Figure 1 Plan of the area of the Forum Romanum and the Imperial Fora in antiquity. The five Imperial Fora are to the north; to the south, the irregular piazza of the Forum Romanum lies between the Basilica Julia and the Basilica Aemilia (drawing by Joseph Skinner, adapted). Memory and Movement in the Roman Fora from Antiquity to Metro C

amy russell Durham University

Introduction: Movement and Memory movement can illuminate the enduring influence of ancient street networks on the modern cityscape. The Forum he built landscape of the city of Rome is a powerful Romanum and the neighboring Imperial Fora shared in engine of cultural memory.1 The visitor can pick antiquity and still share today a similar role as places of out elements of buildings two thousand years old T memory, but they have had different relationships to urban woven into the fabric of the modern city at every street corner movement networks (Figure 1). The Forum Romanum’s in the centro storico.2 But there is more to Rome than picture- function as a node on several ancient, medieval, and Renais- postcard images of crumbling columns juxtaposed with mod- sance major routes was vital to its preservation as a place of ern development. In Rome, perhaps more than anywhere memory for centuries until it was isolated and enclosed in else, ancient architecture is experienced not only as isolated the twentieth century. The Imperial Fora, on the other hand, and picturesque ruins but also as an integral part of the living became isolated from movement networks, and their histori- city. Scholars and tourists can choose to stand and wonder cal associations were largely forgotten until Mussolini at these buildings, photograph, draw, or write monographs used movement on the great processional route of the Via about each of them individually, but Rome’s inhabitants and dell’Impero to revitalize the area as central to Roman cul- visitors also walk and drive between and around them as they tural memory and identity. Both areas had experienced con- go about their daily business. tinuity in movement patterns from antiquity to the twentieth In this article, I investigate the relationship between century, when sweeping changes essentially reversed their movement and memory, and in particular how the integration relationship to the city. Mussolini’s road replaced the path of a space or building into the city’s wider movement patterns through the Forum Romanum as the major artery between affects its role as a place of memory. By considering two the Capitoline and the Colosseum. The pattern of long-term neighboring districts with very different ancient layouts continuity and the recent change in each area’s relationship and subsequent histories, I demonstrate how awareness of to the wider city are direct consequences of the way cultural the creation and reproduction of cultural memory through heritage has been consumed and cultural memory constructed

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 73, no. 4 (December 2014), 478–506. through movement. ISSN 0037-9808, electronic ISSN 2150-5926. © 2014 by the Society of Architectural Histo rians. In recent years, the relationship between these areas and All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions web- the city has come under greater scrutiny than ever before. An site, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/jsah.2014.73.4.479. entry fee for visitors to the Forum Romanum was introduced in 2008, and the practicalities surrounding payment and memory.”4 Very often these places of memory are literal enforcement meant that only a few points of entry and egress places. Buildings and landscapes endure temporally and could be used. The Via dell’Impero, renamed the Via dei are loaded with emotional significance and meaning for Fori Imperiali, has long been threatened by calls for demoli- the community. They play a role in the construction and tion, or at least pedestrianization. In 2013, Ignazio Marino reproduction of both communicative and cultural memory. made a proposal to close the road as part of his successful Individual events may be remembered in the place where campaign for mayor, although a year later the section of the they happened or deliberately memorialized by plaques, road that actually runs through the Imperial Fora remains statues, or monuments elsewhere. Anything from an archi- open to vehicular traffic. Through these tensions between tectural style to a toponym may call to mind some element cultural heritage and traffic circulation, the competing of the past. As a result, memories can be arranged spatially as demands of memory and movement continue to play a role well as chronologically, mapped onto the landscape in a way in Rome’s development. that disassociates each moment from its temporal context The ancient urban landscape was not just a series of and produces new juxtapositions.5 In Rome, history lives as individual monuments but a cityscape that organized space much in space as it does in time. Thinkers from Virgil to and controlled movement. In Rome, this aspect of the past Petrarch to Freud have used the sites of Rome to call up still impinges on modern movement patterns and behavior. memories of the past.6 But we need not stop there. If the past Romans and tourists alike walk their dogs in the Circus is neither ordered nor understood in terms of the chrono- Maximus, swerve their cars to navigate the piers of aqueducts logical progression of time, other methods of organizing and and walls at the Porta Maggiore, and have dinner in restau- structuring the past become important. In space, one of the rants built into the access corridors of the Theatre of Pompey, ways of joining individual memories into meaningful wholes perhaps commenting on the building’s history as they eat. is movement: both the movement of individuals as they go These activities form a vital part of how knowledge of the about the city and the shared knowledge and experience past is accessed, transmitted, and developed. In a few genera- of such routes as ritual processions.7 In a city, movement tions’ time, however, a restaurant may become an office or a becomes narrative. house, and the people who spend time there may tell differ- When we consider ancient architecture as monument, ent stories about it. our impulse is often to separate out the building from com- In Jan Assmann’s formulation, such stories exchanged municative memory and to move instead into the more over dinner would fall into the category of communicative permanent realm of cultural memory.8 This can involve dis- rather than cultural memory practices.3 Communicative missing the ephemeral patterns of behavior and movement memory consists of memories built by casual exchanges of that surround the edifice. Isolating an ancient building from information and spontaneous interactions and is of vital its place in urban life either now or in a previous period risks importance in the identity formation of individuals and missing those forms of behavior and movement that fit into groups, but the knowledge created and preserved through the more permanent category. Formalized or ritualized these practices dissipates within eighty or one hundred movement is a key component of long-term cultural memory years. Cultural memory represents more lasting forms of production and preservation. Each generation tells stories shared knowledge about the past (for Assmann, “Vergangen- about buildings in which and among which they live, but heitsbezug”) and includes the mechanisms by which they are those that are memorialized and formalized through cultural collectively concretized (“Erinnerungskultur”) through practices, including movement, have the greatest effect on objects, rituals, or texts designated by cultural practices as how the cityscape is known and understood. Such under- separate from the everyday and preserved over time. Cultural standing and knowledge affect decisions shaping the city’s memory offers fully realized ways of understanding the past cumulative architectural development over time. that can be transmitted between generations. Each genera- tion, in turn, uses cultural memory to construct its own collective identity. Although each individual or generation Static and Moving Modes of Experience relates to the resulting stories and knowledge differently, the The visual experience of ancient architecture has been a knowledge itself is relatively stable. prime method of accessing the city’s cultural heritage at least It is no accident that Pierre Nora referred to objects, since the Grand Tour flourished. The vedute of artists such symbols, events, and even people as crucial reference points as Étienne Dupérac and Giuseppe Vasi depict monuments in a group’s understanding of history using a spatial meta- as part of a living city; for the viewer, however, the element phor: “lieux de mémoire,” which I translate as “places of of movement in such depictions is missing (Figure 2;

480 JSAH / 73: 4 , DECEMBER 2014 Figure 2 Étienne Dupérac, Vestigi dell’Arco di Settimo Severo … 1607–20. View of the northern end of the Forum Romanum, showing the semiburied Arch of Septimius Severus on the left and the Church of Sant’Adriano (the ancient Curia) on the right (British School at Rome Archive, Ashby Collection, L611.D9.003).

see Figure 14). The presence of figures in the foreground from the time of the republic and empire, made of nearly in contemporary dress, some going about their business indestructible Roman concrete, have served as foundations and others depicted as an audience of tourists, reminds the for later structures. Traces of ancient monuments are pre- viewer that the monuments these images depict have a wider served in the city’s fabric and layout almost everywhere: not context both spatially and temporally. But the engravings just where columns and capitals are visible but also in the themselves—souvenirs deliberately intended as aides-mémoire arrangement of streets and even the internal articulation to allow returning Grand Tourists to recall and share memories of buildings. For example, Piazza Navona is built upon the of Rome—preserve only static images. The medium privi- foundations of the Stadium of Domitian. The open space leges the experience of standing still at a scenic point to take of the piazza traces out exactly the lines of the racetrack, in the view. Today, despite the alternatives offered by video, something the visitor walking through the piazza can easily tourists queue to frame the perfect still shot from a specific grasp. Other examples are more difficult to pick out at street vantage point.9 The literal reproduction of “picture postcard” level but still affect our experience of the city. Across the views gives these spots prominence in the cultural memory, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the area south of the Piazza and we can see the influence of this phenomenon on the Navona overlies Pompey’s Theatre. The curve of the Via di cityscape when a new project is halted because it blocks a Grottapinta is formed by the curve of the cavea beneath. Here famous view.10 the presence of the ancient city imposes itself directly not Highlights of the static and visual modes of experience on vision but on movement. The foundations of Pompey’s proposed by the vedutismo tradition and its photographic Theatre, below street level but deferred to by later con- descendants are the monuments that can be seen standing at struction, force anyone who walks along the street into a street level, picturesquely woven into the modern streetscape. curved path. Modern visitors may or may not realize they But it is not only there that Rome’s classical past touches the are tracing a route marked out by ancient architecture. Some visitor. The present city of Rome is not just built alongside modern routes follow an ancient route exactly: for example, the monuments of its past but also on top of them. Buildings the Via del Corso is the direct descendant of the ancient

