Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Sample 952323
Sample 952323
Sample 952323
Edited by
Gregory Smith and Jan Gadeyne
Edited by
Gregory Smith
Cornell University College of Architecture, Art and Planning,
Rome Program, Italy
Jan Gadeyne
Cornell University College of Architecture, Art and Planning,
Rome Program, Italy
Perspectives on public space in Rome, from antiquity to the present day / edited by
Gregory Smith and Jan Gadeyne.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Public spaces Italy Rome History. 2. City planning Italy Rome History.
3. Land use, Urban Italy Rome. 4. Rome (Italy) History. I. Smith, Gregory, 195
II. Gadeyne, Jan.
HT169.I84R63944 2013
307.12160945632dc23
2012033539
ISBN
ISBN
ISBN
9781409463696 (hbk)
9781409463702 (ebk-PDF)
9781472404275 (ebk-ePUB)
XV
Contents
List of Illustrations
Presentation: Crossroads in Space and Time
Ali Madanipour
Introduction
Gregory Smith and Jan Gadeyne
vii
xvii
1
Part I: Antiquity
1
2
15
43
67
85
109
vi
131
187
211
Part V: Modern
10
Public Space as Desire, Dream and History: Freud and Rome 233
Paola Di Cori
11
251
277
13
301
14
331
Bibliography
351
Index
391
List of Illustrations
0.1
0.2
0.3
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
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1.6
1.7
1.8
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viii
1.9
5.1
5.2
5.3
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List of Illustrations
5.4
5.5
5.6
6.1
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7.3
7.4
7.5
7.6
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List of Illustrations
7.7
7.8
7.9
7.10
7.11
7.12
7.13
8.1
8.2
8.3
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8.4
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List of Illustrations
9.3
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List of Illustrations
xv
13.19 Nolli Map: Piazza del Quirinale (Reproduced from the original
held by the Department of Special Collections of the University
Libraries of Notre Dame)
328
342
345
Presentation
Cities are concentrations in space and time, many growing historically around
the intersection of major roads, facilitating the development of an urban society,
with its functional division of labor, communication with a hinterland, and trade
with other cities. The important nodes inside cities have grown around these
crossroads, where public spaces and major public institutions cluster, where
different paths meet and where the multiple dimensions of public life unfold.
Before the rise of the modern technologies in transport and communication,
these crossroads were the physical and institutional foci of social, economic
and political life, receiving much of the attention and investment that a town
could make. Rome, the eternal city at the heart of secular and spiritual empires,
standing at spatial and temporal crossroads, displays this better than most cities.
After a brief historical visit to the changing faces of Romes public spaces, as
places of power and persuasion, as well as trade and consumption, this chapter
will focus on the contemporary public spaces in a wider international context
and the challenges they face in the future. Public spaces are a primary component
of the urban experience, and as cities have become more important as nodes in
the network of globalized economies, their public spaces have found increasing
significance. This new attention has brought to surface the tensions between
different claims to space, where strong exclusionary forces can be identified in
the making and managing of public spaces in cities. This chapter explores these
pressures within the framework of the changing nature of cities, and its impact
on public spaces, arguing for democratic public spaces that are considered as
common goods, as accessible places made through inclusive processes.
Places of Power and Persuasion
As Virgil had wished it, Romans were to have no bounds of empire Nor term
of years to their immortal line.1 This sense of limitless time, space, and power
Aeneid, Book I.
xviii
was to be reflected in their cities and public spaces, as displayed in the Forum
and other public spaces, which accumulated buildings and places of significance,
as well as memories and mythologies, through a long history.
Similarly, the provincial Roman cities public spaces provided the stages
upon which the might of the empire and the religious and secular powers were
on display. In the layout of a new Roman town, sacrifice, divination and augury
were used first for the selection of the best site. Within the city walls, a grid was
established, and sites for public places for temples and forums were determined.
According to Vitruvius,2 the celebrated Roman architectural theorist who
lived in the first century B.C., the Greeks designed their agora on a square plan
with exceedingly spacious double porticoes. However, the Italian cities, with
their custom of gladiatorial games in the forum, he thought, required more
spacious intercolumnations around the performance space. In inland cities, the
forum was to be placed at the centre of the city, while in seaside cities it had to be
right next to the port.3 Temples and other public places were to be adjoined next
to the forum and the senate house, in particular, being built so as to enhance the
dignity of the town or city.4 As Vitruvius puts it,
shrines of Venus, Vulcan, and Mars should be located outside the walls so that
venerated lust will not become a commonplace for the citys adolescents and
matriarchs. By summoning Volcanic energy out of the city by means of rites and
sacrifices, the citys buildings are thought to have been delivered from the danger
of fire. And if the divinity of Mars is honored outside the city walls, there will not
be armed conflict among citizens, rather, he will ensure that the walls serve only
to defend the city from its enemies and the danger of war.5
The forums dimensions depended on the size of the citys population, as its
area should neither be too cramped for efficiency nor so large that for lack of
population it looks deserted.6 The proportions of 3 by 2 for its length and width
were recommended. The forums configuration was therefore oblong and its
design effective for mounting spectacles.7
The interplay of power and persuasion once again shaped the spaces of the
city in new ways, as Rome was revitalized at the end of the medieval period on
the basis of promoting pilgrimage. From 1300 onwards, jubilees were held in
2
3
Figure 0.1
The Roman Forum:
A crossroads in space
and time
xx
Rome; these were a time of pilgrimage and a source of income, with which vital
repairs to the city were made. Pope Nicholas V (144755) saw the rebuilding of
the city as an instrument of establishing Rome as the undisputed capital of faith
for Christians. He wrote,
To create solid and stable convictions in the minds of the uncultured masses there
must be something that appeals to the eye: a popular faith, sustained only by
doctrines, will never be anything but feeble and vacillating. But if the authority of
the Holy See were visibly displayed in majestic buildings, imperishable memorials
and witnesses seemingly planted by the hand of God himself, belief would grow and
strengthen like a tradition from one generation to another, and all the world would
accept and revere it. Noble edifices combining taste and beauty with imposing
proportions would immensely conduce to the exaltation of the chair of St Peter.8
With the turn of the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, the centre of
innovation moved from Florence to Rome, with Early Renaissance transition
to High Renaissance, and Mannerism.9 Eventually, the counter-reformation
provided the impetus for a Baroque refashioning of Rome, which combined the
religious and the temporal in a display of images and an organization of space.
Romes streets and monuments were gradually improved under the patronage of
different popes, but it is Sixtus V (158590) who is widely known for a radical
plan for the city. His program was based on three objectives. The first objective
was to set up a water distribution network that would enable the repopulation of
the city hills, through building new and repairing ancient viaducts. The second
objective was setting up a street network that would connect the main churches
of the city and the improvements undertaken by his predecessors. The third
objective was to create an aesthetic unity for a city made of disparate parts.10
Old and new streets were integrated into a network which connected the seven
pilgrimage churches of Rome, easing the navigation in the city for pilgrims.
The streets were given gentle inclines by flattening hills and filling valleys; their
straight lines provided open vistas, which were enhanced by placing obelisks at
the main intersections and other important points.
According to Leon Battista Alberti, the Renaissance counterpart to
Vitruvius, a forum is but an enlarged crossroad, and a show ground [which
included theatre, circus, and gladiatorium,] nothing but a forum surrounded
Quoted in A.E.J. Morris, History of Urban Form: Before the Industrial Revolution,
Third edition (Harlow, 1994), p. 176.
9
Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture, Seventh edition
(Harmondsworth, 1963), p. 200.
10
Morris, History of Urban Form, p. 179.
8
Presentation
xxi
with steps.11 But it was essential that such public places were well articulated, as
compared to the relative modesty of private buildings and spaces. While private
buildings were expected to be modest in their appearances, the significance of
public buildings (civic and sacred) was to be emphasized by ornaments.12 The
public space was to be clean and elegant, and
[a]part from being properly paved and thoroughly clean, the roads within a city
should be elegantly lined with porticoes of equal lineaments, and houses that
are matched by line and level. The parts of the road that need to be particularly
distinguished by ornaments are these: bridges, crossroads, fora, and show buildings.13
One of the best examples of the use of public places for the display of a new
order was the monumental use of sculpture in public places, by placing a statue
or an obelisk at the centre of a square, a tradition that was adopted widely after
the sixteenth century. The idea was introduced by Michelangelo in Campidoglio
on Capitol Hill in Rome, which he was commissioned to design in 1537. Before
this square, sculpture was placed next to buildings, working closely with, or
as part of, buildings, leaving the center of public spaces open for public use.14
Michelangelo, with his sculptors sensibilities, gave the center of the square to
a statue of Marcus Aurelius, the only equestrian statue to have survived from
ancient Rome, making a temporal connection with antiquity. This central place
was emphasized by placing the statue at the center of an oval pattern on the floor,
and on the main axis of the square, which was marked by the stairs leading from
the bottom of the hill to the square. This was the first monumental square of
its kind, paving the way for the Baroque squares that were created afterwards.15
In Baroque streets and squares, fixed points, such as statues, fountains,
obelisks or buildings were used to manage vistas, as distinctive from the ever
changing vistas that characterized medieval cities.16 These fixed points were the
reference points of central composition of the time, which were connected to
one another through axes and gridiron patterns, to create harmony and unity in
11
Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books (Cambridge, MA, 1988),
IIX,6, p. 262.
12
Ibid., IX, 1. p. 2923.
13
Ibid., IIX, 6, p. 262.
14
Camillo Sitte, City Planning According to Artistic Principles, in George Collins
and Christiane Collins (eds) Camillo Sitte: The Birth of Modern City Planning (New York,
1986).
15
Morris, History of Urban Form, pp. 1834.
16
Andrew Trout, City on the Seine: Paris in the Time of Richelieu and Louis XIV (New
York, 1996), p. 52.
xxii
Figure 0.2
Presentation
xxiii
urban space. Even though religious beliefs still dominated the urban structure,
and the urban nodes and points of reference were still churches and other
religious symbols, the idea of creating an interconnected and harmonious urban
space now made these nodes a part of a larger structure.
After the emergence of the absolute monarchies and the modern nation states,
Rome was a source of inspiration for many city builders throughout the centuries,
eager to use the urban space as an affirmation of their rising power and the
development of new national identities. Colbert, Louis XIVs powerful treasurer
who changed the face of Paris, dreamed of a new Rome that was decorated with
obelisks, a pyramid, a new royal palace, and triumphal arches.17 Louis Napoleon
declared his wishes to be a second Augustus, as it was he who had turned Rome
into a city of marble.18 Wren, who proposed the transformation of London after
the great fire of 1666, was aware of the Sixtus Vs streets in Rome through printed
sources and travelers accounts.19 In the design of Washington DC, Rome is
present in the geometrical and axial plan of LEnfant, while Washingtons senate,
and its location Capitol, were both named after Romes.
The ancient Greek approach to spatial organization was based on human
cognition, in sacred precincts as well as in agoras. Buildings were so positioned
around an open space that they could all be seen from a three-quarter view,
and be located at distances of 3070 meters, from the vantage point of a main
entrance.20 For the Greeks, even after the Hippodamian orthogonal town plans,
each building was an end in itself and they were satisfied if it was beautiful
and accessible. This, however, changed with the Romans, who subordinated
their streets and marketplaces to dominant buildings and axial planning. The
city space was organized along the two main northsouth and eastwest axes
(cardo and decumanus). As the size of the city and the power of the state grew
and democratic practices were abandoned, long vistas, mechanical symmetry,
centralized effects and sacrificing other considerations to the facade were sought.
This difference between the Greeks and Romans in the approach to urban space
seems to have provided a basis for the future trends in the West. The Middle
Ages unconsciously reverted to the Greek method, while the Renaissance and
what has followed since have revived the Roman ideal.21
Ibid., p. 168.
Quoted in Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris (London, 2002), p. 265.
19
Kerry Downes, The Architecture of Wren, Second edition (London, 1988), p. 51.
20
C.A.Doxiadis, Architectural Space in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, MA, 1972), pp.
35.
21
D.S. Robertsons, Greek and Roman Architecture, Second Edition (Cambridge,
1969), pp. 1914.
17
18
xxiv
Presentation
xxv
Figure 0.3 The revival of struggle between public and private spheres
were engaged in production and exchange. In contrast to this positive image of
the medieval city stood the image of the ancient city, especially Rome: there was
no political distinction between the ancient city and the countryside, both ruled
by the same elite, in which the city consumed what the countryside produced,
suggesting a parasitic role for the city at the expense of the countryside. Historians
of ancient cities, however, have rejected this characterization, arguing that the
relationships between the town and the countryside in ancient Rome should be
put in a broader context, concentrating on the role of households, rather than the
geographical separation between town and country. The relationships between
the town and the country worked in two ways, both being parts of the economy,
with a level of investment by the landed aristocracy in the productive capacity of
the urban economy. Indeed, the argument goes, the dystopian characterization
of the ancient metropolis, exemplified in the influential work of Mumford27 and
the city planning tradition, draws on twentieth-century approaches to the city,
in which the metropolis was equated with unhealthy and chaotic conditions, as
opposed to the planned order of smaller cities.28
27
28
xxvi
29
Tola Onanuga, Emergency Budget: George Osbornes speech in full, The Guardian,
Tuesday 22 June 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/22/emergency-budgetfull-speech-text, accessed 2 August 2010.
Presentation
xxvii
xxviii
Presentation
xxix
xxx
Presentation
xxxi
access is denied, a clear signal is given that the space is not open to all and caters
only for a select group who are able to pay for the privilege. The public has been
defined as the opposite of the private and the personal,44 or in other words, as
being permeable, interpersonal or impersonal.45 The clear spatial differentiation
between the two realms has been also advocated by those who are concerned
about safety and security.46 In social and spatial terms, however, the boundaries
are much more blurred, as the existence of semi-public and semi-private spaces
are essential for making social life possible through softening the boundaries.
The way these boundaries are constructed has a considerable impact on the
character of a city: if public spaces are lined by high walls, barbed wire and
set-back fortress buildings, or by low fences, trees, green spaces and welcoming
buildings, this can create completely different conditions and atmosphere.
Beyond functional and instrumental access, there is also a symbolic and
expressive dimension to public spaces. In small towns and villages of the past,
the public space was the place of many activities, including ritual and display,
integrating the economic, political and cultural life of the community. In the large
cities of modern societies the integrative nature and role of public spaces have
changed, but the use of public space for sociability has not disappeared. Public
space is the place where identities are displayed, discovered, and asserted. Access
to this opportunity plays a major role in the sense of wellbeing for individuals
and social groups. Access, therefore, finds both instrumental and expressive
dimensions, responding to a variety of social needs, even in the modern large city
with its non-converging networks and fragmented identities. The anonymity of
the city and the openness of its public spaces have caused fear in people who
have been worried about crime and security, moving towards enclosure and
limitation imposed on public spaces. Any reduction in accessibility, however,
would take away an essential part of what makes spaces public and democratic
and, subsequently, what makes cities. Accessible public spaces provide the
opportunity for collective and shared experiences, confronting the forces of
segregation and disintegration that are inherent in large urban societies.
To understand the significance of inclusivity, which would ensure equality
and accessibility, we can look at the dynamics of the development process, in
which urban spaces are produced. This is a process in which a wide range of
actors and agencies are involved, often conceived and controlled by professional
considerations and commercial interests. As the size of companies and their
Allan Silver, Two different sorts of commerce friendship and strangership in
civil society, in J. Weintraub, and K. Kumar (eds), Public and Private in Thought and Action:
Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy (Chicago, 1997), pp. 4374.
45
A. Madanipour, Public and Private Spaces of the City (London, 2003).
46
Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
44
xxxii
productive capacity has grown, the division of labor has diversified and extended,
and the process of development become more complex, the tendency has been
for the process to become more instrumental and technical, with limited relations
to the people who may use the product. The broader conceived and the more
inclusive this process, the more accessible and inclusive its results would be.
To ensure a degree of success in meeting these challenges, there is a broad
agreement that participation of the public would improve the chances of success
in development and regeneration of urban neighborhoods. Such inclusivity is
unable to address the more fundamental economic and social problems that have
persisted in these areas, but they have the potential to trigger the start of a process
of change. Without indulging in physical determinism, inclusive processes would
create and maintain better places, where people have a better sense of ownership
and have more control over their living environment. Rather than merely reflecting
the market expectations or professional instructions, an inclusive process may have
the capacity to include the voices of the people who use and inhabit the space,
hence ensuring its accessibility and relevance to their needs.
