Online exhibitions

EXHIBITION Imago Augusti. Due nuovi ritratti di Augusto da Roma e Isernia

> Exhibition sheet

> Exhibition sheet

An original video account of the exhibition Civis, Civitas, Civilitas. From the Mercati di Traiano - Museo dei Fori Imperiali, editor Claudia Cecamore guides us on a journey through the spaces and buildings of the cities of the Empire through the plaster models of the Museo della Civiltà Romana.

As part of the exhibition Civis Civitas Civilitas. Roma antica modello di città (Ancient Rome as a model of the city), a series of online lectures were held, illustrating different aspects of Roman architectural typologies, their diffusion in the territories of the Empire and their political and social meaning.

Ancient Rome as a model of the city. Public spaces   
Claudia Cecamore and Lucia Cianciulli discuss public spaces in ancient Rome, with a focus on the forum of Pompeii.

Marble and plaster
Marina Milella describes a journey throughout the Roman Empire, talking about the peculiarities of the architectural decoration of some monuments, with interesting comparisons with the models on display in the exhibition. Claudia Cecamore recounts the varied genesis of the collection that later became part of the Museo della Civiltà Romana.

The distribution of architectural typologies within the Empire
The numerous models in the exhibition offer the possibility of positioning the types of monuments within a geographic database, rendered "statically" along the route through printed maps, and interactively through the scanning of QR codes. In the perspective of a work in progress, each architectural typology is enriched in terms of quantity and quality of information for end users, also with a view to online collaboration. Edited by Paolo Vigliarolo.

Memory in stone
Mariapaola Del Moro talks about the value of personal and family memory in Roman society, embodied in the care of its preservation through the construction of monumental tombs, or in its erasure through damnatio memoriae.

Il Foro di Augusto: model for the cities of the Empire?
Not a large square, dominated by the gigantic temple dedicated to the god of war and vengeance, Mars Ultor, and in the porticoes and wide exedras, a 'crowd' of statues recounting the origins of Rome, its glorious past, the men who made it great, its founders, Aeneas and Romulus, descendants of two divinities, Mars and Venus, all combine to magnify the new founder of Rome, Octavian Augustus, who thus left a testament of precious marbles to his contemporaries together with the testament he himself wrote, the famous Res Gestae. Inscriptions present the illustrious men and triumphants who welcomed the citizens summoned to hear civil cases in the great tribunals set up in the porticoes and exedras: justice, the true administrative heart of the empire, found its first majestic public setting in the Forum. Shining polychrome marble, innovative architectural orders, sacred female figures alternating with heads of divinities rich in pathos placed at the centre of large marble shields... All this and more was represented in the monumental public space that was to become a model for the cities of the ever-growing empire: but with what meaning and with what "crowd" depicted? In town halls large and small, sometimes apparently lost in vast territories? Edited by Lucrezia Ungaro.

Travelling with writers: the city empire in literary texts
Through the eyes of Orazio, Ovidio, Tacito, Dione Chrisostomo, Elio Aristide and many others, we followed an itinerary that showed us which buildings and monuments represented for intellectuals the social, cultural, religious and ideological functions of the city. Edited by Alessandra Balielo.

Games of power. Agonism and the architecture of conquest from Romanisation to colonialism
Simone Pastor illustrates the peculiarities of the gladiatorial games in a chronological path that goes... Up to the present day. If Rome introduced gladiature as part of the process of 'Romanisation', so did the colonial powers of the last century impose their customs through sporting activity. Far from being merely a game or recreational activity, sport has always been the key and component of the constitution of many ancient and modern societies and a central aspect of the globalisation of culture and local resistance to it.

The role of theatre in Civitas
Performances, stage mechanisms, music. A multi-voice dialogue on the different aspects of Roman theatre. The reception of the Greek model, performances, stage mechanisms. Finally... at the theatre with the Romans: an essay on musical archaeology. Edited by Alessandra Balielo, Claudia Cecamore, Massimiliano Munzi, Paolo Vigliarolo.

A day at the baths
Architecture of thermal baths and bathing rituals in the Romans The word "thermae", of Greek origin and etymologically linked to the concept of "heat", indicated in the Roman world the large public baths that were built next to smaller, mostly private baths. From an architectural point of view, the great bath complexes are characterised by constant technical and constructional experimentation, which in Rome can be seen in the evolution from the first complex built by Agrippa in the Campus Martius at the end of the 1st century B.C. to the great complexes of the imperial age open to the masses. In the course of time, attendance at the baths, where the hygienic and sanitary functions were accompanied by complementary activities of socialisation and culture, became a daily necessity, the echoes of which have been handed down to us not only through the numerous monuments but also through the words of the philosopher Seneca, who in a well-known passage describes the noise and clamour caused by the many activities and life that usually took place there. Edited by Stefania Fogagnolo.