John H. Middleton, Henry S. Jones and Francis M. Crawford

“ During the latter part of the 15th and the first few years of the succeeding century Rome was enriched with a number of buildings Bramante. by Bramante (q.v.) , one of the greatest architects the world has ever seen. He combined the delicacy of detail and the graceful lightness of the Gothic style with the measured stateliness and rhythmical proportions of classic architecture. Though he invariably used the round arch and took his mouldings from antique sources, his beautiful cloisters and loggie are Gothic in their general conception. ”

“ At a later time, when Rome was united under one government, the very physical peculiarities which had originally made its hills so populous, through their natural adaptability for defence, became extremely inconvenient in a united city, where architectural symmetry and splendour were above all things aimed at. Hence the most gigantic engineering works were undertaken: tops of hills were levelled, whole ridges cut away, and gentle slopes formed in the place of abrupt cliffs. The levelling of the Velia and the excavation of the site for Trajan’s forum are instances of this. ”

“ This falling off in architectural taste was due to Michelangelo (q.v.) more than to any other one man. His cortile of the Farnese palace, though a work of much stately beauty, was one of the first stages towards that lifeless scholasticism and blind following of antique forms which were the destruction of architecture as a real living art, and in the succeeding century produced so much that is almost brutal in its coarseness and neglect of all true canons of proportion and scale. ”

“ Caracalla, after murdering Geta, erased his name from all monuments to his honour in Rome. Representations of the arch on coins of Severus show that its attic was surmounted by a chariot of bronze drawn by six horses, in which stood Severus crowned by Victory; at the sides were statues of Caracalla and Geta, with an equestrian statue at each angle. The arch, except the base, which is of marble-lined travertine, is built of massive blocks of Pentelic marble, and has large crowded reliefs of victories in the East, showing much decadence from the best period of Roman art. ”

“ The characteristics of the barocco are the reckless abuse of curves and extravagantly broken lines, of contorted columns, twisted tympanums and highly exaggerated ornaments; yet we must confess that many monuments of this period of art exhibit such exuberant life, such contrasts of relief and shadow, and such a wonderful combination of variety and solidity as cannot fail to please the many, even now, by the magnificence of their general effect. ”

“ In the middle ages the population of Rome had dwindled to twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, who lived huddled together about the strongholds of the barons, and the modern city had slowly grown again upon the exiguous foundation of a medieval town. ”

“ No other extravagances or cruelties of Nero appear to have offended the Roman people so much as the erection of this enormous palace, which must have blocked up many important roads and occupied the site of a whole populous quarter. It was partly to make restitution for this enormous theft of land that Vespasian and Titus destroyed the Golden House and built the Colosseum and Thermae of Titus on part of its site. Adjoining the baths of Titus were those built on a much larger scale by Trajan. Under the substructions of these extensive remains of the Golden House still exist ”

“ Concrete (opus caementicium, Vitr. ii. 4, 6, 8) , the most important of all the materials used, is made of rough pieces of stone, or of fragments of marble, brick, &c., averaging from about the size of a man's fist and embedded in cement made of lime and pozzolana-forming one solid mass of enormous strength and coherence. Stucco, cement and mortar (tectorium, opus albarium and other names) are of many kinds; the ancient Romans especially excelled in their manufacture. ”

“ The superficial strata on which Rome is built are of three main kinds: (1) the plains and valleys on the left bank of the Tiber are covered, as it were, by a sea of alluvial deposits, in the midst of which (2) the hills of volcanic origin rise like so many islands; and (3) on the right bank of the Tiber, around the Janiculan and Vatican Hills, are extensive remains of an ancient sea-beach, conspicuous in parts by its fine golden sand and its deposits of greyish white potter’s clay. ”

“ Of course, the numbers of the poor greatly increased with the growth of population, especially after the failure of building speculations between 1888 and 1890, though great efforts were made by the municipality to send all persons then thrown out of employment back to their homes. One of the difficulties under which Rome labours is that while it attracts the population of the country, as other capitals do, it possesses no great mechanical industries in which the newcomers can be employed. Efforts to create small industries in the populous quarters of the poor met with little success. ”