Examples of co-production of inclusive places can be found around the
world. An example is the low-income neighborhoods in Latin America, where
informal settlements have gradually matured, and through collaboration between
residents and support from the municipality, public spaces of barrios have
improved and new spaces been created.47 In northern France, the collaboration
of design teams, local municipalities and local populations were able to plan and
implement public spaces that were more accessible.48 In Britain, the regeneration
processes that have involved citizens from the start have been widely recognized
as successful examples of urban transformation, where public spaces are
reconfigured and new ones created. These examples of inclusive production
of urban space indicate the possibility of creating alternative conditions for
the lives of people who are often undermined and ignored in urban change.
When compared to similar schemes without any public participation, the gap in
acceptability and accessibility of urban space becomes fully evident.
Presentation
xxxiii
Introduction
Gregory Smith and Jan Gadeyne
spatial expression of that protean concept of the public. The idea of the public
is expressed in such a diversity of settings that it escapes precise definition.
Contemporary practitioners of urban planning, urban activists, sociologists,
anthropologists, historians and any citizen with an interest in one of the most
compelling and enduring dimensions of western society all have an interest in
the public sphere, but rarely agree on what it entails. Madanipour2 suggests that
the relevance of the concept is not limited to the western city. And the concept
is strongly nuanced when contextualized in different geographical, social and
historical settings. Rome as the paradigmatic western city may be considered
the privileged home of public space which has changed so dramatically over the
centuries. By treating diverse facets of public space as expressed in this peculiarly
western setting in so many different historical periods we were able to cast new
light on the plastic limits of the idea of the public as expressed in spatial practice.
The complex evolution of a spatialized idea of the public as seen through
critical episodes in the history of Rome shows just how vital the notion has been
over many millennia. This evanescent notion has furnished an ideal and a measure
of success not only in planning the city, but likewise in the pursuit of human
perfection associated with urban life. The contemporary decline of the public
may be the measure of the decline of a type of community, and with it a type of
individual, that has accompanied so many centuries of western experience. It is
also a potential witness to the decline of such urban values as equality, diversity
and civic virtue. This is the pessimistic view. More optimistically one might hope
that the apparent erosion of the public in contemporary Rome is a sign that this
historic principle is undergoing yet another transformation.
Guiding Principles for the Investigation
From the outset we faced the question of how to define the limits of our
investigation. We did not wish to exclude perspectives, and aspired to encourage
cross-disciplinary debate on the idea of public space as seen across a wide
range of historical periods. The possible contexts in which public space could
acquire relevance included architectural, institutional, political, social, religious,
phenomenological, and artistic settings. This list was by no means exhaustive, and
other settings which emerged as the seminar evolved included the exploration
of the human subconscious, and the use of the visible city in the construction
of narrative. From a conceptual standpoint the idea of situating a study of
2
Ali Madanipour, Whose Public Space. International Case Studies in Urban Design and
Development (London, 2010).
Introduction
8
9
Introduction
with the forms of government which shape their development. Public areas are
typically rich semiotically, at times expressing sharp tension between vernacular
and formal meaning systems. They may convey deliberate political messages; or
represent the mentioned areas of spontaneous interaction, protected as such
by the State, allowing citizens to give free reign to various forms of creative
expression. Public spaces may also have a juridical dimension, establishing an
exclusive definition of space which can be termed public.
We can borrow broadly from Lofland10 to provide a provisional summary
of what can be defined as public space, noting the presence of three core
components: ownership, accessibility, and assembly. Not all public spaces are
publicly owned, and not all are universally accessible or encourage the assembly
of all citizens in equal measure. These three components are part of a composite
system of classification. As long as one or more of these core elements is invoked
or implied in discursive practice we can say that we are dealing with public space.
Yet though helpful, this composite definition does not spare us further
analytical challenges. We wish to dwell especially on the way space becomes
public in practice. At some level the presence of an acknowledged public space
requires or implies a degree of intentionality. Certainly in the formal terms
understood by Sitte public space is the product of deliberate planning intention.
