part of my course for INTO Newcastle Uni students

1. ROME

2. Introduction
• Roman culture is the result of different
influences:
– Primitive cultures of the area Rome was
founded in (they were peasants and warriors)
– Etrurian civilization: urban, offering culture to
the ancestors
– Greek and Hellenistic: this was the model they
aimed at imitating.

3. ETRUSCANS

4. ART

5. Introduction
• General characteristics of Roman Art
– It is practical and utilitarian
– Interest in public works and engineering
– Large scale
– Great technical advances
– Colossal to show Roman power
– It is commemorative and propagandistic

6. CLASS

7. General Characteristics
• Special importance for the internal space
• Integral view of the art combining:
– Beauty and sumptuosity with
– Utility and practical sense
• Buildings are integrated in the urban space

8. General Characteristics
• Building systems:
– Lintelled:
• Copied from the Greeks
• Spaces are closed by straight lines
– Vaulted
• Taken from the Etrurian
• Use of arches
• Barrel vaults
– Use of domes
– Strong walls so that they do not use external supports

9. General Characteristics
• Materials:
– Limestone
– Concrete
– Mortar
• Arches:
– They used half point or semicircular arches
– They could use lintels above these arches
– Pediments were combined with them

10. General Characteristics
• Walls were made in one of these ways:
Ashlar Masonry Brick

11. General Characteristics
• Material combinations in walls:

12. General Characteristics
• Greek shapes assimilation:
– Architectonical orders were used more in a
decorative than in a practical way
– Order superposition
– The use of orders linked to the wall created a
decorative element
– They used the classical orders and two
more:
• Composite
• Tuscan

13. Roman Town Planning
• Cities were the centre of Roman life
– Need for infrastructures
• Water and sewer system
• Transport and defence
• Public spaces and markets
– Psychological effect: power and control
• There was a need of linking them through
paved roads

14. Roman Town Planning
• The plan of the city was
based on the camp
• It had two main axes
– Cardus E-W
– Decumanus N-S
• Where the two converged
was the forum
• The rest of the space was
divided into squares in
which insulae or blocks of
flats were built

15. Forums
• Forums were cultural centres in cities.
• They were often placed at the crossroads of important urban ways: cardo maximus and
decumanus.
• A great porticated square was the centre of a group of buildings around it.
• They were communicated through it.
• Temples for Imperial worship, schools, basilicae, markets or even termae had a direct access
through forum.
• In many cases even buildings for spectacles -circus, theatres and amphitheatres- were
communicated so.
• Forums were a way in for important persons to tribunals.

16. Hypothetical reconstruction of Roman Forum in Imperial times.
Watercolor (18th century), Giuseppe Becchetti

17. FORUM

18. CICERO

19. Roman Roads
The Romans built many roads throughout their empire. The roads made it easier to travel and trade
with faraway provinces. It also made it easier to collect taxes. Roman roads were straight and
followed an exact design. The expression, “All Roads Lead to Rome” refers to the fact that Rome was
the center of modern civilization.
The road system of the
Ancient Romans was
one of the greatest
engineering
accomplishments of its
time, with over 50,000
miles of paved road
radiating from their
center at the miliarius
aurem in the Forum in
the city of Rome.

20. TRADE

21. Roman roads

22. TRADE

23. aqueducts

24. Model of Rome's main aqueducts

26. Bridges

27. Ports and Lighthouses
• Roman ships and those for commercial
trade should travel from port to port with
the speed and security adequate to the life
of a great Empire.
• In these ports every necessity for the
execution of the usual works in a port
ensemble should be found:
– gateways with stores and bureaux,
– shipyards for stationing ships,
– roads for taking ships to earthly
ground,
– drinkable water fountains and
– machinery for loading and
downloading merchandises.
• Indeed, a system of indication was
necessary in order to mark the right
access and exit to the port.

29. Walls
• Defence of cities has been
one of the capital
problems that civilizations
had to solve in order to
project the future of their
citizens, goods, culture
and ways of life.
• Romans were the first in
the technique of
improving different kinds
of defence, using walls.

30. GODS

31. Religious: Temple
• It copied the Greek model
• It has only one portico and
a main façade
• It tends to be
pseudoperiptero
• The cella is totally closed
• It is built on a podium
• Instead of having stairs all
around, it only has them in
the main façade

33. Religious: Temple
• There were other kind
of temples:
• Circular: similar to the
Greek tholos
• Pantheon: combined
squared and circular
structures and was in
honour of all gods.