M EMORY AND M OVEMENT IN THE R OMAN FORA F ROM A NTIQUITY TO M ETRO C 481 Via Flaminia and Via Lata.11 Are movement patterns like Movement Patterns in Antiquity these to be understood as contributions to cultural memory? Is the route itself a monument? Unmarked and mostly The areas I consider here, Rome’s Forum Romanum and the unremarked upon except by the occasional group of archae- adjacent Imperial Fora, had and continue to have a variety ology students, such routes do not fit into the criteria laid out of different relationships to citywide movement patterns. above for cultural memory. In antiquity, the Forum was a thoroughfare, a place of move- As our appreciation of cultural heritage has expanded ment, while the Imperial Fora were largely not traversable. beyond the single monument, the ancient streets that In the postantique, medieval, and Renaissance periods, the underlie the modern have sometimes been excavated and Forum remained an open space, while the Imperial Fora displayed: Rimini has an example (Figure 3). Such solutions became heavily built over. Today the situation is exactly the for ancient streets, which are then ringed by railings or reverse of that in antiquity: the Forum Romanum is a sealed- covered over with glass, fit into the static viewing pattern of off precinct for tourists while the Imperial Fora are bisected the vedute. When these streets become places of memory, by the Via dei Fori Imperiali, once Mussolini’s grand fascist the ancient infrastructure of movement is transformed into parade route. A detailed analysis of a few key periods of urban a modern stopping point, something to look at rather than development reveals that in both the Forum Romanum and to travel through. In Rimini, the railings impede the progress the Imperial Fora modern patterns of movement developed of traffic along the modern road that exactly follows the as a direct result of their ancient equivalents, although the ancient route.12 The choice to mark the streets architecturally ancient functions were the exact opposite of the modern as places of memory disrupts the continuity of movement functions in the same areas. The impetus for the reversal patterns, suggesting that static viewing rather than the resulted from the different relationships between movement experience of movement is preferred as a memory practice. and memory that evolved in the two spaces. Such choices throw into sharp relief the problems caused The Forum Romanum was Rome’s central square, its when memory and movement collide or where memory political and economic focus, as well as an important site for brings ancient and modern movement into conflict. If the religious activity.13 Its location was determined by the inter- streets themselves are monuments, there is no space left in section of two routes. The Via Sacra paralleled the Palatine which to move or from which to watch and remember. slope before climbing the Capitoline Hill and extended along the Forum’s long axis. Across the short axis ran the path from the river Tiber to the Esquiline heights, that is, from the river port and crossing at Tiber Island to Rome’s main residential area. The Romans called this heavily tra- versed place in the city the locus celeberrimus, “the busiest spot,” and precisely because of its busyness, it became the most prestigious site for monuments.14 The crossroads of the two routes in the Forum developed as Rome’s most important representational space, a space of memory par excellence. The Via Sacra was a processional route of great antiq- uity used in such community-defining movement rituals as the triumph, the pompa circensis (procession to mark the start of the games), the elite funeral, and the inauguration of new magistrates, to name just a few events.15 Over time, the space was marked by innumerable statues, inscriptions, shrines, and even full-scale temples set up by individuals or the com- munity as permanent reminders of particular moments of celebration. Each arch or statue built to honor a general or an emperor for some great achievement, and each temple erected to thank the gods for success in a specific battle, served as a space of memory for that occasion; the past was organized spatially rather than sequenced chronologically. Figure 3 An ancient roadway directly under a modern street displayed An individual was free to wander around them at will, creat- in Rimini, Italy, forming a barrier to modern traffic (author’s photo). ing his or her own narrative of the Roman past. But it was the

482 JSAH / 73: 4 , DECEMBER 2014 formalized, ritualized movement of the great processions that allowed the creation of narratives that could live in communal (as opposed to communicative) memory. Each honoree reauthored and added to this communal narrative: as he moved in space, he also journeyed in time, past monu- ments of earlier achievements, thus linking his latest success to the unfurling history of the Roman people. To a great extent, these narratives are lost to us today. We do not even know which of the paths along the long sides of the square was properly known as the Via Sacra. The exact assemblage of buildings changed over time as well; many of the meanings they would have held for an ancient audience are no longer known. Still, there is much we can re-create: for example, as the triumph of the high empire processed from the southeast to the northwest, it would have passed by the points shown in Figure 4. If the trium- phant general and his soldiers entered on the south side, they passed through the Triple Arch of Augustus, a monument to the great achievements of Rome’s first emperor that also bore a list of every consul and every triumph in Roman history from Romulus to the time of Augustus (Figure 5).16 The Temple of Castor and Pollux on the left was traditionally believed to have been founded as a sign of gratitude for victory at the Battle of Lake Regillus in ca. 495 BCE, when the divine brothers themselves had come to the Romans’ aid in person and afterward watered their horses at the fountain known as the Lacus Juturnae, which still flowed next to the temple. Entering the open square, those processing saw to their left the Basilica (Aemilia) Paulli, decorated with friezes depicting events from early Roman history; straight ahead stood the Temple of Saturn, which was thought to date back to the time of the kings, and off to the side of the route lay the Lacus Curtius, a low precinct containing a basin legend told was named for a Roman youth who had plunged into it on horseback to avert by his sacrifice a doom-laden oracle. The basin would have winked in and out of view between Figure 4 Plan of the Forum Romanum showing one possible path the large freestanding honorific columns, themselves monu- of the triumphal procession. Shaded cones indicate the viewpoints ments to great Romans’ achievements, as the participants of reconstructed images of Figure 5 (drawing by Joseph Skinner, moved along the length of the open square. Once the proces- adapted). sion reached the far end of the Forum, attention would have been drawn to the Arch of Septimius Severus, richly deco- unprepossessing temples commemorating victories going rated with depictions of his triumphs over Parthia; beyond back centuries, such as those of Janus, Spes, and Juno Sospita it loomed the Carcer, the place of execution for Rome’s in the Forum Holitorium (all three now built into the Church defeated enemies, including notorieties such as Jugurtha and of San Nicola in Carcere), to the Colosseum (a monument Vercingetorix. to the Flavian conquest of Jerusalem). No doubt for a Roman After their progression through the Forum, the par- traveler or viewer there would be a great deal more to say ticipants moved up to the heights of the Capitoline. Earlier about the order in which the monuments were encountered in the day, before they had entered the Forum, they had and the specific associations brought to the fore by juxtaposi- moved past dozens of other important monuments lining the tion, and not least by the interplay between the individual’s route elsewhere in the city, from comparatively small and own memories and the collective memory of the culture in

M EMORY AND M OVEMENT IN THE R OMAN FORA F ROM A NTIQUITY TO M ETRO C 483 Figures 5 Reconstructed images of four views from one possible path of the triumphal route from the points indicated in Figure 4 (copyright 2014 Matthew Nicholls, created using the Virtual Rome model, http://www.reading.ac.uk/classics/research/Virtual-Rome.aspx).

which he or she participated. Even if we cannot hope to Romans could find meaning by ordering their disparate pasts recover the full effect, we can say with confidence that the and linking them to the present. triumphal route thus provided not just a path through the con- The Forum was one of the most important nodes on this fusing whirl of memories congregating around the Forum and other processional routes. It was endowed with monu- but also a way to link the Forum to other places of memory mental buildings from the archaic period onward. But its elsewhere in the city. The route linking these places redolent overall architectural layout arose haphazardly, the result of of Rome’s past allowed each participant or spectator to read multiple building projects by competing patrons over many and find his own place in a larger narrative of patriotic service centuries. Particularly during the Roman Republic, there and Roman glory extending across but detached from time: was no centralized coordination of planning, no patron who the route connected the distant past of kings and living gods was responsible for the Forum as a whole rather than for one to the imperial present. Even when no parade was taking of its individual structures.17 The colonnades decorating place, the route’s power did not dissipate: Romans had seen many of the buildings and the repeated pattern of temple the same path traversed with magnificent ceremony on so pediments and podiums provided coherence in stylistic many important and festive occasions that this particular terms, but architecture of different periods and materials itinerary through the city was prominent in their minds. The stood side by side. The square’s limits were loosely defined parades along the Via Sacra were perfect examples of move- by individual freestanding elements often not arranged on ment as narrative: an ongoing and iterative process by which a common orientation; its irregular shape is apparent even

484 JSAH / 73: 4 , DECEMBER 2014 in the imperial period (see Figure 1). The only element that he cut away 316,000 cubic meters of earth to provide flat drew the entire grouping together was its paving: although land for his new square. One of its most striking features, the controversies surround the dates of the various surviving famous Column of Trajan, memorializes this achievement: levels, the Forum of the late republic and empire was distin- its inscription tells the reader it was placed there “to show guished from the streets around it by stone flagstones laid how high a mountain and place were removed for such great neatly across its entire expanse.18 More than any single build- works.”25 But it was also a conquest of cityscape, since the ing, this uniform surface defined the square, further marking newly flattened hill had not been empty fields but densely it as a space for movement.19 The Forum Romanum can be inhabited land crossed by dozens of routes.26 In its place, apprehended more as a monumentalized crossroads or even Trajan, like emperors before him, built a monumentalized a widening of the Via Sacra rather than as an enclosed square. open square bounded by colonnades. Like all of the previous A great deal of traffic crossed the Forum on quotidian business Imperial Fora, it was distinctly inward looking: the colon- in addition to the grand ritual processions that moved along nades bounding it were open and richly decorated on the side the Via Sacra. A place to move through as well as a destina- facing the square but closed and unornamented on the exte- tion, its preeminence as a space of memory was largely deter- rior side.27 From the outside, all the Imperial Fora appeared mined by its relationship to the city’s movement patterns.20 as massive, unelaborated walls towering above the wooden Organized urban development would not come to the residential districts (Figure 6). Unlike any other area of the city of Rome until the unifying will of Julius Caesar and the city of comparable size, each Imperial Forum was laid out emperors. Caesar, Augustus, and the rulers who followed precisely with symmetrical rectilinear plans uninterrupted them devoted substantial time and money to improving the by older monuments. At the moment of entry, visitors con- city of Rome. Five new squares, collectively known as the fronted a gleaming, open, and above all unified space, pro- Imperial Fora, were constructed in the area to the north of viding a marked contrast with the narrow, dark city streets the original Forum Romanum between 46 BCE and 113 CE: from which they had emerged. the Forum of Caesar, the Forum of Augustus, the Temple or Forum of Peace (an enclosed precinct built by Vespasian, in practice indistinguishable from the other Imperial Fora structures despite the different convention of its name), the Forum of Nerva, and the Forum of Trajan (see Figure 1).21 Each was designed deliberately as a monument, a lesson to contemporary and future audiences in how to read the past: the Forum of Augustus was decorated with a sculpture gal- lery depicting great men of the Roman past with captions inscribed in stone listing their illustrious deeds.22 The new Imperial Fora aspired to serve a similar repre- sentational purpose as the Forum Romanum, except that all their allusions to the past were centered on the present emperor as the glorious culmination of Rome’s history.23 Their contribution to cultural memory was a snapshot of a particular moment, not an evolving narrative bringing together multiple pasts. So it is not surprising these new proj- ects differed substantially from the earlier Forum Romanum in architectural design and practical functions. As a result, the ways in which they are incorporated into the city today differ. For the builders of the Imperial Fora, there was no need to conform to the earlier layout of the areas they chose. They had the money to buy property and the authority to expropriate it if necessary.24 Indeed, the observable imposi- tion of a new order on the human and natural landscape of the city was a desirable feature of the projects. We see this most clearly in the final result. Trajan’s Forum is an explicit Figure 6 Standing remains of the massive exterior wall of the Forum conquest of landscape: in a crowded and hilly city center, of Augustus seen from outside (author’s photo).

M EMORY AND M OVEMENT IN THE R OMAN FORA F ROM A NTIQUITY TO M ETRO C 485 The earlier Forum Romanum had long been a place for and processional route. The new Imperial Fora were designed grand representational architecture, but it was also always to function differently and had the opposite relationship to a multipurpose space hosting commercial and recreational movement patterns, as recent studies have convincingly activities alongside political ones. On the roads leading established.28 The emperors created new spaces where art up to it and in the square, there were plenty of shops with and architecture could disseminate a single message, a single businesses ranging from prestigious moneylenders to dis- version of Rome’s past and present, in honor of a single reputable brothels. Until the construction of the Colosseum patron. To do this, they found new architectural forms in the 70s CE, it was the standard venue for Rome’s gladi- recalling the Forum Romanum but rejecting its multipur- atorial games. And as described earlier, one of its most pose nature. Architecturally, they enclosed the new squares important functions was to determine movement patterns: within massive walls with few openings. These were dead situated at the crossroads of major routes through the city, ends with few pathways even from one forum to the next, the Forum Romanum continued to be used as a thoroughfare barring chance wanderers or through traffic (Figure 7). The

Figure 7 Plan of the area of the Forum Romanum and the Imperial Fora in antiquity showing one possible system of entrance and exit routes to the Forum (black) and the Imperial Fora (dark gray). The width of the arrows roughly indicates the width of the entrances (not to scale). Much remains speculative and some commentators would restore further exits and entrances in the areas now under the road, for which see Figure 29 (drawing by Joseph Skinner, adapted).

486 JSAH / 73: 4 , DECEMBER 2014 emperors restricted the activities taking place within these disrupted previous routes.30 These same innovations pro- spaces, thus discouraging casual visitors. The Imperial Fora’s duced a unified, immersive experience for those inside. Being main functions were religious and civic: they contained so decisively set apart from the rest of the city and its quotid- important temples and were the venue for law courts and ian business rendered them powerful places of memory in imperial ceremonials but by deliberate design did not have antiquity.31 such features as shops to attract passersby.29 The small entrances often provided access only by stairways, pro- hibiting wheeled traffic, and they were screened by arches The Afterlife of the Forum Romanum and the or colonnades (Figures 8–10). Given these architectural Imperial Fora innovations, the new fora stood apart from patterns of move- The gigantic tufa walls bounding the Imperial Fora have ment in the city. Indeed, their presence must have massively enabled their footprint to survive in the modern city

Figure 8 Interior of the Forum of Augustus showing stairs leading to the exit (author’s photo).

Figure 9 Reconstructed view of the Forum of Augustus from the piazza looking toward the Temple of Mars Ultor. The stairs and exit seen in Figure 8 are masked by the arch flanking the temple on the left (copyright 2014 Matthew Nicholls, created using the Virtual Rome model http://www.reading.ac.uk/classics /research/Virtual-Rome.aspx).

M EMORY AND M OVEMENT IN THE R OMAN FORA F ROM A NTIQUITY TO M ETRO C 487 (see Figure 6). From as early as the fourth century CE, much separated from each other and from the rest of the city, no of the area was hidden under other structures incorporating longer served a useful purpose. Residential, commercial, and the walls’ strong foundations and gradually obscuring their agricultural activities took over the area. Trajan’s Forum shape.32 In a changing political context, as rulers shifted their survived the longest, but it too was eventually filled in by new attention away from the capital or preferred new building building. These new uses required new movement patterns. types, the inward-looking buildings of the Imperial Fora, Because there were no obvious pathways across the Imperial Fora, new routes cut at diagonals across the careful rectilin- ear plan. With changes in the area’s use and movement patterns, knowledge of its earlier purpose and layout was lost.33 Sixteenth-century drawings and engravings by Dupérac, Maerten van Heemskerck, and others show the standing ruins of the Temple of Minerva in the Forum of Nerva, although the long wall originally flanking the temple had already been reduced to two lone columns (Figures 11–13). Such engravings are our last surviving pieces of evidence for elements of the original layout, because in the 1560s Pope Pius V began constructing a new residential district in the area with its own plan rather than following ancient or medi- eval logic. Half a century later, in 1606, Pope Paul V removed sub- stantial quantities of marble from the temples of the Imperial Fora for his own construction projects elsewhere.34 The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century papal interventions com- Figure 10 Plan of the Forum of Augustus showing the points of view pletely changed the area’s layout once more. An engraving of Figures 8 and 9 (drawing by Joseph Skinner, adapted). by Vasi from Delle magnificenze di Roma antica e moderna

Figure 11 Étienne Dupérac, Vestigi del Foro di Nerva Imperatore … [1575], 2nd edition 1607–20. View of the Temple of Minerva in the Forum of Nerva just before its demolition in 1606 (British School at Rome Archive, Ashby Collection, L611.D9.006).

488 JSAH / 73: 4 , DECEMBER 2014 Figure 12 Reconstructed view of the Temple of Minerva from a similar point of view as Figure 11 (copyright Matthew Nicholls, 2014, created using the Virtual Rome model, http://www.reading.ac.uk /classics/research/Virtual-Rome.aspx).

shapes of the Imperial Fora had survived (Figures 18 and 19). The great eastern walls of the Forum of Augustus and Forum of Trajan are indicated, as is the footprint of the Temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum of Augustus, but almost all are sur- rounded by later buildings and crisscrossed by streets. In Nolli’s time and the century following, the few stand- ing remains of ancient buildings (the Colonnacce, part of the back wall of the Forum of Augustus, and Trajan’s Column) received interest as individual monuments from architects,

Figure 13 Plan of the Forum of Nerva showing the point of view of artists, and even Napoleon, who endowed them with new roles Figures 11 and 12 (drawing by Joseph Skinner, adapted). as places of memory in isolation from the complex of which they had been a part.35 The area as a whole did not feature in Rome’s cultural memory: no toponyms marked the streets of (1747–61) shows part of the area previously belonging the Pantano district (later better known as Alessandrina), to the Forum of Nerva, in his time a small crossroads: only which developed there on the site of ancient temples and one short section of the long wall of the Forum survives fora, and nonscholars would not have had much knowledge (the section, still visible today, is known as the Colonnacce); of its wider history. The Forum Romanum, on the other the street leading away from the viewer passes directly hand, was still mostly open space right up to the excavations through the original line of the wall (Figure 14). At the far of the late nineteenth century. In the Middle Ages, marsh right of the composition, the Church of Santa Maria in partially reclaimed it as the ancient drainage system was Macello Martyrum occupies what had been the open space gradually blocked, and cows were pastured there: the area of the Forum (Figures 15–17). Interestingly, Vasi also pro- acquired the toponym Campo Vaccino (cow field). Tops of duced a reconstructed view of the same area showing the monuments such as the Arch of Septimius Severus protruded lost façade of the Temple of Minerva in the Forum of Nerva, from the ground (see Figure 2), and the Forum Romanum presumably based on his knowledge of earlier images. But for remained a place of historical associations for Rome’s inhab- those not endowed with his antiquarian interests, the original itants and visitors in a way the Imperial Fora did not. layout of the area was forgotten. Giambattista Nolli’s Nuova The difference in the fates of the two adjoining areas Pianta di Roma of 1748 shows that little trace of the original was partly a product of their different relationships with

M EMORY AND M OVEMENT IN THE R OMAN FORA F ROM A NTIQUITY TO M ETRO C 489 Figure 14 Giuseppe Vasi, Descrizione della Chiesa di Santa Maria in Macello Martyrum, 1747–61 (Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles).

Figure 15 Reconstructed view of the Forum of Nerva from a similar point of view as Figure 14. The church in the foreground of Figure 14 corresponds to the open square in this reconstruction (copyright 2014 Matthew Nicholls, created using the Virtual Rome model, http://www.reading.ac.uk/classics /research/Virtual-Rome.aspx).

490 JSAH / 73: 4 , DECEMBER 2014 Figure 16 The Forum of Nerva today, from a similar point of view to Figure 14. The foundations of the temple can be seen on the left. The buttresses of the Via Alessandrina (see Figure 27) tower above the excavated section (author’s photo).

In the medieval period, memory and movement com- bined to preserve the existing layout of the Forum Romanum. In early medieval Rome, many imposing ancient buildings had ceased their original functions. Consequently building activity was sometimes characterized by “façadism,” the practice of retaining imposing ancient façades at the front of entirely newly constructed buildings. In the eighth or ninth century CE, a wealthy Roman chose to build his new house on the site of the Basilica Paulli (better known today Figure 17 Plan of the Forum of Nerva showing the approximate point as the Basilica Aemilia) in the Forum Romanum (Figures 20 of view of Figures 14–16 (drawing by Joseph Skinner, adapted). and 21).36 He retained elements of the ancient façade in his new building. The decision to use this particular site and Rome’s street network. Without the commanding presence its façade for the Basilica Aemilia house was conditioned by of the emperors’ control, the practical need for people to a number of factors: the prestige of the space (including as create new routes across the massive block of the Imperial a place of memory), the striking visual impact of the façade, Fora became too great to discount. Widening the existing and its position along a major route.37 The result of the access points would have been impractical because of the decision to retain the ancient façade meant that less tangi- stairs and changes of level involved, so new paths were forged ble things were preserved as well: the space was rein- on new orientations, thereby diminishing the striking effect scribed as a place of memory and prestige and the route as of the area’s rectilinear spatial choreography. The Forum an important one. What is more, façadism guaranteed that Romanum, on the other hand, was already integrated into the spatial relationship between building and street remained patterns of movement, so no new routes were needed. unchanged.

M EMORY AND M OVEMENT IN THE R OMAN FORA F ROM A NTIQUITY TO M ETRO C 491 Figure 18 Giambattista Nolli, detail (two plates, joined) of Nuova Figure 19 Giambattista Nolli, detail of Nuova Pianta di Roma, 1748, Pianta di Roma, 1748. The small square at the top of the image is overlaid with a plan of the ancient topography of the Imperial Fora Trajan’s Column; below and to the right, Nolli used darker lines to show (reproduced by permission of Durham University Library, Palace Green the surviving exterior walls of the Imperial Fora, including the curving Special Collections NSR Plan file C 16/8; overlaid drawing by Joseph exedras of the Fora of Trajan and Augustus, but they are completely Skinner, adapted). engulfed in later construction and the area of the open squares is built over. Below, the Campo Vaccino is the ancient Forum Romanum; the Via Papalis is marked by a double line of trees through the open area Romanum, this house disregards the open space of the (reproduced by permission of Durham University Library, Palace Green Forum of Nerva by directly impinging on it, contributing Special Collections, NSR Plan file C 16/8). to the transformation of the space from relatively broad piazza to narrow road. The Basilica Aemilia house’s use of Nearby in the Forum of Nerva in the Imperial Fora, an ancient façade preserved the ancient open space, and the more recent excavations have uncovered another medieval route through the Forum Romanum remained stable; in the house built about the same time (Figure 22; see Figure 20).38 Imperial Fora, medieval building activity altered the area’s This house stands in the center of what would have been a spatial configuration and movement patterns. pedestrian precinct at the time of the Forum’s construction, We know from documentary as well as topographical but ruts in the ancient paving stones show the development evidence that a route through the Forum Romanum was still of a new route used by wheeled traffic throughout the medi- in use in the eighth or ninth century. The Einsiedeln Itiner- eval period.39 Unlike the Basilica Aemilia house in the Forum aries, a fascinating set of pilgrim routes, guide pious visitors

492 JSAH / 73: 4 , DECEMBER 2014 through the center of Rome, listing landmarks on the left list the ancient arch alongside contemporary churches dem- or right of the route. One route goes “per arcum Severi”— onstrates the persistence of ancient monuments as places of through the Arch of Septimius Severus. Next, on the left, memory even in an altered city; these routes told narratives come “sti. Hadriani. Forum romanum”—the Church of about the transformation from ancient imperial pagan glory Sant’Adriano (the ancient Curia) and the square in front to contemporary Christian piety. The practice of ritualized of it that the author identifies as the Forum—and Santa movement by pilgrims along these routes secured their con- Maria Antiqua, on the right. The path is shown in Figure 23. tinuing status as places of memory, as information about In ancient terms, it passes directly along the Via Sacra.40 them was passed from pilgrim to pilgrim and preserved in The fact that the itineraries, written for a Christian audience, documents like the Einsiedeln Itineraries. In the early Middle Ages, the Forum Romanum contin- ued to provide a pathway lined with evocative monuments and loaded with historical associations. Papal Rome from late antiquity through the Renaissance and beyond continued to use the Forum Romanum both as a quotidian thoroughfare and as part of one of the most important grand processional routes structuring the city and linking together its most prestigious locations.41 The route from the Vatican to the Lateran, known as the Via Papalis, followed the ancient Via Sacra from the Capitoline to the Colosseum directly through the Forum Romanum. In a ritual known as the possesso, the newly elected pope and his grand entourage would process across the city along the Via Papalis to take possession of the Lateran.42 In the Renaissance and early

Figure 20 Plan of the Basilica Aemilia and Forum of Nerva showing modern period, temporary triumphal arches would be set up the approximate locations of two medieval houses: the Basilica Aemilia along the route of the procession, contrasting with and call- house is the left rectangle and the Forum of Nerva house is the right ing attention to the standing ancient arches, and the parade square. Shaded cones represent the points of view of Figures 21 passed through both ancient and new arches. Vasi’s engrav- and 22 (drawing by Joseph Skinner, adapted). ings of these temporary arches use conceits of composition

Figure 21 Remains of a medieval house built into the ancient Basilica Aemilia in the Forum Romanum (author’s photo).

M EMORY AND M OVEMENT IN THE R OMAN FORA F ROM A NTIQUITY TO M ETRO C 493 Figure 22 Remains of a medieval house built on the site of the Forum of Nerva in the Imperial Fora (author’s photo).

to play up the juxtaposition, showing in one example the Arch of Titus visible through the opening of a temporary arch erected by the King of the Two Sicilies for the possesso of Benedict XIV in 1741 (Figure 24). The movement of the procession created narratives linking temporal and spiritual power, both ancient and modern, and rituals performed en route reinforced the monuments’ role in cultural mem- ory: at the Arch of Titus, originally erected to commemorate the Sack of Jerusalem by the Flavian emperors and decorated with a frieze showing the menorah being carried through Rome in triumph, the pope would receive homage from the Jews of Rome (Figure 25).43 The Forum Romanum was active as a place of memory not only when a papal procession was in progress. The parade route was permanently marked, giving the rituals last- ing power in cultural memory through physical form as well as repetition: Nolli’s plan of Rome shows a double line of trees marking an avenue running diagonally across the open area from the Colosseum to the Capitoline (see Figure 18). The contrast with the area of the Imperial Fora could not be greater; as Nolli’s map shows, their architecture and layout had been entirely subsumed into the residential Pantano district.

Into the Modern Period Figure 23 Plan of the Forum Romanum showing the locations of monuments mentioned in the Einsiedeln Itineraries and the path a Movement would continue to be an important way of expe- pilgrim would take: (1) Arch of Septimius Severus, (2) Church of riencing the Forum as a space of cultural memory into the Sant’Adriano (the ancient Curia), (3) Church of Santa Maria Antiqua modern period. In the nineteenth and early twentieth cen- (drawing by Joseph Skinner, adapted). tury, the static experience of the vedute was supplemented in

494 JSAH / 73: 4 , DECEMBER 2014 Figure 24 Giuseppe Vasi, Arco Trionfale Innalzato … per … Papa Benedetto XIV, 1741 (copyright Trustees of the British Museum, London).

Figure 25 Frieze of the Arch of Titus, still in situ, showing the Triumph over Jerusalem (author’s photo).

M EMORY AND M OVEMENT IN THE R OMAN FORA F ROM A NTIQUITY TO M ETRO C 495 the imagination of the champions of Rome’s cultural heritage formalizing the concept that Rome’s archaeological heritage with the notion of a passeggiata archeologica, a park that offered was something to be explored in motion as well as viewed as walking routes through ancient monuments preserved in a static panorama.44 Entirely excluded from the passeggiata picturesque landscapes. During the Napoleonic period, was the area of the Imperial Fora, which was known to archae- archaeologist and architect Luigi Canina instigated the trend ologists but lost to the sight of tourists; it was too built up to with his excavations and restorations along the Via Appia fit neatly into the concept of a park characterized by open leading out of the city, and half a century later, in 1871, after spaces and scenic views. Rome had been granted its first self-government of the Rome’s new passeggiata, promising movement, in fact modern period, the new city council proposed a great parco posed a problem for circulation in the modern city. The archeologico using large swathes of land from the Via Appia ancient thoroughfares of the Forum Romanum, long used to the Circus Maximus, Colosseum, Palatine, and Forum by all kinds of traffic from papal processions to cowherds, Romanum. This idea would recur in different forms in were now conceptualized as spaces set aside for edifying the following decades. A law was passed in 1887 to create a strolls. The park became an obstacle.45 Today the surviving zone protected from construction, and although funding for parts of it, linking the Palatine and the Forum, remain an the purchase of land was slow to come, some expropriations obstacle to foot and vehicular traffic, especially after the were made. The official Passeggiata Archeologica was formally reintroduction of entrance fees (Figure 26). Separation from inaugurated in 1911. The area had been gradually planted the rest of the city marks the area as a space of memory in a with trees to create long vistas and map out walking routes, new way, but the movement rituals that had long preserved

Figure 26 The Forum Romanum seen from the western slopes of the Capitoline; tourists look over the wall dividing the ticketed area from the public street (author’s photo).

496 JSAH / 73: 4 , DECEMBER 2014 its centrality to the city’s cultural memory as well as its inte- the jumbled medieval and later constructions that overlay gration with the urban fabric have been decisively curtailed. them. During the same years, however, others had different The Forum Romanum, always a place of transit as well as a ideas. The archaeologist Corrado Ricci and the architect destination, has become a dead end, isolated from the move- Marcello Piacentini, both of whom later worked with ment of daily life.46 Mussolini on the Via dell’Impero, proposed in 1911 and The Imperial Fora, on the other hand, have had a very 1925, respectively, that the area of the Imperial Fora should different afterlife. By the beginning of the twentieth century, be cleared of postantique structures. Both were more inter- they had long been entirely built over, hidden from sight ested in investigating antiquity than freeing up circulation. by more recent construction and their footprint obscured by Ricci’s proposal did include the road, but Piacentini explicitly winding routes dating from the medieval period and Pius V’s aimed for an expanded archaeological park, including the sixteenth-century interventions. But the problems of circula- Imperial Fora, which would be uncrossed by vehicular tion that the new capital of a united Italy faced in the auto- routes.49 Disagreements and funding difficulties resulted in mobile age were soon to affect many of Rome’s historic nothing being done, but the various plans considered in the districts. In the nineteenth century, a number of proposals early 1900s demonstrate for the first time an awareness were on the table to create wider new roads cutting through of both the street layouts, antique and postantique, which the city. Several schemes involved the area of the Imperial Fora, together constitute the architectural patrimony of the area. as the planners hoped to devise a new route between the Indeed, the great archaeologist and topographer Rodolfo Piazza Venezia (and the new Vittoriano) and the Colosseum— Lanciani, then a member of the Italian Senate, discussed the thus directly replacing the artery lost when the Forum changes in the area’s orientation over time at a hearing on Romanum became a park rather than a through route.47 Ricci’s proposal in 1917.50 The various new roads already created in modern Rome Just like the original construction of the Imperial Fora, offered two different models for ways to reconcile their paths it took an autocrat to cut through the deliberations and begin with the earlier layouts upon which they were superimposed. building a new road through the area. Mussolini was perfectly The Via Nazionale and the Via Cavour, taking advantage conscious of the parallel he was drawing between himself of the more regular layout of the later eastern areas of the and the emperors and saw his interventions in Rome’s urban city, cut Haussmannesque wide swaths down the hill of the fabric as deliberate reworking of the city’s history and its Esquiline. The Corso Vittorio, in contrast, was designed by people’s memory and identity. Both his ideology of romanità the planner Alessandro Viviani as a modern traffic artery not and the process of expropriation, clearance, and construction at all in the style of Georges-Eugène Haussmann. It curves there and elsewhere in the capital were well documented at gently but perceptibly around the great palazzi of the Campo the time and have been examined by many scholars since.51 Marzio. In constructing the new road around rather than Mussolini and those surrounding him were interested in through the preexisting street layout, Viviani succeeded “ liberating” the monuments of imperial Rome from what in creating a route punctuated by picturesque piazzas and they saw as worthless accretions engrossing them over time. bounded by imposing façades, which observers today might The liberated structures would then be placed in juxtaposi- be forgiven for thinking is a relic of the city’s ancient or medi- tion with the new monuments of the fascist regime. To those eval layout. Some of the buildings facing onto it were origi- who made a claim for the significance of Rome’s winding nally designed to front a roadway but were later engulfed by streets in the city’s cultural heritage, Mussolini answered that later construction from which Viviani freed them; others, a distinction should be drawn between “the living testimony like the Piazza della Cancelleria, have had their side façades of the glory of Rome” and “the picturesque and so-called elaborated to match their fronts.48 Viviani’s careful evocation local color.”52 Fascism emphasized the distant past and the of the city’s organic development is congenial to present future; anything in between was removed from the picture.53 taste, though the false sense of “authenticity” it offers might The fascists did not consider medieval and later buildings find detractors. that had occupied the area of the Imperial Fora to be a useful Nineteenth-century proposals for a route through the part of Rome’s collective history. They destroyed an entire area of the Imperial Fora had been rejected because they neighborhood, including 5,500 residential units, and con- would have required too much expropriation. The sugges- structed the grandiose Via dei Monti, soon renamed the tions of the early 1900s aimed to ameliorate difficulties by Via dell’Impero, now the Via dei Fori Imperiali.54 suggesting a curving road with minimal demolitions, similar Antonio Muñoz, whom Mussolini placed in charge of to the Corso Vittorio. The buildings these plans aspired to Rome’s antiquities and fine arts, produced a pamphlet on the preserve were not those of the rectilinear Imperial Fora but construction of the new road outlining the fascist attitude

M EMORY AND M OVEMENT IN THE R OMAN FORA F ROM A NTIQUITY TO M ETRO C 497 Figure 27 The area of the Imperial Fora in light of recent excavations overlaid with the modern street layout. The large arrow shows the approximate viewpoint of Figures 28–30. The Via dei Fori Imperiali is outlined: the part of the road running across most of the fora remains open to all traffic; the stretch closed to private cars is the crosshatched portion to the right of the junction with the Via Cavour (courtesy of Amanda Claridge, modified).

