DISCOVERING OLD ROME

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 85, 4 January 1930, Page 10

DISCOVERING OLD ROME

EXCAVATING IN THE IMPERIAL FORA FLOWERS IN TRAJAN’S MARKET MUSSOLINI’S GREAT WORK By word and deed Mussolini has shown his determination to revive in the hearts of all Italians his own passionate love of ancient Rome, and bring her traditions and aspirations into their everyday life, On the' first anniversary of the March on Rome (October, 1923) he laid a laurel wreath on. the altar of the Forum Magnum, where the body of Caesar had been cremated; and the work of excavating the Imperial Fora (including that of Caesar’s Forum) was inaugurated by the King and Mussolini on April 21, 1926, the birthday of Rome, chosen as the Fascist Labour festival (states an “Observer” correspondent). Under the old regime, over twenty years ago, Senator Carrado Ricci, then Director General of Fine Arts, conceived the idea of restoring and isolating the Imperial Fora; but, money being scarce, he was destined to wait for the dynamic Fascist Government before dreams could become realities. He had concentrated his studies always on the Forum of Trajan, the last and most beautiful of the Imperial Fora. Imagine an immense square with an equestrian statue of the Emperor Trajan, approached by means of a triumphal ai'ch and flanked by two colossal curved wings and with two smaller exedrae at the extremity of the adjoining Basilica Ulpia. The Basilica opened out into the square of the column of Trajan with its spiral band of reliefs containing 2500 human figures; from thence the worshipper mounted the steps to the Temple of Mars. A writer in the fourth century described this 1' orum as a work “which even the gods cannot help admiring;” two centuries later 1 ope Gregory the Great prayed that the soul of the man who had built so wonderful a monument might not be doomed to perdition, and in a vision he was told of Trajan’s salvation. The Dream* of Apollodorus. To make this Forum the architect, Apollodorus of Damascus, had cut through the ridge between the Quirinal and Capitoline hills to the height of liajah’s' column. In order to sustain the shelving slope of the hill, which had been cut away, he laid out a great hemicycle on the east side, separated from the actual Forum by a paved road,-and made use of them as shops. The hemicycles disappeared beneath medieval and modern erections of all kinds, and some authonties even doubted, their existence. Lotions of one on the N.E. side could be seen by looking into the back gardens of wineshops, barracks and private houses, but, as in the days of Piranese, these remains were still spoken of as the Baths of Paulus Emilius. Corrado Ricci, determined to find the building of Apollodorus, started work on this site. In two years some 13,009 square metres of earth were removed, and this autumn the greater part of Trajan’s market was uncovered, showing rows of shops or tabernae. The whole structure is of brickwork, while the lintels and threshold of the shops are of travertine. On the lower story are eleven shops; a flight of steps at each end of the hemicycle leads to the second level with twenty-two shops; and above is a third tier which adjoins the Via Biberatica lined with wineshops. ■ ■ Sculpture Unearthed. By demolishing the baracks of Santa Caterina in this street a large vaulted hall has been discovered recently which was probably a meeting place for commerce. Another building has been found at the top of the market; it has. a separate entrance, a tribune with an apse at one end, a courtyard and two other rooms entered under an archway. The rooms are full of niches which were probably used both for books and statues. It may have been some tribunal, but nothing precise is known at present. The subsoil of Rome is rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and much will come to light from the Forum of Trajan. Only a few days ago Senator Ricci noticed that. the threshold of one of the shops in this market was of marble instead of travertine. Carefully freeing, it from earth, he found a marble slab six feet long by two feet with four niches framed in carved blive-wreaths, each one containing a life-size head. Two represent an elderly man and woman; the others are of a young man and girl. The sculpture, forming part of this mausoleum. is realistic and powerful, and Italians are pleased at this discovery, which they think is an efficacious answer to certain foreign authorities who deny an original Roman school of portraiture, uninfluenced by Greece. Another fragment brought to light during last week is a slab forming part of a Christian tomb of the fourth century. In the centre is a niche shaped like a shell, framing the head of a man. At the side is a relief representing Moses striking water from the rock. A Forum of Fascism. Thus a marvellous work has been planned and is being carried out under one’s very eyes. By clearing away a rab-bit-warren of houses, and even palaces, suppressing trams, and making, new roads for congested traffic, Mussolini will be restoring the ambitions of the Caesars, who each one in turn tried to connect the public buildings in a continuous chain. Trajan sought to link the Imperial Fora with that quarter of Rome containing the Flaminian Circus, the Theatres of Balbus, Pompey and Marcellus, and other temples and porticos. Mussolini is also adding to the Fora with one dedicated to Fascismo, to be adorned with a giant monolith of white marble and numerous symbolic statues.

But, perhaps, the plan just announced ■of using the great market of Trajan as a flower market will delight arid charm many people quite as much as the more ambitious schemes for beautifying Rome.