Day 11 Mausoleum of Augustus to Mussolini to the Rome Editor of the NY TImes

Day 11

Began with my second outstanding AAR Friday morning walk with the outstanding Kimberly Bowes Kim (Ph.D. Princeton University, 2002 Visiting Fellow, Harvard University, 2001 M.A. Courtauld Institute of Art, 1993 B.A. Williams College, 1992, and AAR Fellow 1999) Kim studies the archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean, with specialties in domestic and religious architecture, and the archaeology of the Roman economy. Her current interests focus on the archaeology of poverty during the Roman empire.   

 

 Her walk and talk this past Friday was on Augustan Rome and the Invention of Imperial Ideology.

 

 

We started at The Masuoleum of Augustus, one of the most sacred monuments of ancient Rome.  However, it is now fenced off with no public access.  Erected in 28 BC, it is a circular structure 87 meters in diameter. It was built as a tomb for Augustus and members of his family.

 

 

 From where we stood to view the Mausoleum there were workers hanging about, or at least they might have been workers......

 .........on their way to work on these buildings, which were erected by Mussolini, NOT coincidently around Augustus Mausoleum. 

 Our group gets deep detail from Kim, with other Fellows who are expert in this era chiming in.

 The buildings built by Mussolini were designed by Victorius Marpulo.  While Facist in origin, I love these buildings.

 Ruth, an architectural history PhD candidate chimes in here.  She is an expert in early 20th century Fascist architecture, and his doing here year in Rome on slaughterhouses..........

 Modernized bruto doric columns, limestone, travertine, and terra cotta details

 Notice the stylized letters that push out proud of the facade rather than being incised.  The man to to the right is thought to be Augustus.  Mussolini modeled himself on this emperor..........

 Fantastic facades which strangely have relationships to American Federal buildings in DC. Note the mosiac work showing the birth of Rome.

 Elements of War, which Mussolini thought was sacred

 Note the rods wrapped around an ax in the upper right.  The rods are "Fasci" and this is where the word Fascism comes from. 

Adjacent to the site of the Mausoleum was the Arc Pacis, consecrated in Campus Martius in 13 BC. It was moved by Mussolini to ab adjacent river front site in 1938, and a Fascist structure was built to shelter it.  Then in 2,000, the Roman government hired Richard Meier to design a new  building to cover it.  Italians are still up in arms that a liberal American architect replaced the original Fascist structure. 

 The wall of the Meier pavilion has this amazing bronxe caligraphy set into travertine.

 AAR Fellows inspecting

 Inside, the Ara Pacis sits in restored grandeur.  There are more pictures of this in an earlier blog from when I visited this building last week.

 AAR Architecture Fellow Catie Newell discussses the Meier building

 I leave the AAR tour to visit the new facilities for my client the University of Notre Dame, who have always had a strong prescence in Roma. The terraces of the new building have great views of the Pantheon

 Here, the architects and project manager who met me show me brand new the drafting room, with old fashioned maylines.  This is due to the fact that UND still teaches people how to draw with their hands!

 There is of course a chapel for UND students and staff.

 Elegantly handling of old and new

 Francesco and Franscesco, the Father / Son architectural team, and Anthony the project manager.

 The exterior of UND's new center

 I rushed back from my visit to UND to hear the head of the AAR Chris Celenza have a "Conversations that Matter" talk with Rachel Donadio, who is the European Culture Correspondent for the New York Times. Based in Rome and Paris, she writes about culture, high and low, across the continent.
From September 2008 until August 2013 she was Rome Bureau Chief, covering the vicissitudes of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi; political and social disarray in Greece amid the European debt crisis; and historic changes at the Vatican, including the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and election of Pope Francis.
Ms. Donadio joined The Times in 2004 as a reporter-editor at the Book Review, where she wrote essays on literary culture and contributed widely to other sections of the paper. She grew up in Middlebury, Vt., and studied Italian and French at Middlebury College. She graduated from Yale University with honors in Humanities in 1996.
She worked as a translator and tour guide in Rome before beginning her career in journalism at the ANSA news agency in Rome and The International Herald Tribune’s Italy Daily in Milan. Before joining The Times, she covered culture and politics for The Forward, The New York Observer and other publications.
This talk was of course - AMAZING!
Comments from Rachel included:
"What I have learned about Rome is that TIME IS POWER, and that the shortest line between two points in Rome is an arabesque."
"Italians always run to the aid of the victor"
"Italy is a place that is at ease with the distinction between what is "real" and "ideal - and is a place where frustration and simulation happy concurrently"
"This is a country that is too well dressed to fail"
When trying in frustration to get news from the Vatican about the new Pope, a colleauge said to a Vatican official - "I have two words for you, and they are not happy birthday"

 Dinner later that night at the AAR alongside the childern of Landscape Architect Fellow Elizabeth Fain.

........to close out a wonderful day, AAR Fellow Peter Bognanni was able to get the Red Sox game on his computer and hook it up to the TV in the lounge.  BoSox 12 / Tampa 2