Key to relevant items: 1. Church of Santi Luca e Martina, originally 7th century 4. Curia, converted into the church of Sant’Adriano in the 7th century 6. Medieval house in the Forum of Nerva, 9th century 13. Church of Santi Cosma e Damiano, built into the structures of the Forum (or Temple of Peace in the 6th century 16. Standing section of the wall of the Forum of Nerva, known as the Colonnacce 17. Temple of Minerva 18. Porticus Absidata 21. Temple of Mars Ultor 29. Medieval houses in the Forum of Trajan, 13th–14th century 30. Medieval hospital in the Forum of Trajan, 13th century toward urban history, memory, and preservation.55 The post- and time, he claimed, and so he proposed the simplest solu- antique city, he wrote, was an obstacle; displaying the monu- tion: a straight line was best (Figure 27). He took care to note ments of antiquity was a key goal, but everything was that a straight route would also offer the best panorama, subordinate to the needs of the contemporary city, not least demonstrating the concern with scenography often charac- its traffic circulation. Muñoz noted that the project had a terizing fascist interventions. The route required cutting long history, and multiple different routes had been planned. away part of the Velian Hill, a challenge Muñoz welcomed He was not interested in emulating Viviani’s curving route for its parallelism with Trajan’s landscaping excavations at around existing buildings, objecting that a proposed curve the other end of the valley. Finally, Muñoz conceptualized at the Via Cavour in the Piano Regolatore of 1931 to spare the result as a kind of passeggiata archeologica as well as a traffic some Renaissance constructions would impede the view of artery; the area carved out, he claimed, would allow cars to the Colosseum. Nor was he concerned about minimizing the zip along the street while pedestrians strolling in the green destruction of ancient architecture. Full-scale excavations park areas of the verges could contemplate the monuments to uncover its exact layout would require too much money of the Imperial Fora forming the road’s backdrop. With the

498 JSAH / 73: 4 , DECEMBER 2014 interventions of Muñoz and Mussolini, the Imperial Fora in many ways his imperial pretensions conjured up accurate once again found a place in cultural memory as important reflections of their original representational purposes. The repositories of national identity and pride. Indeed, new exca- new fascist roads were themselves monuments: monuments vations in the Imperial Fora undertaken by the Comune di to modernity, to the triumph of fascism, above all to speed. Roma for the millennium demonstrate their continuing These roads-as-monuments combined movement and mem- importance today. ory in an entirely different way from the fenced-off Roman The road ran, and still runs, in a straight line obliquely road displayed in Rimini. They were not there to be looked across the Imperial Fora’s layout, creating a new line of sight at: movement at the speed of the automobile was an essential between the Piazza Venezia and the Colosseum (Figures 28 part of their existence, an urban ritual implying a new mode and 29). The closed spaces of the Imperial Fora were opened of viewing for the ruins and a new form of cultural memory.56 for movement, modern speed, and fascist parades, which Mussolini’s use of the area as a processional route solidified paralleled those of the ancient and papal periods through its role in cultural memory through practice and taught the Forum Romanum next door (Figure 30). Mussolini was Romans and visitors how to understand it during their own keen to exploit the Imperial Fora as places of memory, and speedier journeys.57 But the demolitions erased not just the

Figure 28 The Via dei Fori Imperiali today, seen from the Vittoriano. The Forum of Caesar is in the foreground; in the background, the back wall of the Forum of Augustus stands on the left, and the Colosseum can be seen on the right (author’s photo).

Figure 29 Reconstructed view of the Imperial Fora in antiquity, from the same angle as Figures 28 and 30 (copyright 2014 Matthew Nicholls, created using the Virtual Rome model, http://www.reading.ac.uk/classics /research/Virtual-Rome.aspx).

Key: 1. Forum of Caesar 2. Forum of Augustus 3. Forum of Peace 4. Forum of Nerva 5. Forum of Trajan

M EMORY AND M OVEMENT IN THE R OMAN FORA F ROM A NTIQUITY TO M ETRO C 499 Figure 30 Fascist parade of youths of the Opera Nazionale Balilla along the Via dell’Impero, 3 Mar. 1936 (copyright 2013 Cinecittà Luce/Scala, Florence). buildings of later periods that were entirely destroyed but and modern topography suggested competition as well as also the ancient spatial experience of the area’s inward- looking imitation.59 The modern vision presented by Mussolini separation and careful layout set apart from the city’s move- inevitably excited two concomitant anxieties inherent to ment networks.58 competition: that one might win—or one might lose. Mussolini was looking for a monument, a unified struc- Mussolini’s road did not defer to the original architec- ture that could measure up to his grandiose plans for the ture that had been newly isolated to form its backdrop. Large Third Rome. But so much of the original ancient architec- portions of the Imperial Fora were now “liberated” from ture there, as elsewhere, had been lost, and what remained later accretions of construction only to be buried under the had evolved new stories over the intervening centuries. After new road and its parks, and Muñoz and others were happy to the demolitions, what remained was inevitably fragmentary. admit that traffic needs trumped historical preservation.60 Nowadays, we mourn the loss of the intermediate phases, but The huge ancient walls on display made obvious the earlier for its original audience, the effect produced by the juxta- orientation of the area and the fact that the new road steam- position of fascist showpieces with a past stripped of its rollered across it at a defiant angle (see Figure 27).61 The context was problematic in a different sense. Mussolini’s pro- smooth tarmac of the road contrasted with the pockmarked paganda described the ancient monuments in their new brick and tufa of the ancient walls, their marble revetments settings as examples to emulate or celebrate: Italy’s imperial long since vanished. The visible triumph of new over old past and future standing together. But as always, a city like contrasted with and detracted from the intended message of Rome can bear many meanings, and the overlay of ancient continuity and inheritance.

500 JSAH / 73: 4 , DECEMBER 2014 Even so, the triumph of new over old was not fully real- was switched. The new building would now be built at the ized and could be called into question. Despite Mussolini’s Foro Mussolini, on land less loaded with cultural memory unambiguous elevation of movement over memory, his outside the city center. Its model was neither the Forum desire to preserve even parts of the Imperial Fora as a back- Romanum nor the current Imperial Fora, which had become drop for his road irked some of his supporters who looked palimpsests of generations of construction and destruction, to the future. The futurist movement, at times a contender but the Imperial Fora as they were originally built. Mussolini to be an official fascist style, despised the remembrance of took decisive steps away from the old, multilayered space of the past as harbinger of imitation and fear. Futurists had been memory of the older fora to a place where a new ruler could among the strongest supporters of the demolitions, and their paint his own image on a blank canvas. ideals precluded leaving some privileged remains standing Today the road still runs at an angle across the Imperial against which to judge the present.62 The futurist Filippo Fora, despite the recurrence of proposals to demolish it for Tommaso Marinetti wrote that history was a burden the the sake of further archaeological investigation.66 On the one Italian people must set down; he conjured up the image hand, the road is a major source of pollution and vibration, workmen in awe surrounding “the latrine of the third public threatening the ancient ruins and marring the experience scribe who wrote the first love letter to Cicero’s cook.”63 of tourists in the city center. On the other hand, closing the Marinetti believed that the supposed grandeur of antiquity, road to traffic circulation (especially Rome’s bus network) is no less than the winding medieval streets that overlay its a stumbling block. Mayor Ignazio Marino has succeeded in structures, held back modern Romans from their full potential. closing to private cars a stretch to the south of the Imperial Memory and movement could not coexist under futurist Fora leading toward the Colosseum, but the rest of the doctrine; all movement was to be forward, unimpeded by road remains open (see Figure 27). Full pedestrianization the past. ( pedonalizzazione) remains the mayor’s stated goal.67 In 2014, The futurists had a point. The picturesque ruins of the Marino experimented with a series of temporary closures Imperial Fora were also monuments of decline and decay. of the entire road, but they raised the ire of drivers and From one point of view, Mussolini could claim to be avenging passengers and the result remains uncertain.68 the shameful defeat of the ancient past by the barbarisms of Although traffic continues to thunder down the Via dei the intervening centuries; but surely the eventual fall of the Fori Imperiali, in the open spaces of the Imperial Fora them- empire he regarded as his model could also be read as an selves the balance between memory and movement has omen for the inevitable end of his new order. Marginal voices tipped once again, and the more recently excavated portions such as an American living in Rome quoted in the National are closed spaces, set apart from the modern street layout Geographic in 1937 drew attention to the bleakness of the (Figure 31). They are still important places of memory contrast in another part of the city: “Look to your left. See to Romans and to tourists, but only scholars with special those young Fascists on the athletic field. Behind them lie permessi can actually visit the excavations and temporary ruins of Caracalla’s Baths. Vast in size and equipped with fences force even them into defined paths across the ancient every luxury then known, they marked the beginnings of open squares. Plans for the area aspire to value all the differ- Rome’s fall.”64 Indeed, impressive as some of the Imperial ent stages of the site’s development, integrating architec- Fora’s newly revealed standing ruins were, they were all dam- ture of different periods into the modern city.69 Even so, the aged and incomplete. The traumatizing potential of ruined problem of movement and memory has reared its head once buildings was soon freshly apparent in Rome itself as the city again with the excavations for the new Metro Line C, which was bombed in the war; Mussolini did not visit the affected will run directly underneath the area. The tunnel itself does areas. not pose a problem; the engineers plan to dig at a lower level Official communications betray no trace of possible than any human archaeological strata. However, in test exca- alternative readings, but in the final phase of his building vations for possible entrance sites to the proposed station at projects Mussolini rejected the ideal of glorious unification Piazza Venezia, the archaeologists have discovered few viable of past and present, preferring to emulate the emperors options; they are constantly tripping over more and more more literally by creating new areas in which no extraneous fascinating structures connected to Trajan’s Forum. These material disrupted his unified modern vision.65 Originally the finds represent some of the most exciting new archaeol- Via dell’Impero was to have been the site for one of the ogical discoveries in Rome for decades, which are as we speak grandest fascist projects of all, the Palazzo del Littorio, for reshaping the way we see the Imperial Fora.70 The difficulties the party headquarters. In 1934, a massive open competi- the Metro faces are directly connected to the ways the tion was held for designs. But the following year, the site Imperial Fora originally controlled movement and limited

M EMORY AND M OVEMENT IN THE R OMAN FORA F ROM A NTIQUITY TO M ETRO C 501 Figure 31 Tourists look down at the closed space of the Forum of Nerva. In the background can be seen the back of the Curia and the Forum Romanum beyond (author’s photo).

access routes for the traffic of their own time. The Imperial did not survive in the developing postantique cityscape. Fora’s unified, centrally planned layout left no space unused. Once there was no longer a powerful central authority for- Since the structures directly abut each other, they have not bidding such passage, people eventually made their own left any gaps for metro passengers today. routes across the Imperial Fora despite the massive walls and orthogonal rigor of the area’s layout. Over time, these encroachments lessened the unified visual impact and sense Conclusion of separation that had originally made them such powerful Until very recently, movement and memory worked together places of memory. They languished unremembered until in the Forum Romanum; in the area of the Imperial Fora, Mussolini plowed his way through the area of the Imperial they were at odds. The success of movement-related narra- Fora to rediscover and reappropriate only the memories tives ensured the persistence of the Forum Romanum as a he selected from among the many layers of memory the place of cultural memory, lifted above the quotidian or com- Alessandrina neighborhood embodied. In doing so, he created municative memory by tradition, repetition, and ritual. a location of memory that was also a location of movement Leaders who wanted to link their present to a past significant designed for the motor age. to Roman identity—from triumphing Roman generals to The Forum Romanum, in contrast, had always been early modern popes—created routes linking older and newer a location of movement. A great deal of its specific power in parts of the built environment and themselves to all those cultural memory was bound up in the processional practices who had followed the same path. Mussolini’s new road aimed of papal Rome, a direct inheritance from the ancient ritual to accomplish the same, but his imposition of a new move- of the triumph. The Forum’s importance as a route, for both ment pattern also created a sense of competition with the ceremonial and quotidian purposes, was one reason why past that eventually became a threat. it was never built over in the same way the Imperial Fora An understanding of the relationship between move- were. As a direct consequence, its ancient structures have ment and memory in Rome explains why the two areas under survived, and it has become once again one of Rome’s pri- consideration had such different postantique fates. The mary locations of cultural memory. But the way we consume original design of the Imperial Fora deliberately did not our memories has changed since the papal processions of the allow for movement across the area, setting each closed space Renaissance and early modern period. A residue of formal- apart from the daily life of the city. Because the Imperial Fora ized movement still persists, as we follow tour guides in a were not integrated into the city’s movement patterns, they ritual dance from monument to monument; but we must

502 JSAH / 73: 4 , DECEMBER 2014 now pay to enter a fenced-off area, and although we may 6. David H. Larmour and Diana Spencer, “Introduction—Roma, recepta: wander as tourists along the ancient flagstones of the Via Sacra, A Topography of the Imagination,” in Larmour and Spenc e r, The Sites of Rome, 1–60, esp. 15–18, provide a vital guide to a range of historical and the Forum Romanum’s role as a location of movement inte- contemporary approaches to the conflation of time and space in Rome. grated with the city’s movement patterns is lost. Not surprisingly, walks through Rome play an important role in Aleida Assmann’s conception of places of memory; discussing a letter of Petrarch (to Giovanni Colonna, Fam. 6.2) about a stroll he took with a friend, she writes, “For the two walkers, time is now condensed into space… . Notes Chronology is turned into a topology of history, and one can make one’s 1. Preliminary versions of this article were presented at the European way through it step by step over the very ground where it all happened” Architectural Historians Network Annual Meeting in Brussels, 2012, and (Cultural Memory and Western Civilization, 294). at Durham University; my thanks to Samantha L. Martin-McAuliffe and 7. Ritual processions are part of Erinnerungskultur (the tools of memory Daniel Millette as the organizers of the EAHN panel and to both audiences culture). By repetition and because they are marked as special, they transmit for helpful comments. I have also benefited greatly from the advice and knowledge of particular routes. suggestions of David J. Newsome and Matthew Nicholls and from the 8. Astrid Erll, “Cultural Memory Studies: An Introduction,” in Cultural editorial and anonymous reviewing team at JSAH. Any deficiencies in the Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. Astrid final result remain my sole responsibility. Translations are mine unless Erll and Ansgar Nünning (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), works with a wider otherwise specified. I regret that I have been unable to engage with the definition of cultural memory that resists drawing such boundaries between insights of Diane G. Favro, “Moving Events: Curating the Memory of the any different forms of memory related to culture and identity, including Roman Triumph,” in Memoria Romana: Memory in Rome and Rome in between communicative and cultural memory (1–15). For this article, the Memory, ed. Karl Galinsky (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, distinction is vital, although we should be careful before deciding in which 2014), which appeared just as this piece was going to press. category any specific instance belongs. 2. On the layering of multiple pasts in Rome, see most recently Dorigen 9. Samantha L. Martin-McAuliffe and John K. Papadopoulos explore the Caldwell, “Introduction: Continuities of Place,” in Rome: Continuing persistence of particular vantage points in drawn and photographic images Encounters between Past and Present, ed. Dorigen Caldwell and Lesley of the Athenian acropolis in “Framing Victory: Salamis, the Athenian Caldwell (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011), 1–16; David F. Karmon, The Ruin Acropolis, and the Agora,” JSAH 71, no. 3 (Sept. 2012), 332–61. of the Eternal City: Antiquity and Preservation in Renaissance Rome (Oxford: 10. London has a View Management Framework to protect thirteen Oxford University Press, 2011), 3–20; R. J. B. Bosworth, Whispering City: specific views in the capital; the most recent detailed information can be Rome and Its Histories (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011). found in London View Management Framework: Supplementary Planning Many of the articles in The Sites of Rome: Time, Space, Memory, ed. David H. Guidance (London: Greater London Authority, 2012). In Rome, one of Larmour and Diana Spencer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) are the recent controversies over Richard Meier’s Museo dell’Ara Pacis has relevant. focused on a wall that separates the piazza from the Lungotevere, thus 3. Jan Assmann, “Kollektives Gedächnis und kulturelle Identität,” in blocking the view of the Churches of San Girolamo and San Rocco from Kultur und Gedächtnis, ed. Jan Assmann and Tonio Hölscher (Frankfurt: the river. See “Ara Pacis, giù il muretto di Meier, spostata la Fontana Suhrkamp, 1988), 9–19; Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civiliza- dei naviganti,” La Repubblica, 28 May 2012, http://roma.repubblica.it tion: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (Cambridge: /cronaca/2012/05/28/news/ara_pacis_cancellato_il_progetto_del_sottopasso Cambridge University Press, 2011), 34–44. Assmann built on the work of _ridimensionato_il_muro_della_fontana_del_navigante-36082819 (accessed Maurice Halbwachs, La mémoire collective (Paris: Presses Universitaires de 1 May 2014). France, 1950), by introducing this distinction. 11. For the persistence of one route, the Via Aurelia Vetus, in the Via della 4. Pierre Nora, Les lieux de mémoire, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–92). Lungaretta in Trastevere, see Deborah Robbins, “Via della Lungaretta: 5. Walter Benjamin explores the idea of documenting his life not chrono- The Making of a Medieval Street,” in Streets: Critical Perspectives on Public logically but spatially on a map of places tied to vignettes of memory in Space, ed. Zeynep Çelik, Diane G. Favro, and Richard Ingersoll (Berkeley: “A Berlin Chronicle,” written in 1932 but unpublished in his lifetime University of California Press, 1994), 165–76. A recent project hosted (here cited from Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, ed. Michael by the Swedish Institute in Rome has undertaken an interdisciplinary and W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith; trans. Edmund Jephcott diachronic study of the Via Tiburtina, with important contributions from [Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1999], 2:595–637). He writes: “I have both archaeologists and landscape architects on the infrastructure of long, indeed for years, played with the idea of setting out the sphere of movement as cultural heritage. See Hans Bjur and Barbro Santillo Frizell, life—bios—graphically on a map” (596); later he writes: “For autobiography eds., Via Tiburtina: Space, Movement & Artefacts in the Urban Landscape has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow ( Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Rom, 2009). of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities” (612). 12. Other options are available: in Córdoba, the ancient flagstones have The shifting relationships between time and space also extend beyond been covered with strong glass on which visitors can walk, with the result individual memories; in his final, unfinished project on Parisian arcades that the old route can still be followed. Variables such as considerations of (“Passagen,” here cited from Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. cost, the need to protect the ancient stones from the elements, modern Rolf Tiedemann [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982], 5.2:1041–43), he describes movement patterns, and the attitude taken by local authorities to tangible the arcades as “raumgewordene Vergangenheit” (the past become space) and intangible cultural heritage will mean different solutions are appropri- (1041). For more on the specific roles played by place and the built environ- ate in different places. ment in discourses of cultural memory, see Aleida Assmann, Cultural 13. David Watkin, The Roman Forum (London: Profile Books, 2009), pro- Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives (Cambridge: vides an accessible overview of the Forum Romanum from antiquity to the Cambridge University Press, 2012), 281–324. present. On the Forum Romanum in antiquity and its relationship to the