34. The dome meant
bigger buildings
could be built
which were safer
and did not need
thick walls or
large numbers of
pillars to support
the ceiling.
This piece of
technology will be
lost to medieval
Europeans.

36. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfyO1w96lUo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2rr-yAPgZI&featu

39. Inside the pantheon
in Rome.

41. Spectacles: Theatre
• It is similar to the Greek but it
is not located in a mountain
but it is completely built
• It has a semicircular scenery
• The doors to facilitate
peoples’ movement are called
vomitoria
• It does not have the orchestra
because in Roman plays was
not a chorus
• The rest of the parts are
similar to those of the Greek
theatre

42. Merida’s Roman Theatre

45. Spectacles: Amphitheatre
• It comes from the
fusion of two theatres
• It was the place for
spectacles with
animals and fights
(gladiators)
• There could be filled
with water for naval
battles.

47. Under the floor were cages and cells for
animals gladiators and Christians.

48. ENTERTAINMENT

51. Roman Colosseum in Croatia

52. Spectacles: Circus
• It was a building for horse races and cuadriga
competitions.
• It has the cavea, the area and a central element to
turn around, the spina.

57. Commemorative monuments:
Triumphal Arches
• They were usually placed at the main
entrance of cities in order to remember
travellers and inhabitants the Greatness
and strength of Roman world.
• At the beginning they were wooden
arches where trophies and richness
from wars were shown.
• This habitude changed: Romans built
commemorative arches with
inscriptions.
• They were a Roman creation and they
succeeded: many of them have been
constructed until the present days.
• Arches were used not only for
commemorating Roman victories or
military generals: they also marked
limits between provincial borders.

58. Commemorative monuments:
Columns
• They were columns decorated
with relieves
• In them some important facts
were related
• They were built in the honour
of a person.
• The best instance of these
works is the famous Trajan
Column at Rome. It is
decorated with a spiral of
relieves dealing with scenes
of his campaigns in Danube
and with inscriptions.

59. TRAJAN’S COLUMN

60. Roman baths (England)

61. Civil Buildings: Baths
• There were spaces for
public life
• They consisted of different
rooms:
• Changing rooms
– Different temperature rooms:
• Frigidarium (cold)
• Tepidarium (warm)
• Caldarium (hot)
– Swimming pool
– Gymnasium
– Library

63. Caracalla´s Bath House

64. Most important of all, flushing toilets!!

65. These were public toilets
and the water
continually flowed
underneath.
The wealthy had toilets
you could flush by lifting
a piece of wood that
blocked the sluice.

66. Houses: Insulae
• There are urban houses
• In order to take advantage from
the room in cities, buildings up
to four floors were constructed.
• The ground floor was for
shops -tabernae- and the
others for apartments of
different sizes.
• Every room was
communicated through a
central communitarian patio
decorated with flowers or
gardens.

68. Houses: Domus
• It was the usual housing for important people
in each city.
• It was endowed with a structure based on
distribution through porticated patios:
– the entry -fauces- gives access to
– a small corridor -vestibulum-.
– It leads to a porticated patio -atrium-.
– Its center, the impluvium, is a bank for
the water falling from the compluvium.
– At both sides -alae- there are many
chambers used as rooms for service
slaves, kitchens and latrines.
– At the bottom, the tablinum or living-
room can be found, and close to it, the
triclinium or dining-room.
– This atrium gave also light enough to
next rooms.
– At both sides of the tablinum, little
corridors led to the noble part of the
domus.
– Second porticated patio peristylium, was
bigger and endowed with a central
garden.
– It was surrounded by rooms -cubiculum-
and marked by an exedra used as a
chamber for banquets or social meetings.

71. Houses: Villa
• Houses far from cities, were
thought for realizing
agricultural exploitations -villae
rustica-, or else as places for
the rest of important persons
-villae urbana-.
• Entertaining villa was endowed
with every comfortable element
in its age as well as gardens and
splendid views.
• Country villae got stables,
cellars, stores and orchards
apart from the noble rooms.

73. Palaces
• There were the
residence of the
emperor
• They consisted of a
numerous series of
rooms
• Their plan tended to
be regular

74. Diocleciano’s Palace at Splitz

75. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso