HISTORY OF

ARCHITECTURE 1
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WEEK 12

Unit 3.4: Etruscan and Roman Architecture

I. Introduction

During the first millennium BCE, while Greek civilization originated and flourished on the mainland and
around the eastern Mediterranean, an enigmatic people, the Etruscans, were settling and developing
their own culture in the area of north-central Italy now known as Tuscany. (2)

Even though they assimilated much from their neighbors (Greece, Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria), the
Etruscans were an original people whose accomplishments left distinctive imprints on Roman
civilization. (2)

Etruscan influence on ancient Roman culture was profound. It was from the Etruscans that the Romans
inherited many of their own cultural and artistic traditions, from the spectacle of gladiatorial combat, to
hydraulic engineering, temple design, and religious ritual, among many other things. In fact, hundreds of
years after the Etruscans had been conquered by the Romans and absorbed into their empire, the
Romans still maintained an Etruscan priesthood in Rome (which they thought necessary to consult when
under attack from invading ‘barbarians’). (15)

So now, let us get to know the characteristics of Etruscan architecture which influenced the Roman
architecture.

II. Learning Outcomes

At the end of this unit, you should be able to:

1. Identify characteristics of Etruscan architecture.
2. Assess building techniques innovated by the Romans.
3. Compare the city planning of Greeks and Romans.
4. Distinguish building types built by the Romans.

III. The Etruscans

Many Etruscan walls and gateways in Rome, Perugia, Cortona, and other places still exist today and still
bear witness to Etruscan skills. The city gate of Perugia in particular exhibited a bold use of the arch, a
building element that, along with the vault, was introduced by the Etruscans and became one of their
main contributions to Roman architecture. (10) See Figure 55.

In Rome itself, several famous structures, including the Circus Maximus and the Cloaca Maxima, the
Roman sewage system still in use today, were built by Etruscan masons. The deft and unfailingly secure
use of arches that emerged in Etruria was to have a tremendous impact on Roman architecture. Even
the Greeks had not equalled this skill. (10)

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Figure 55. Example of Etruscan Arch. Figure 54. Diagram of cardo and decumanus.
(A Global History of Architecture) (A Global History of Architecture)

Etruscan Temples

Among the early Etruscans, the worship of the gods and goddess did not take place in or around
monumental temples as it did in early Greece or in the ancient Near East, but rather, in nature. Early
Etruscans created ritual spaces in groves and enclosures open to the sky with sacred boundaries
carefully marked through ritual ceremony. (15)

Elements of the Corinthian, Ionian, and Attic are all in evidence in Etruscan art and painting. This is also
true of their religion—so much so that their own deities came to be fused with, and coalesced around,
Greek ones, paving the way for the later Roman assimilation of Greek culture. Unlike the Greek
pantheon, however, that of the Etruscans included supernatural and chthonic beings. (2)

The orientation of Etruscan temples was of critical importance and was determined by the intersection
of two axes (see Figure 54), one north-south, called cardo, and the other east-west, called decumanus.
Apparently these orthogonal lines were closely connected to Etrusco-Italic religious iconography. The
observer’s place was at the point where the two lines crossed; he stood with his back to the north. The
eastern sector to the left (pars sinistra) was of good omen and superior gods; the western sector to the
right (pars dextra) was of ill omen and for the infernal deities. (10)

It seems clear that the Etruscans borrowed the orders of architecture and the temple form from Greece,
modifying both to suit their own purposes. Etruscan temples typically contained a tripartite, or
threepart, cella oriented in only one direction, generally to the south (Figure 56). The intricate
refinement of the Doric and Ionic was forsaken for a greatly simplified original order, the Tuscan, which
had the basic characteristics of the Doric but no fluting on the column shafts or sculpture on the frieze.
(2)

Both the columns and roof structure were built of wood, while the walls were laid up with unbaked
brick. More durable terracotta was employed for roofing tiles, pediment ornamentation, and sculpture.
Because of the impermanence of their materials, no Etruscan temples survive. (2)