“ The reason of the almost universal use of smooth facings either of opus reticulatum or of brick over concrete walls is a very puzzling question; for concrete itself forms an excellent ground for the stucco coating or backing to the marble slabs, while the stucco adheres with difficulty to a smooth facing, and is very liable to fall away. ”

“ All the better rooms and the baths are lined with polished marbles, many of great beauty and rarity; the floors are mostly mosaic of tessellated work. The paving of the tablinum was a beautiful specimen of inlay in orphyry and marble. In many places alterations and clumsy patchings of the 4th and 5th centuries are apparent. A number of statues of the chief vestal, or virgo vestalis maxima, with inscribed pedestals, were found in the atrium, mostly of the 3rd century, though a few are earlier; these are of especial interest as illustrating the sacerdotal dress of the vestals. ”

“ Between 1870 and the end of the century the socialist party had no great influence in Rome, which can never be a city of manufacturing interests. For purposes of municipal government the division of the city into districts has been modified, but the old division into fourteen rioni is adhered to in principle, the new quarters of Castro Pretorio and the Esquiline having been included in the first Rione, which still bears the name of “Monti.” The municipality consists of a mayor and eighty communal councillors, of whom a large proportion were for many years members of the aristocracy. ”

“ Finally, after Rome had become the capital of united Italy, in the last quarter of the 19th century, an extensive government plan (piano regulatore) was gradually carried out, with the object of reducing hills and valley to a uniform level and constructing wide boulevards on the chessboard method of a modern American city. The constant fires which have at times devastated Rome have been a powerful agent in obliterating the natural contour of the ground; and the accumulated rubbish from this and other causes has in some places overlaid the ground to a depth of 40 ft., notably in the valleys. ”

“ Usually such cast-work was only used for foundations and cella walls, the upper parts being faced with brick; but in some cases the whole wall to the top was cast in this way and the brick facing omitted. In strength and durability no masonry, however hard the stone or large the blocks, could ever equal these walls of concrete when made with hard lava or travertine, for each wall was one perfectly coherent mass, and could only be destroyed by a laborious process like that of quarrying hard stone from its native bed. ”

“ Among the numerous buildings discovered in the Horti Sallustiani near the Quirinal was a very fine house of the 1st century A.D., in concrete faced with brick and opus reticulatum. It had a central circular domed hall, with many rooms and staircases round it, rising four storeys high. This house was set in the valley against a cliff of the Quirinal, so that the third floor is level with the upper part of the hill. It is nearly on the line of the Servian wall, which stood here at a higher level on the edge of the cliff. ”

“ The most important and expensive work executed by the government with the assistance of the municipality was the construction of the embankments along the Tiber. Though damaged by the great flood of December 1900, their truly Roman solidity saved the city from the disastrous consequences of a wide inundation. It is impossible not to admire them, and not to feel respect for a people able to carry out such a plan in such a manner and in so short a time, in the face of such great difficulties. ”

“ On the opposite side of the peristyle is a large throne-room, the walls of which were adorned with rows of pavonazzetto and giallo columns and large marble niches, in which were colossal statues of porphyry and basalt; at one side of this is the basilica, with central nave and apse and narrow aisles, over which were galleries. The apse, in which was the emperor's throne, is screened off by open marble cancelli, a part of which still exists. It is of great interest as showing the origin of the Christian basilica (see Basilica) . ”

“ The modern practice of raking out the joints to form a key was not employed by the Romans, but before the mortar was hard they studded the face of the wall with marble plugs and iron or bronze nails driven into the joints, so as to give a hold for the stucco—a great waste both of labour and material. ”

“ The enormous dome, 142 ft. 6 in. in span, is cast in concrete made of pumice-stone, pozzolana and lime; being one solid mass, it covers the building like a shell, free from any lateral thrust at the haunches. On the face of the concrete is a system of superimposed relieving arches in brick. These no longer possess any constructive value, but were designed to preserve the stability of the dome whilst the concrete became firmly set. Round the central opening or hypaethrum still remains a ring of enriched mouldings in gilt bronze, the only bit left of the bronze which once covered the whole dome. ”