M EMORY AND M OVEMENT IN THE R OMAN FORA F ROM A NTIQUITY TO M ETRO C 503 rest of the city, see esp. Nicholas Purcell, “Rediscovering the Roman 17. Recently, Eva Margareta Steinby, Edilizia pubblica e potere politico Forum,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 2 (1989), 155–65; and Nicholas nella Roma repubblicana (Rome: Jaca Book, 2012), has suggested that the Purcell, “Urban Spaces and Central Places: The Roman World,” in Classical republican Senate played a larger role in urban planning than has some- Archaeology, ed. Susan E. Alcock and Robin Osborne (Malden, Mass.: Black- times been thought. The large-scale patterns she cites as evidence of a well, 2007), 182–202. Filippo Coarelli, Il Foro Romano, 2 vols. (Rome: guiding hand, such as the fact that all four sides of the Forum square were Quasar, 1982–85), and Paul Zanker, Forum Romanum: Die Neugestaltung adorned with basilicas by different patrons within twenty years in the early durch Augustus (Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, 1972), provide the full- second century BCE, can be explained equally well, however, by one- est archaeological and topographical discussions for the republican and upmanship and fashion. Augustan periods, respectively. For the Forum Romanum as a space of 18. The archaeological evidence can be found in Cairoli Fulvio Giuliani and memory, see esp. Diane G. Favro, “The Roman Forum and Roman Patrizia Verduchi, L’area centrale del Foro Romano (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Memory,” Places 5 (1988), 17–24. Editore, 1987); Ray Laurence, Roman Archaeology for Historians (London: 14. The concept of the locus celeberrimus is explored by David J. Newsome, Routledge, 2012), has an excellent overview of the controversy (31–33). “Introduction: Making Movement Meaningful,” in Rome, Ostia, Pompeii: 19. The emperors made various attempts to create a more unified visual Movement and Space, ed. Ray Laurence and David J. Newsome (Oxford: aspect for the buildings lining the Forum, and the arches installed in the Oxford University Press, 2011), 1–54, esp. 22–26; Francesco Trifiló, time of Augustus at the two main entrances to the southeast added to the “Power, Architecture, and Community in the Distribution of Honorary feeling of enclosure; for these changes, see most recently Susanne Muth, Statues in Roman Public Space,” in TRAC 2007: Proceedings of the Seven- “Reglementierte Erinnerung: Das Forum Romanum unter Augustus teenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, ed. Corisande als Ort kontrollierter Kommunikation,” in Kommunikationsräume im Fenwick, Meredith Wiggins, and Dave Wythe (Oxford: Oxbow, 2008), kaiserzeitlichen Rom, ed. Felix Mundt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 3–47. 109–20, esp. 115–17. Even so, none of these interventions could match the Imperial Fora’s sense 15. On the role of processional routes in ancient Roman identity and of enclosure and isolation from movement patterns. topography, see Stéphane Benoist, “Les processions dans la cité: De la mise 20. On movement as a defining characteristic of the Forum area, see also en scène de l’espace urbain,” in Roma illustrata: Représentations de la ville, ed. Roland Martin, “Agora et forum,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Philippe Fleury and Olivier Desbordes (Caen: Presses Universitaires de Antiquité 84 (1972), 909–33; and esp. David J. Newsome, “Movement and Caen, 2008), 49–62. Diane G. Favro and Christopher Johanson, “Death Fora in Rome (the Late Republic to the First Century CE),” in Laurence in Motion: Funeral Processions in the Roman Forum,” JSAH 69, no. 1 and Newsome, Rome, Ostia, Pompeii, 290–311. (Mar. 2010), 12–37, provide a compelling analysis of the Roman elite 21. On the Imperial Fora, older works, including James C. Anderson, The funeral as ritual in motion through the Forum; see also John P. Bodel, Historical Topography of the Imperial Fora (Brussels: Latomus, 1984), and “Death on Display: Looking at Roman Funerals,” in The Art of Ancient James E. Packer, The Forum of Trajan in Rome: A Study of the Monuments Spectacle, ed. Bettina Ann Bergmann and Christine Kondoleon ( Washington, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), still have much to offer, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2000), 258–81; and Harriet I. Flower, but in architectural detail they have been superseded by new excavation: Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford: Clarendon see Eugenio La Rocca, “La nuova immagine dei Fori Imperiali,” Mitteilun- Press, 1996). A great deal has been written on the triumph as community gen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts: Römische Abteilung 108 (2001), ritual; recent contributions include Ida Östenberg, Staging the World: Spoils, 171–213; Roberto Meneghini and Riccardo Santangeli Valenzani, eds., Captives, and Representations in the Roman Triumphal Procession (Oxford: I Fori Imperiali: Gli scavi del comune di Roma (1991–2007) (Rome: Viviani Oxford University Press, 2009); Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph Editore, 2007); Roberto Meneghini, I Fori Imperiali e i Mercati di Traiano: (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2007); Tanja Itgenshorst, Tota illa Storia e descrizione dei monumenti alla luce degli studi e degli scavi recenti pompa: Der Triumph in der römischen Republik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 2009). Excavations are ongoing; the most Ruprecht, 2005). For the element of movement in particular, see Jean-Luc recently published results can be found in Roberto Egidi, Fedora Filippi, Bastien, “Le triomphe et la voie sacrée: Quelques réflexions sur les inter- and Sonia Martone, eds., Archeologia e infrastrutture: Il tracciato fondamentale actions d’un espace et d’une cérémonie,” in Rome antique: Pouvoir des images, della linea C della metropolitana di Roma; Prime indagini archeologiche images du pouvoir, ed. Elizabeth Deniaux (Caen: Presses Universitaires de ( Florence: Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki, 2010). Caen, 2000), 149–61; Diane G. Favro, “The Street Triumphant: The 22. The Latin word monumentum, derived from moneo (I remind), makes Urban Image of Roman Triumphal Parades,” in Çelik et al., Streets, the didactic and mnemonic aspects of monuments explicit. The semantic 151–64. connection was often commented upon by Latin authors (e.g., Varro, 16. The Triple Arch has been established definitively as the original loca- De lingua latina 6.49; Ulpian, Digesta 11.7.2.6; Porphyry, Hor. Carm. 1.2.15) tion of the triumphal and consular lists now on display in the Musei Capi- and is thoroughly explored by Andrew Meadows and Jonathan Williams, tolini as the Fasti Capitolini by Elisabeth Nedergaard, “La collocazione “Moneta and the Monuments: Coinage and Politics in Republican Rome,” originaria dei Fasti Capitolini e gli archi di Augusto nel Foro Romano,” Journal of Roman Studies 91 (2001), 27–49. Bullettino della Commissione archeologica comunale di Roma 96 (1994–95), 23. The work of Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus 33–70; “Facts and Fictions about the Fasti Capitolini,” Analecta Romana (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), esp. 193–95, has been Instituti Danici 27 (2004), 83–99. Details of the other elements referred fundamental to recent readings of the Imperial Fora and their involvement to can be found in the works cited above in n. 13. For archaeological and in the construction of imperial Rome’s memory and identity. topographical information on specific buildings, see the relevant entries in 24. The purchase at great expense of huge amounts of prime residential Eva Margareta Steinby, Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae (Rome: Quasar, land for the Forum of Caesar is described in a letter of Cicero’s from 1993–2000). The ancient textual sources that preserve stories linked to 54 BCE (Att. 4.16.8). Augustus famously boasted that he built his forum individual monuments are readily accessible in Peter J. Aicher, Rome Alive: on private land (Res Gestae Divi Augusti 21)—to be interpreted as a sign of A Source-Guide to the Ancient City (Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci, his modesty in buying rather than expropriating. Suetonius claimed that 2004). Augustus could not persuade all the owners to sell (Suet., Aug. 56.2),

504 JSAH / 73: 4 , DECEMBER 2014 and the slight irregularities of the plan at the northeast corner have some- templum Iani (Temple of Janus), identifying Ceasar’s Forum with the times been cited as evidence that he did make some changes in response. Church of San Lorenzo in Miranda (the ancient Temple of Antoninus and This has more to do with propaganda than reality; if Augustus had wanted Faustina) and the Temple of Janus with the Torre dei Frangipane, which to make his forum a perfect rectangle, he could have done so. Augustus was built on the site of the Arch of Titus. made a point of publicizing his refusal to expropriate because this was 34. At first glance, the Forum of Nerva provides an exception, but upon unexpected. Later emperors would have faced even fewer social constraints closer inspection, it too conforms to the pattern. Known in antiquity as the on their ability to build anywhere they wished. Forum Transitorium (the going-through forum), it stood on land that had 25. “Ad declarandum quantae altitudinis mons et locus tantis operibus sit previously been occupied by the Argiletum, one of Rome’s major movement egestus” (CIL 6.960). arteries. The Forum of Nerva has the appearance of a monumentalized 26. Noted by Domenico Palombi, “Morfologia, toponomastica e viabilità street. Even so, at the northeast end, the Temple of Minerva provides a prima dei Fori Imperiali,” in Théorie et pratique de l’architecture romaine: visually satisfying terminus and the appearance of closure; movement Études offertes à Pierre Gros, ed. Xavier Lafon and Gilles Sauron (Aix-en- through the narrow passage that remained to the south of the temple was Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 2005), 81–92. further hindered by stairs. 27. For the development of this inward-looking architectural type and its 35. The postantique history of Trajan’s Column, including its appropriation contrast with the Forum Romanum, see in particular John R. Senseney, by the popes and early excavations under Napoleon, deserves an article in “Adrift toward Empire: The Lost Porticus Octavia in Rome and the itself, but it was treated in the main as an individual monument, not part Origins of the Imperial Fora,” JSAH 70, no. 4 (Dec. 2011), 421–41, esp. of an urban landscape. For the Napoleonic interventions, see in particular 422–23. Ronald T. Ridley, The Eagle and the Spade: Archaeology in Rome during the 28. Eugenio La Rocca, “Passeggiando intorno ai Fori Imperiali,” in Napoleonic Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 152–66. Imaging Ancient Rome: Documentation, Visualization, Imagination, ed. Lothar 36. This house and the practice of façadism are discussed in detail by Caroline Haselberger and John H. Humphrey (Portsmouth, R.I.: Journal of Roman J. Goodson, “Roman Archaeology in Medieval Rome,” in Caldwell and Archaeology, 2006), 120–43; David J. Newsome, “The Forum and the City: Caldwell, Rome, 17–34. For the continuing prestige of the Forum Roma- Rethinking Centrality in Rome and Pompeii (3rd Century B.C.–2nd num as a residential location throughout the late antique and early medieval Century A.D.)” (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2010); Newsome, periods, see Robert Coates-Stephens, “Housing in Early Medieval Rome, “Movement and Fora in Rome.” 500–1000 AD,” Papers of the British School at Rome 64 (1996), 239–59. 29. The absence of suitable architectural features for shops in most of 37. The owner was presumably, in the words of Richard Krautheimer, the Imperial Fora is argument enough, although Caesar’s Forum, which Rome: Profile of a City, 312–1308 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University contains small rooms suitable for use as shops, is an exception. Appian (Civil Press, 1980), one of the “respectable burghers able to afford festooning Wars 2.102) tells us that Caesar explicitly barred commerce from his forum. their houses and the adjoining stretch of street for papal processions” (315). See also Roger B. Ulrich, “Julius Caesar and the Creation of the Forum 38. Riccardo Santangeli Valenzani, “Strade, case e orti nell’alto Medioevo Iulium,” American Journal of Archaeology 97, no. 1 (Jan. 1993), 58–66. nell’area del foro di Nerva,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Âge 30. For further discussion, see Palombi, “Morfologia, toponomastica”; 111 (1999), 163–69. Ulrich, “Julius Caesar and the Creation of the Forum Iulium.” 39. Indeed, this stretch was part of the papal processional route from the 31. In 357 CE, when the emperor Constantius II visited Rome for the first Lateran to the Vatican, which according to the order of Benedictus Canoni- time, he was taken to visit Trajan’s Forum. The emperor had no trouble cus of ca. 1140 CE passed through slightly different areas of the city to the deciphering its message and thus its place in his own past and present. reverse path discussed here; it crossed the area of the Imperial Fora there Ammianus Marcellinus wrote: “But when he came to the Forum of Trajan, and continued up the Salita del Grillo, behind the back wall of the Forum a building which I believe has no equal under the sun and which even the of Augustus. For further detail, see Krautheimer, Rome, 278–79. gods agree is a marvel, he was transfixed with astonishment while his mind 40. Goodson, “Roman Archaeology in Medieval Rome,” discusses this roamed around the gigantic complex, indescribable in words and never section of the itinerary and the links it suggests between old and new archi- again to be attempted by mortals” (Amm. 16.10.15). tecture in the Forum (25–26). 32. New archaeological investigations in the Imperial Fora begun in 1999 41. Mark Humphries, “From Emperor to Pope? Ceremonial, Space, and have uncovered a great deal about the late antique and postantique history Authority at Rome from Constantine to Gregory the Great,” in Religion, of the area: see Roberto Meneghini, “Le trasformazioni dei Fori Imperiali Dynasty, and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300–900, ed. Kate Cooper nella tarda antichità,” Bullettino della Commissione archeologica comunale and Julia Hillner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 21–58, di Roma 109 (2009), 145–60; Meneghini and Santangeli Valenzani, I Fori discusses the evolution of processional ritual in Rome from late antiquity Imperiali; Riccardo Santangeli Valenzani, “I Fori Imperiali nel medioevo,” to the medieval period, noting how many imperial practices and routes were Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts: Römische Abteilung retained and revitalized by the popes even as entirely new forms also devel- 108 (2001), 269–83. oped. The possesso shows specific links with the Roman triumph and the 33. David J. Newsome (personal communication) has pointed out that the imperial adventus, the ceremony of an emperor’s arrival in the capital. Mirabilia Urbis Romae (Marvels of Rome) (a loose family of descriptions of 42. The possesso was a long-standing ritual, although in the medieval period the city that can be traced to the mid-twelfth century CE) mistakenly placed it involved movement from the Lateran to the Vatican and back, rather than the Forum of Caesar on the other side of the Forum Romanum entirely— beginning at the Vatican. For the sixteenth-century version, see Irene Fosi, contra the claim stated in Anderson, The Historical Topography of the Imperial “Court and City in the Ceremony of the Possesso in the Sixteenth Century,” Fora, that the Forum of Caesar was “never really lost” (44). Chapter 24 of in Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492–1700, ed. Gianvittorio Signorotto the Mirabilia (following the edition of Roberto Valentini and Giuseppe and Maria Antonietta Visceglia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Zucchetti, eds., Codice topografico della città di Roma, vol. 3 [Rome: Istituto 2002), 31–52. David Mayernik, Timeless Cities: An Architect’s Reflections on Storico Italiano per il Medioevo, 1946], 17–65) links the forum Cesaris Renaissance Italy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2003), reads the possesso ( Caesar’s Forum) with templum Palladis (Temple of Pallas [Minerva]) and route as a “memory path” (66–74).