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Figure 56. An Etruscan Temple, based on description by Vitruvius (A Global History of Architecture)
Compare this plan to those of Greek temples. Note that the colonnades extend only across the front to create a
portico, while the cella has been expanded to several chambers set the full width of the temple. The highly
sculptural building of the Greeks, meant in Classical times to be viewed at an angle, has been transformed into one
dominated by a central axis and meant to be seen frontally. (2)

IV. The Romans

According to legend, the city of Rome was founded on the hills above the marshlands on either side of
the river Tiber in 753 BCE by Romulus and Remus, and it was ruled from 616 to 510 BCE by members of
the Etruscan royal house, the Tarquins. In about 500 BCE, the Latins overthrew the Tarquins and
established the Roman Republic. (2)

Rome absorbed the Etruscans, Greeks, Egyptians, and many lesser peoples and formed an empire with a
remarkably homogeneous architectural style. Roman building practices, like Roman culture, were
derived from many sources, especially Etruscan and Greek, but the forms of their architecture were in
many respects original. (2)

The city of Rome first became the seat of a republic governed by a senate with members drawn from
notable families and by elected magistrates or consuls. The breadth and complexity of the Empire
demanded new construction practices capable of producing very large buildings relatively quickly and
economically. (2)

Vitruvius

We are aided in our understanding of Roman construction during the time of the Republic by a
contemporary work, The Ten Books of Architecture, composed in the late first century BCE by Marcus
Vitruvius Pollio, commonly known as Vitruvius. (2)

It has been studied carefully by architects from the Renaissance to the present seeking to understand
the principles of Roman architecture. Among the topics Vitruvius covers are building design, city
planning, military engineering, and the design of machines, which together indicate that architects dealt
with a much wider array of problems in design and construction then than they do now. His opening
comments on the education of the architect are enlightening:

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The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of
learning, for it is by his judgment that all work done by the other arts is put to the test. This
knowledge is the child of practice and theory. Practice is the continuous and regular exercise of
employment where manual work is done with any necessary material according to the design of a
drawing. Theory, on the other hand, is the ability to demonstrate and explain the productions of
dexterity on the principles of proportion. It follows, therefore, that architects who have aimed at
acquiring manual skill without scholarship have never been able to reach a position of authority
to correspond with their pains, while those who relied only upon theories and scholarship were
obviously hunting the shadow, not the substance. But those who have a thorough knowledge of
both, like men armed at all points, have sooner attained their object and carried authority with
them. (2)

V. Building Techniques and Materials

The imposing quality and size of Roman construction is a result of their application of engineering skills
to the problems they encountered in everyday life. Roman construction exploited structural elements
that acted in compression: the arch, the vault, and the dome, elements developed by earlier civilizations
but used in a very limited fashion. Roman hands these elements became the basis for structural systems
on a scale unimaginable with post-and-lintel construction.

Arch, Vault and Dome

A true arch consists of voussoirs set in a curved shape, often a semicircle. Building one requires a
temporary timber formwork, or centering, to support the voussoirs as they are laid, for the arch will not
stand on its own until all the voussoirs, including the central keystone, are set in place (see Figure 57). If
the arch is continued along its longitudinal axis, it produces a vault; if an arch is rotated on its center, it
produces a dome.

Figure 57. Romans construction method of arch (Graphic History of Architecture)

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The earliest Roman vaults were built for utilitarian structures, such as:

1. Cloaca Maxima
- the trench begun by the Etruscans to drain the Roman marshes. By the mid-first century BCE, it
was vaulted with stone, and the construction still functions as one of the main sewers of Rome.
2. Aqueducts
- a gravity-fed system brought clean water from rivers or springs in the Sabine Hills above Rome
to city reservoirs, then distributed to fountains or other uses around the city.
Some of these handsome arched structures are:
1. Aqua Appia (312 BCE)
2. Aqua Claudia (38 BCE)

Figure 58. Pont du Gard, Nimes 20-16 BCE (Buildings Across Time)

3. Pont du Gard (20-16 BCE)

- most spectacular surviving aqueduct
- made of unmortared masonry (opus quadratum)
-The water channel (aqueduct) runs along the uppermost level, which maintains a
constant incline to carry the water, through the pull of gravity, from nearby mountains
into the city of Nîmes. Aqueducts ran along the contours of the land whenever possible,
but when a valley had to be crossed, as here, Roman engineers used arches to span the

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gap. Projecting stones and inset holes were used for bracing the wooden centering, or
scaffolds, needed to erect the arches, and they were left in the finished work in case
repairs were ever required. This aqueduct has long been severed, so the Pont du Gard
no longer carries water. (See Figure 58)
Masonry
The efficient Romans developed a more expedient building method by using a new material, hydraulic
cement, derived from volcanic deposits first discovered around Puteoli (today’s Pozzuoli) and named
pozzolana. What the Romans discovered was that when pozzolana was mixed with lime, rubble, and
water, the mixture reacts chemically and hardens to a stonelike consistency, even if under water.

The new artificial stone was also used away from the water, which made curves and irregular shapes
much easier to achieve, but the resulting walls were generally not as handsome as ashlar stones.

Roman engineers had perfected the masonry-wall construction process, using “formwork” made from
two faces of stone or tiles, with the cavity between them filled with concrete. From left to right in Figure
59, this facing changes from uncoursed rubble masonry, to pyramid-shaped stones, to pie-shaped tiles.
1. Opus incertum- rough stones surrounding a concrete core
2. Opus reticulatum- a technique later refined to pyramidal stones with square faces and their
points embedded in the wall, which gave a more orderly exterior appearance.
3. Opus testaceum- used triangular bricks as the concrete facing, laying their thin triangular
shapes to present a smooth exterior and an irregular inner face for maximum bonding surface
with the soupy cement mixture.

Figure 59. Three types of Roman concrete walls (Buildings Across Time)

VI. City Planning

City planning practices in ancient Greece and in Rome had striking parallels. Both Athens and Rome, the
cultural centers, grew without preconceived overall plans, while the colonial cities established by each
were generally provided with orthogonal plans. (2)

a. Provincial Town:
Pompeii- one of the best-preserved examples of a Roman provincial town.
- was founded by the Greeks in the sixth century BCE, and it was briefly inhabited by the
Etruscans and Samnites before becoming a Roman city.
- Its irregular grid plan covered about 160 acres within roughly oval town walls (see Figure 60).
(2)

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th
Figure 60. Plan of Pompeii, founded 6 century BCE. (Buildings Across Time)

Figure 61. Plan of Timgad, Algeria(Buildings Across Time)

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b. Roman City:
Some Roman cities began as military garrisons (castra) located in unsettled areas as a means of defense
and of bringing civilization to new territories. For these, and for many colonial cities as well, the Romans
had a standard plan, perhaps derived from the Etruscans and applied with consistency throughout their
empire, from Britain to North Africa, Italy, and the eastern Mediterranean. (2)
Standard characteristics of Roman cities were:
1. It was rectangular or square, with two main roads, the cardo and the decumanus, crossing
at right angles in the center of town. See Figure 61, showing the plan of Timgad City.
2. A wall surrounded it.
3. The public spaces—the forum and military headquarters—were usually located at the
principal intersection in the center of town.
Forum is the public square or marketplace of an ancient Roman city, the center of judicial and
business affairs, and a place of assembly for the people.
4. Residential sectors were laid out in square or rectangular blocks.
5. Large public buildings, such as baths and theaters, served the whole community and were
located according to topography.
6. Triumphal Arches, freestanding monuments built to commemorate a military victory, framed
the entrances into the city.