“ Metropolitan building acts, not unlike those of modern London, were enacted by several of the emperors. These fixed the materials to be used, thickness of walls, minimum width of streets, maximum height allowed for houses, &c. After the great fire in Nero's reign, A.D. 64, an act was passed requiring the lower storeys of houses to be built with fire-proof materials, such as peperino or burnt brick.
Enormous accumulations of statues and pictures enriched Rome during its period of greatest splendour. ”

“ The superior neatness and beauty of Tiberius's brick-facing make it easy to distinguish where his work ends and that of the later emperors begins. Owing to the addition of the later wall it requires some care to trace the rows of battlements which belong to the camp.
The Pantheon is the most perfect among existing classical buildings in Rome. The inscription on the frieze of the portico (M . AGRIPPA . L . F . COS . TERTIVM . FECIT) refers to a building erected by Agrippa in 27 B.C., consecrated to the divinities of the Julian house (Mars, Venus, etc.) under the name Pantheon. ”

“ The aristocracy, however, kept rigidly aloof from all speculations for a time, and maintained its traditional attitude of contemptuous superiority, to which the middle class answered with its profound hatred. This state of things lasted about ten years, until the time of the great building speculations, in which a number of noble families were tempted, and in which they soon found themselves hopelessly involved, and brought into close contact with the middle class. ”

“ It is very neat in appearance, and is often fitted with great care, though it was generally covered with stucco. The so-called “house of Livia” on the Palatine is a good example of the earlier sort, when the quoins were made of small rectangular blocks of tufa. Under the Empire brick quoins came into use (as may be seen, e.g. in the so-called palace of Caligula) . Though in Rome opus reticulatum was almost always made of tufa, in the neighbourhood of the city it was sometimes of peperino or even lava, where these materials were found on the spot. ”

“ The marble plan of Rome (Forma urbis Romae, ed. Jordan, 1874; the more recently discovered fragments have only been published in periodicals) dates from the reign of Septimius Severus, who restored the building to which it belonged after the fire of 191 B.C. The plan which it replaced was executed by order of Vespasian. The scale was generally 1 : 250; it was oriented with S.E. at the top, N.W. at the bottom. Buildings are of course frequently represented on coins and works of art, and these may often be identified with existing remains. ”

“ It had a lofty podium, faced with marble and decorated with a heavy cornice and pilasters, one under each column. The podium is an interesting example of the enormous solidity of Roman buildings of the best period. Solid tufa walls, 8 ft. thick, are built under the whole of the cella and the front row of columns, while the columns of the sides rest on spurs of similar walling, projecting at right angles from that under the cella; the part immediately under the columns is of travertine, and the spurs are united and strengthened laterally by massive flat arches, also of travertine. ”

“ The ideal boundary of the city was formed by the Pomerium (see Varro, L.L. v. 143; Liv. i. 44; Dionys. i. 88) , whose original course is traced by Tacitus (Ann. xii. 24) . It passed along the foot of the hill (per ima montis Palatini) , the angle-points being given by the Ara Maxima in the Forum Boanum, the Ara Consi in the Circus Maximus, the Curiae Veteres (near the arch of Constantine) and the Sacellum Larum (at the N. angle) . But this was of course not a defensible site, and the extent of the fortified city can only be determined by the traces of its early walls. ”

“ Besides the Cosmati, other artists, such as Paulus Romanus and his sons in the 12th century, and Petrus Vassallectus in the 13th, contributed to the revival of art. The beautiful cloisters of S. Paolo fuori le Mura, begun by “Magister Petrus,” and those of S. John Lateran, the work of Vassallectus, are the finest architectural works of this school. In the latter part of the 13th century we find the sculptor Arnolfo del Cambio at work in Rome. His altar-canopy at S. Paolo fuori le Murai (1285) seems to have been imitated by the Cosmati in their latest works ”