At last! Augustus’s Mausoleum is to be restored

Salve readers! So, although I regularly read up on the latest news in Roman archaeology and history, I seem to have missed a very important announcement. I have myself visited Rome twice, once in June 2012, once in October 2013. I am now already pining for the eternal city and would love to make a return visit as soon as possible (and when I have convinced my fiancee it is worth a third visit on his part!) Both times we dropped by Augustus’s mausoleum, a massive cylindrical structure in the middle of a ring road on three sides, next to the museum that holds the Ara Pacis, Augustus’s own peace altar (which is also definitely worth a visit!)

Here is a little snippet from Google Maps which shows the sheer size of the structure. The white building on the left is the museum.

Augustus’s Mausoleum is an imposing figure on the architecture of Rome. Source: Google Maps

Each time I have visited Rome I have peered through the metal railings between myself and the mausoleum, trying in vain to get a view of the building. Each time, although views were impaired by bushes, it wasn’t hard for me to notice that the building was in major disrepair, graffiti scrawled on the walls, abandoned and broken steps and bricks and rubble strewn all over the grassy floor. I thought it was such a sad way for the building to end up, and largely disrespectful to such a great figure, and hoped that they would soon do something about it and let visitors in one day (although whether this might make matters worse remains to be seen – it would probably help any funding issues for its upkeep).

Well, it seems my prayers have been answered. At last, £1.6m has been handed over to the site in funding for restoration and the city is set to spend £9.9m on building a piazza around the site for handling visitors.

Augustus’s Mausoleum in Rome

Rome’s culture assessor Flavia Barca said:

“Augustus made Rome the world’s biggest and most beautiful city, the capital for business, culture and entertainment. Not every city can celebrate a 2,000-year anniversary.”

Too right! I am eternally envious that I don’t live in the city of Rome (perhaps a little ungrateful seeing as I do live in the (almost) equally impressive London, for its own reasons) and so they must continue to make the most of, and preserve, the edicts and evidence for their history that they are blessed to still have among them.

The mausoleum used to hold a 15ft statue of Augustus and was of course covered in marble, now long lost. I can’t wait to see how they recover this fantastic part of history.

Thanks to the Guardian for the source.

Learning about the Roman House

The towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum have proved invaluable for insights into the lives of Ancient Roman’s, regarding all aspects of their daily business and habits. One of the most useful insights has been the preservation of the houses themselves, allowing us to understand and reconstruct their homes and therefore better understand how they lived.

A typical Roman house is often referred to as an atrium house. This house looked a little something like this:

An atrium house

There are various elements to a house and so I’d like to discuss them in their latin terms and take you through a typical house.

As you walk into the front door of the domus, you will be walking through the ianua. There you will find yourself in the fauces or the entrance hall. In front of you will typically be the atrium, with an impluvium in the centre (a pool for rain water) and a compluvium above this (a same-sized gap in the roof to allow the rain in). This gives the atrium house it’s typical look. The roof would be slanted inwards to encourage the rain downwards.

An example of a typical atrium with an impluvium and compluvium in Pompeii.

Atrium houses were designed to show off the wealth of the owner so typically the atrium would be lavishly decorated. Some house owners would have a table in the atrium furnished with prized possessions, such as their finest silverware.

A painting from a Pompeiian wall showing a table holding the owner’s finest silverware. The Romans loved to show off! 

Due to its design, it is likely your eye would be drawn straight ahead, through the tablinum (the study) and on into the peristyle and hortus. The peristyle was a collonaded courtyard which ran all the way around a garden (hortus) in the centre. The tablinum would typically be between this and the atrium and open-plan. Excavators in Pompeii have found evidence of shutters and curtains having divided such rooms, although it may have been preferred to keep it open to show off the size of the house.

 

A view of a peristyle and hortus in Pompeii.

Moving into the peristyle, your ears may have been graced by the sound of running water from fountains or the tweets of birds in the bushes, shrubs and trees in the garden. There may have been benches about the garden, both wooden and stone or marble, where the house owners may have rested on a good day.

Off of the peristyle would have been other rooms, such as the cucina (the kitchen), the cubicula (the bedrooms) and the tricliunium (dining rooms).

The cucina often held, much to modern distaste and in disregard for good hygiene, the latrina. Yes, that is the toilet. Why? Perhaps for easy disposal of waste, maybe even because the smell of food masked the smell of the latter? We may never know. However, we are sure that it was covered over by a room divider so at least there was an element of privacy.

A cucina in the House of the Vettii in Pompeii.

The cubiculum often held stone or wooden beds. Mary Beard suggests that no one person had a fixed bedroom, as we would today, which is an interesting thought. One just lay wherever they fancied!

Similarly, Mary suggests that the triclinium was not used as often as one’s breakfast table today. Triclinium means three couches which would have been set out in a U-shape, as below. Each person, or persons, would lay with their feet at the head of the next person (not pleasant when you’re eating, I would say). A table, fixed or otherwise, would be within arms reach in the middle of the couches and the rooms were typically richly decorated, fit for receiving, and impressing, guests.

A typical triclinium.

In addition, a Roman house wouldn’t be so without a lararium – a household shrine. Each house had a household god or gods which were honoured with statues in the shrine with small statues and sacrificed to here. Sometimes these were dedicated free-standing structures, other times just niches in the walls. Often it is difficult to tell the difference between a possible lararium or what might simply have been a shelf. Some archaeologist have in some cases jumped to the conclusion of the latter without much evidence to go by to suggest such a use.

 

Here is a lararium, or household shrine, from Pompeii.

Some of the best houses also had private baths. Many houses also had taberna on either side of their ianua, i.e. shops. Sometimes they were owned by the owners of the house, sometimes they were seperate altogether. Some houses had upstairs quarters (seperate often to the house below) and some of the people up in those quarters owned the shops themselves (think of your typical corner shop with flats above). The taberna were sometimes accessible from the houses themselves in which case this was more like having local shops on the front of a wealthy person’s house today. This may seem odd but it was very commonplace then.

In the future, I will focus more on the roles of each room and what may have been found and used in here. For now, I hope this serves as a good introduction to a typical Roman house.

The Roman Domus

I’m going to be posting more about the Roman Domus, or house, in coming posts and in more detail but I wanted to give you a taster before I began. Here is a video of a reconstruction of a typical atrium house. It is a fantastic virtual tour that gives you a great idea of what a typical Roman’s home may have looked like.

Reconstructing Rome

For anyone that has been to Rome, or any similar ruins, they will understand how difficult it is for one to reconstruct a image of what those ruins may have looked like. Even the most vivid imaginations would be hard pushed to reconstruct the Roman Forum in their minds eye. However, by the grace of the internet, some very clever people have reconstructed parts of Rome for us and I wanted to share with you a good starter.

This video is based in the Roman Forum itself and gives a good idea of how big everything was! Towards the end of the video they begin recreating the temples and such from the present day image to what it may have looked like then. It’s wonderful to think that there were thousands of people visiting this place as it looked then.