For centuries, civic life in Rome focused on the Forum Romanum (Figure 62), where the functions of
commerce, government, law, and religion mingled. (2)

Figure 62. View of the Forum Romanum (Buildings Across Time)

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Figure 63. View of the Forum of Trajan, c. 112 C.E., the Column of Trajan can be seen behind the columns of the
Basilica Ulpia (Smarthistory)

The Forum of Trajan

- The final imperial forum, was both the largest and the most lavish (Figure 63). Inaugurated in
112 C.E., the architectural complex is dedicated to Emperor Trajan.
-the forum complex has a vast footprint, measuring 200 x 120 meters
- designed by the architect Apollodorus of Damascus (16)

Figure 64. Arch of Trajan at Timgad, Algeria (A Global History of Architeture)

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But by the time of the Colosseum, Roman architects were beginning to experiment with complex
articulations of the vertical surface. For the first time, the wall became an architectural element per se.
(10) Take a look of the Arch of Trajan in Figure 64, for the Romans technique of framing arches.

The Romans also invented the aediculae, a combination of niche with flanking columns connected by
either a pediment or arch. In addition, they developed the dado, a boxlike stone under the column that
allows it to be elevated.

VII. Temples

Generally speaking, the Romans did not build temples as isolated structures as had the Classical Greeks
but as axially approached buildings in an urban setting, like the temples of the Hellenistic period or the
temples of the Etruscans. (2)

Figure 65. Temple of Fortuna Virilis, Rome, 2nd century BCE (Buildings Across Time)

Temple of Fortuna Virilis, 200 BCE

- resembles an Ionic Greek temple, in Figure 65.
- columns at the side and rear are engaged with the cella wall and not freestanding. Expanding
the cella to the limits of the surrounding colonnade provides a larger interior space and
reinforces the axiality of the whole. (2)

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Temple of the Sibyl (ca. 25 BCE) in Tivoli

-one of the most striking circular temples by the Romans.
-the cella wall is constructed of concrete instead of marble blocks; and the ornamental frieze of
the Corinthian order has Roman swags and ox skulls. (2)

The Pantheon (ca. 125 BCE)

-The greatest circular-plan Roman temple (Figure 66), considered by many to be the most
influential building in Western architectural history.
-Dedicated to seven planetary deities, the Pantheon was constructed in the reign of the emperor
Hadrian, who is reputed to have been its architect. (Figure 67)

Figure 66. Plan of the Pantheon (Smarthistory)

-The bottom half of the cella is a cylinder on which rests a hemispherical dome, with a circular
opening or oculus, twenty-seven feet in diameter, at the top to let in light and air. Figure 68
-Articulation in the dome is accomplished by five tiers of diminishing square coffers, designed
with exaggerated perspective to enhance the sense of depth. (2)
-Against the vertical alignment of the half-spherical dome is added the startling dynamic of the
sun’s rays as they move slowly through the space like a searchlight, illuminating one by one
elements of the architectural interior.
-The building probably had an astronomical dimension, but nothing about that is known for
certain. (16)

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Figure 67. The Pantheon (Buildings Across Time)

Figure 68. Dome of the Pantheon (Smarthistory)

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VIII. Public Buildings

The Romans developed a number of public building types for specialized functions:

1. Basilica
- Somewhat similar to a Greek stoa.
- A large rectangular building used as a hall of justice and public meeting place in ancient Rome,
typically having a high central space lit by a clerestory and covered by timber trusses, as well as
a raised dais in a semi-circular apse for the tribunal. (10)

2. Thermae
- Roman baths owned by the state
- At about 2 or 3 pm, men would go to the baths, staying for several hours of sport, bathing, and
conversation, after which they would be ready for a relaxing dinner. (10)

Parts of the Roman Bath:

Apodyterium: Dressing room/locker room
Caldarium: Main hot room
Frigidarium: Main cold-water hall, often containing several unheated pools
Natatio: Large unheated swimming pool
Palaestra: Exercise yard
Tepidarium: Warm room and bath, often a type of “heat lock” between the caldarium and
frigidarium (10)

Figure 69. Plan of the Baths of Diocletian, Rome (Buildings Across Time)

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Examples of Roman Bath:

The Baths of Caracalla (212–16 BCE)
- recognized as the best developed example of the Roman public bath. (10)
The Baths of Diocletian (298–306 BCE)
- were the largest bath complex in ancient Rome, covering about fifty acres of land, and
were said to have the capacity for 3000 people. (2) See plan in Figure 69.