M EMORY AND M OVEMENT IN THE R OMAN FORA F ROM A NTIQUITY TO M ETRO C 505 43. See the discussion in Fosi, “Court and City in the Ceremony of the a passerby is confronted, even surprised by, ruins: see Antonio Muñoz, Possesso in the Sixteenth Century,” 36. “La Via dell’Impero,” Emporium 10 (Oct. 1933), 242. 44. For the history of the passeggiata, see Piero Maria Lugli, Urbanistica di 57. For further discussion of fascist rituals using the street to claim control Roma: Trenta planimetrie per trenta secoli di storia (Rome: Bardi Editore, over public space, see Atkinson, “Totalitarianism and the Street in Fascist 1998), 128–29; Paola Ciancio Rossetto, “La ‘passeggiata archeologica,’ ” in Rome.” L’archeologia in Roma capitale tra sterro e scavo, ed. Giuseppina Pisani Sartorio 58. Angela Maria D’Amelio, “Foro di Augusto,” in Leone and Margiotta, (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1983), 75–88. Fori Imperiali, discusses the loss of the ancient “spazialità,” pointing out 45. The problem is noted by Lugli, Urbanistica di Roma, 128–29. that postantique interventions meant it was not only unrecovered but also 46. Newsome, “The Forum and the City,” reacted in 2010 to the problems unrecoverable (49). created by the introduction of ticket barriers (which took place in 2008, 59. Muñoz, Via dei Monti, remarks with pride that the two exedras in the when he was carrying out his research) in similar terms: “The Forum new layout of the area flanking the Vittoriano are 10 meters larger than Romanum has changed from a place that one might move through, to a Bernini’s exedras at St. Peter’s Basilica (10). As Spiro Kostof, “His Majesty place that one moves to; from a shortcut to an obstacle. This has implica- the Pick: The Aesthetics of Demolition,” Design Quarterly 118/19 (1982), tions for how one should evaluate the perception of this space in the city at 32–41, remarks: “The presentation of ancient monuments in a drama of large. The Forum Romanum is no longer a well-integrated route but is a historical association brings out the comparable or rather competitive gran- segregated destination” (preface, unpaginated). deur of the present regime in relation to the past.” 47. Lugli, Urbanistica di Roma, collects the evidence for Rome’s 60. Noted by Kostof, The Third Rome, 21. urban development in this period. Italo Insolera and Francesco Perego, 61. On ideological impulses behind the change in orientation, see ibid., 24; Archeologia e città: Storia moderna dei Fori di Roma (Rome: Editori Laterza, Baxa, Roads and Ruins, 85. 1983), are particularly helpful for the area of the Forum Romanum and the 62. The link is noted by Kostof, in “His Majesty the Pick,” quoting Filippo Imperial Fora. Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto: “Get hold of picks, axes, hammers, 48. Terry Kirk, “The Political Topography of Modern Rome, 1870–1936: and demolish, demolish without pity, the venerated cities” (33). Via XX Settembre to Via dell’Impero,” in Caldwell and Caldwell, Rome, 63. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, “Senza zaino: Conclusione sul decennale,” 115–19. Futurismo 18 (Dec. 1932); for more discussion of Marinetti’s attitude toward 49. Mario Piacentini, “La grande Roma,” Capitolium 1, no. 7 (1925), the past, see Marja Härmänmaa, Un patriota che sfidò la decadenza: F. T. 413–20; Corrado Ricci, Antonio M. Colini, and Valerio Mariani, Via Marinetti e l’idea dell’uomo nuova fascista, 1929–1944 (Helsinki: Academia dell’Impero (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1933), 3. scientiarum fennica, 2000), 145–68; Günther Berghaus, Futurism and Poli- 50. For Lanciani’s intervention, see Francesco Mora, Da via Cavour a piazza tics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction (Providence, R.I.: Venezia attraverso ai Fori Imperiali (Rome: Direzione della Nuova Antologia, Berghahn Books, 1996), 218–76. 1917), 7. 64. The anonymous American is quoted in Painter, Mussolini’s Rome 51. Important treatments include David Atkinson, “Totalitarianism and the (52–53), citing John Patric’s National Geographic article “Imperial Rome Street in Fascist Rome,” in Images of the Street: Planning, Identity, and Control Reborn” (71, no. 3 [Mar. 1937]). in Public Space, ed. Nicholas R. Fyfe (London: Routledge, 1998), 13–30; 65. Kostof, The Third Rome (33–38), traces the three phases: reverence and Antonio Cederna, Mussolini urbanista: Lo sventramento di Roma negli anni di concern for authenticity in the display of monuments; then the juxtaposi- consenso (Rome: Editori Laterza, 1979); Emilio Gentile, Facismo di pietra tion of ancient and fascist architecture; and finally the move to entirely new (Rome: Editori Laterza, 1997); Spiro Kostof, The Third Rome, 1870–1950: contexts. Traffic and Glory (Berkeley: University Art Museum, 1973); Borden W. 66. One set of proposals can be found in Carlo Aymonino, Progettare Painter Jr., Mussolini’s Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City (New York: Palgrave Roma capitale (Rome: Editori Laterza, 1990); Insolera and Perego, Archeo- Macmillan, 2005). Most recently, Paul Baxa, Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic logia e città; Raffaele Panella, Roma città e Foro: Questioni di progettazione Landscape of Fascist Rome (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), has del centro archeologico monumentale della capitale (Rome: Officina Edizioni, revitalized the study of fascist urbanism with a new emphasis on the lived 1989). experience of the city. 67. Full details can be found at the project’s website, www.foripedonali.it 52. Speech of 18 Mar. 1932; quoted in Kostof, The Third Rome, 18. (accessed 14 May 2015). 53. Baxa, Roads and Ruins, speaks of “rupturing memory” (63–66). 68. Opposition to the plans is noted by Paolo Bocacci, “Cancellare via dei 54. In addition to the works cited above in n. 51, for the Via dell’Impero Fori Imperiali? I residenti faranno le barricate,” La Reppublica, 31 Oct. project, see Fabio Betti, Via dell’Impero: Nascita di una strada; Demolizioni 2013, http://roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2013/10/31/news/cancellare_via e scavi: 1930–36 (Rome: Palombi Editori, 2006); Insolera and Perego, _dei_fori_imperiali_i_residenti_faranno_le_barricate-69879936 (accessed Archeologia e città; Rossella Leone and Anita Margiotta, eds., Fori Imperiali: 14 May 2014); “La ‘pazza idea’ di Marino: Smantellare i Fori Imperiali,” Demolizioni e scavi; Fotografie, 1924–1940 (Milan: Electa, 2007). L’Unità, 30 Oct. 2013, http://www.unita.it/culture/pedonalizzazione-fori 55. Antonio Muñoz, Via dei Monti e Via del Mare (Rome: Biblioteca d’Arte -imperiali-smantellamento-area-archeologica-mibact-bray-veloccia Editrice, 1932). -marino-protest-1.530520 (accessed 14 May 2014). 56. Baxa, Roads and Ruins, 80–84; specifically on the Via dell’Impero, 69. In the 1980s, Insolera and Perego, Archeologia e città, wrote of “the he quotes Le Corbusier’s and Muñoz’s conflicting ideas on how best to multiplication of points of intersection and exchange” between periods appreciate ruins (85). In an interview with Muñoz published in Antonio (xxi). The most recent project, in the words of Sonia Martone, “La Linea Muñoz, “Le Corbusier parla di urbanistica romana,” L’Urbe 14 (Nov. 1936), C della metropolitana di Roma: Procedure e nuove prospettive,” in Egidi, it was Le Corbusier who counseled against the juxtaposition of roads and Archeologia e infrastrutture, has the aim of “recuperating and exalting the ruins; he preferred that ruins be studied in an atmosphere of “calm, solitude value of the stratified city” (14). and time for reflection” (35, trans. Baxa). Muñoz, as Baxa notes, preferred 70. The most recently published synopsis can be found in Egidi, Archeologia a model whereby speed of movement enhances the immediacy with which e infrastrutture.

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