Yet the recurring question is whether actual space can ever be the product of pure
rational design, or if the multiplicity of forces involved in shaping spatial practice
is such that planning, even in the most autocratic settings, must be considered
an uncertain spatial practice, the outcomes of which may hold unexpected
surprises. One of the most stunning examples of the unintended consequences
of spatial planning practice in Rome is witnessed in the consequences of Pope
Boniface VIIIs efforts to establish a toll road on the Appian Way. Rather than
enrich his personal fortune, which he more than compensated through other
avenues, the establishment of a toll road led to the rise of an entirely new access
route to the city center, which later became the New Appian Way. The Old Way
was abandoned, and was later unearthed as a rare testimonial to ancient Romes
extraordinary road-building capacity.
The case of the New Appian Way is startling, lasting and still visible today.
More commonly the unintended use of public space goes unnoticed in the
official record, and undetected in historical accounts. Yet in citizen practice
which is susceptible to ethnographic investigation, some form of deviation is so
common as to justify the suspicion that it has been present in any historical age.
10
Lyn H. Lofland, The Public Realm. Exploring the Citys Quintessential Social Territory
(New Brunswick, 2009).
Frank and Stevens11 speak of loose space in this regard, and we might add our
conviction that no planned space in any historical period can be perfectly tight.
The history of loose spaces is difficult to write precisely because the constitutive
citizen actions are generally unrecorded. If such practices persist, they may
become incorporated in ensuing administrative decrees, obliterating memory of
the former deviant action. This is what Gadeyne describes in the rise of new road
networks in the late antique, expressing the tension between what de Certeau12
called strategies and tactics. Strategies are citizen actions which comply with the
intentional bounding of physical space, while tactics challenge the legitimacy of
these delimitations. De Certeau claims that such tension is always present in the
practice of everyday life. Yet it is difficult to detect in historical record precisely
because of the subversive nature of spatial tactics. We mention this tension
here because claims to public status at one level may not correspond to claims
advanced at another. A single space may be differently semanticized by different
individuals or groups, giving rise to rich meaning potential, not all of which can
be captured in the analysis of a given space in a given time.
In a study having the character of these essays, a multiplication of possible
layers of analysis is inevitable. What possible layers are involved? The physical
design of the city is by definition a part of the investigation. Ownership is an
optional issue, as is assembly. Politics at some level is a recurring theme. Shifts in
the distribution of power are mirrored in shifts within the physical orientation
of the city. Rulers from ancient times to modern have structured physical
space according to their political aims, often constraining ordinary spatial
practice in such a way as to legitimize their claim to power. Some chapters deal
with representations of space in painting and literature, and many deal with
architectural design. The specific themes are varied, but all the chapters cast an
analytical lens on the deployment of a spatialized idea of the public in selected
periods of the citys history.
Periodized Findings
It is a truism that physical space exists first in the mind and then in the senses.
Accepted conventions, including myths, impact powerfully the perception of
space, and from there the shape of the city. To take our case in point, Romes
foundation myth had powerful consequences for the form of the city already in
the classical period. In later periods the myth of Rome, embodied in the notion
11
Karen A. Franck and Quentin Stevens (eds), Loose Space. Possibility and Diversity in
Urban Life (London, 2007).
12
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, 1984).
Introduction
of romanit,13 had powerful consequences for the citys growth up to the present
day. In Republican Rome, and before, the idea of origins was critical to the citys
growth. The search for a single origin subtended the illusion of a single center,
a myth which collides with the citys long-established polycentric character. In
a celebrated speech of 1861, Cavour14 underscored the apparent univocality
of Romes symbolic stature when he noted that the city had stood for the
universality of the Empire first and that of the Church later. Rome could thus
stand as the symbolic and effective capital of the united nation. The factually
inaccurate suggestion of a monocentric Rome was functional to Cavours
rhetorical needs, as it was to many city builders before him.
The Campidoglio, hailed in the high Renaissance as the Umbilicus Urbis,
emerges as an urban center point relatively late in history. In the earliest times
the Aventines foundation legend made this Romes urban core. Royo analyzes
the citys gradual eastward growth, projecting out to the Roman forum in the
early Republican period, and then beyond with the construction of the Flavian
amphitheater, or the Colosseum as it is now known, in the second century AD.