3. Theater
- where athletic competition, dramatic performances and gladiatorial combats were staged.
- Roman theaters were based on designs already perfected by the Greeks (Figure 70). The
difference here is that support for the seats depends not on a convenient hillside but rather on a
vaulted structure of cut stone and concrete. (2)

Figure 70. Plan of the Theater of Marcellus, Rome, 13–11 BCE. (Buildings Across Time)

4. Amphitheater
- “amphi” means both sides, so a theater on both sides

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- inspired by the design of theater, which were circular or oval in plan, with raked seating all
around. (2)
The amphitheater, Pompeii, ca. 80 BCE
-This oval-shaped arena was used for the gladiatorial contests of which the Romans
were exceedingly fond. Part of its seating is supported on arched construction and part
is built into rising ground. (2)
The Colosseum (72–80 CE)
- derives its structural strength from its concrete vaults.
- It is elliptical in plan and could hold fifty thousand spectators, with boxes for the
emperor and dignitaries at the centers of the longer sides. (10)
- Grandest of all the Roman arenas, was once entirely clad in travertine, some of which remains
in the form of applied orders, as seen here on the left side of the image. From bottom to top,
these are Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian attached columns and a crowning level of Corinthian
pilasters. (2) See Figure 71.

Figure 71. Colosseum, Rome (A Global History of Architecture)

IX. Domestic Architecture

Understanding the architecture of the Roman house requires more than simply appreciating the names
of the various parts of the structure, as the house itself was an important part of the dynamics of daily
life and the socio-economy of the Roman world. (16)

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There are three types of Roman residential structures:

1. Domus
-Latin for “house”, see architectural layout in Figure 72.
-is a structure designed for either a nuclear or extended family and located in a city or town. (16)
-constructed for the higher middle-class Roman citizens (17)

Figure 72. Architectural Layout of Domus (realmofhistory.com)

Parts of a domus:
1. Atrium- the central hall and focal point of the entire house
-primarily used for entertaining the guests
2. Fauces- a narrow passageway connecting the atrium to the streets.
3. Impluvium- rainwater collector located within the atrium
4. Cubicula- bed chambers
5. Alae- side rooms leading to the dining room

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6. Triclinium- dining room

7. Tablinum- office of the male head of the household
8. Peristylium- the rear open-air courtyard
-Mainly used as a recreational zone for the children to play and for the family and guests
to walk around
9. Culina- kitchen
10. Tabernae- shop for the sale of goods and services.
11. Posticum- rear door

2. Insula
-the high-rise apartment dwellings of the Roman world, presumably since they rose like islands
from the built landscape of the city
-ordinary people of lower- or middle-class status—tended to inhabit insulae. (16)
-Shops or commercial ventures were located on the ground-floor street frontages.
-Unlike the domus, the upper-floor walls of insulae had windows opening to the street so that
rooms could draw on both the courtyard and street for light and air.
-The best surviving insulae are found in the port city of Ostia, see Figure 73. (2)

Figure 73. Insula (tenement building), Ostia, 2nd century BCE (Buildings Across Time)

3. Villa- luxurious private houses with colonnaded gardens, inspired by Egyptian architecture
- embellished with dining pavilions, towers, colonnades, fish ponds, and formal parks.
- The hearth was the very spiritual center of the home. (10)

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Hadrian’s Villa
- a miniature world that Hadrian built for himself (118–34 BCE) at the top of a hill about
25 kilometers east of Rome.
- It is not a single building, but a series of interconnected structures and gardens. (10)
(See Figure 74)

Figure 74. Hadrian’s Villa (teggelaar.com)

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