get when you first see this viewpoint, and to explain it to others because it is one of the most unique views in all of the world. The piazza itself is oval in shape and feels a bit too large. However, this must have been the case because it was rather empty when we arrived. I’m sure that if more people were in the square it would have felt appropriate in size. The strange thing is that there aren’t too many vendors, street performers, shops, or market places to be seen in the piazza. Usually in places like the Piazza Navona (which we went to a few days ago but haven’t discussed in my field notes yet) is replete with street vendors and feels more appropriately scaled. The Piazza del Popolo, however, might have been served better if it were a bit smaller. Nonetheless, I found the view again to be spectacular.

Located just to the left of the entry gate at the Piazza is Santa Maria del Popolo, a Renaissance church completed and updated by Bernini in the 17^th century. What I found notable about this church were the two Cravaggio paintings located inside at the Cerasi Chapel. The Crucifixion of St. Peter and the Conversion of St. Paul were two of the paintings that I anticipated seeing the most. Caravaggio was really a man ahead of his time: he employed strong diagonals, dramatic lighting, figures in positions Europe had never seen before, and an anti-Renaissance style that was both beloved because of the Counter Reformation during that time and hated because they represented themes that had been touched on before but were now represented in a completely different way. It seems that most good art, if you could say such a thing, almost has to be hated at first in order to be loved. People more often than not hate to change. They want their religion brought to them in a certain way. They want their paintings to represent figures they know in a way they are comfortable with. Nevertheless, in order to change a perceived evil in society, one has to take risks, whether it be in the arts, sciences, architecture, writing, etc. Caravaggio ushered in, along with others, a Baroque style of painting that twisted around conventional themes and tried to present them to an audience that was ready for a change. Sometimes these movements happen underground and are eventually brought into the mainstream. Be that as it may, I believe what he was trying to achieve here was groundbreaking in its own right; a work of art which would try to speak to some people in a way they had never thought of before. That’s what all of these sweeping, broad periods in art and architecture are with their own distinct names and styles. They’re reactionary to the period beforehand; an attempt to do something different not simply for the sake of it but for the perceived good of society as a whole.