Each successive effort to found afresh the Urbs under new leadership entailed a
propaganda system expressed inter alia by a public building program, and with it
a definition of new public spaces. Yet Romes obsession with historical precedent
was so cogent that no new foundation cancelled the effects of the previous urban
configuration, giving rise over time to a polycentric city further elaborated in
successive centuries.
As we know, the city continued to grow up until the late fourth century AD,
with an increasing abundance of public buildings, many of which sprang up in
the citys former periphery. The entire territory of the historic city, contained
within the arc of the Aurelian Walls, was dotted with public buildings having
diverse religious, political and social functions. The most spectacular of these
buildings were the citys public baths, often rivaled in their magnificence only
by the Colosseum itself. The greatest of the baths, the imperial thermae, were
an impressive feature of the cityscape which survived the cataclysmic changes
of the fifth century. The function of these pre-eminent public spaces changed in
the shifting circumstances which separated the classical antique from the early
Christian period. Italys loss of economic unity, and its political fragmentation,
deprived Rome of resources needed to maintain such grand public works. Yet
for a time the functionality of the thermae was assured by the Church on a
far more humble scale, as a welfare service for the urban poor. But with time
even this limited function subsided, as citizen practices changed, and public
John Agnew, Rome (Chichester, 1995).
Camillo Benso di Cavour, Discorsi Parlamentari (Florence, 1973).
13
14
Introduction
Boniface VIII was particularly assertive in advocating papal claims to both spiritual
and temporal authority, and was one of the first popes to monumentalize his living
public presence to assist this aim. The particular instrument of public persuasion
was the benediction lodge which Boniface built at the Basilica of St. Johns on
the occasion of the 1300 Jubilee. The public forefronting of the popes person in
pursuing the Churchs temporal aims later became an engrained practice, most
spectacularly pursued by Pius II at the time of the 1450 Jubilee. Pius II was not only
a powerful prince and a spiritual leader, he was a learned scholar, and wished to call
attention to all these qualities in the design of a benediction lodge built under his
guidance at St Peters. It was a theatrical device deriving inspiration from classical
architecture, and made special reference to the grandeur of the Colosseum to
represent the Church as a single community united under the supreme authority
of the pope, placed on view for the benefit of citizens and pilgrims alike.
St. Peters was the natural center of Catholic Rome, as was St. Johns, and a
handful of other patriarchal basilicas. By around 1400 the Church was eager to
assert itself as a major political force in Italy and beyond, and this was reflected
in the citys transformation. Indeed Romes fragmented urban character was
gradually absorbed into an integrated design reflecting the consolidation of papal
power. Critical to the plan was development associated with the Field of Mars, cut
through by the Via del Corso. This area was marked by the presence of scattered
churches and monasteries, and various public buildings. At the top of the Corso
was Piazza del Popolo, the principle gate from which pilgrims entered on their way
to the tomb of St. Peter. This access point was indelibly monumentalized in the
early sixteenth century by the creation of the trident which mirrored the trident
at Ponte SantAngelo. These two spaces provided public witness to the doctrine of
the faith, one upon the pilgrims entry into the city, the other on the last stage of
the journey before crossing the River Tiber.
The Via del Corso strengthened the northsouth integration of the city, and
encouraged eastward expansion in the direction of the Campidoglio. This eastward
expansion was accompanied by important renovation works on the Capitol. On an
urban scale an eastwest tension was involved, especially under the papacy of Paul
III. Pauls Farnese family interests then centered on Palazzo Venezia, in proximity
of the Capitol Hill, while the interests of the Church centered on St. Peters. A
further tension concerned the spiritual as opposed to the civic aspirations of the
Church. These institutional and personal polarities were resolved in the felicitous
program Michelangelo conceived to unite St. Peters and the Campidoglio under a
single architectural motif. The giant orders furnished an unequivocal link between
these two locations, one representing the Churchs spiritual mission, the other its
civic role. They represented a creative re-evocation of the classical orders, which
combined with spatial proximity to Romes historical source to generate potent