Rome – Around Town : Around the Pantheon (part 1)

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During the Roman Empire the
Tiber Bend area was a public training ground for soldiers called the
Campo Marzio. With Rome’s fall, the city turned its back on this
riverside neighbourhood and, aside from a few foreign settlements, it
wasn’t until the 15th century that anything other than a few churches
was built here. The Baroque boom gave the area’s palaces their
distinctive look. Mussolini cleaned up the neighbourhood in the 1920s
and 1930s to bring out its ancient character. He cleared away the debris
surrounding Augustus’s Mausoleum, reassembled the Ara Pacis and
surrounded the lot with reviled Fascist buildings, complete with
self-aggrandizing bas-reliefs.

Recycled Temples

Romans are ingenious
recyclers. The Pantheon became a church, Hadrian’s Temple a stock
exchange; San Clemente was built atop a temple to Mithras, Santa Maria
sopra Minerva one to Minerva. In the 11th century, the walls of San
Lorenzo in Miranda in the Forum and San Nicola in Carcere on Via Teatro
di Marcello were both grafted onto temple columns.




Sights

  1. The Pantheon

    “Simple,
    erect, severe, austere, sublime” – even Lord Byron struggled to find
    words to express this marvel of ancient Roman architecture, the only
    ancient Roman temple to survive the millennia virtually intact .




    Relieving arches, Pantheon

  2. Santa Maria sopra Minerva

    The only truly Gothic church in Rome, possibly built, as the name suggests, atop a temple to Minerva. Michelangelo’s
    Risen Christ
    (1514–21) is a muscular rendition of the Saviour so shockingly
    nude that church officials added the bronze wisp of drapery. Filippino
    Lippi frescoed the last chapel on the right; the lower scene on the
    right wall includes portraits of young Giovanni and Giulio de’ Medici
    (known as Popes Leo X and Clement VII), who are buried in tombs by
    Antonio Sangallo the Younger, in the apse, with Fra’ Angelico and (most
    of) St Catherine of Siena .

    • Piazza della Minerva

    • Open 7:10am–7pm Mon–Sat, 8am–noon, 2–7pm Sun

    • Free

    • DA




    Nave, Santa Maria sopra Minerva

  3. Galleria Doria Pamphilj

    The
    best of the private collection galleries in Rome. In addition to
    paintings by Rubens, Correggio, Tintoretto, Carracci and Brueghel, star
    works include Caravaggio’s Mary Magdalene, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, and Young St John the Baptist (a copy he made of his Capitoline version); Titian’s Salome with the Head of John the Baptist

  4. Ara Pacis

    Augustus Caesar built this “Altar of Peace” between 13 BC and 9 BC to celebrate the famed pax romana
    (Roman peace) he instituted – largely by subjugating most of Western
    Europe, the Levant and North Africa. Fragments of the altar were
    excavated over several centuries, and in the 1920s Mussolini placed the
    reconstituted Ara Pacis by Augustus’s Mausoleum. The altar is now housed
    in a Richard Meier-designed museum, the first modern structure to rise
    in the centre of Rome in 70 years.

    • Piazza Augusto Imperatore & Lungo­tevere Augusta

    • 060608

    • Open 9am–7pm Tue–Sun

    • Adm €6.50


    • www.arapacis.it




    Marcus Agrippa, Ara Pacis

  5. Sant’Ignazio di Loyola

    When the Jesuits’ new Baroque church was finished in 1685, it still lacked a dome. Master of trompe-l’oeil
    Andrea Pozzo used his flawless technique to create the illusion of an
    airy dome on the flat circle of ceiling over the church’s crossing;
    stand on the yellow marble disc for the full effect, then walk directly
    under the “dome” to see how skewed the painting actually is. Pozzo also
    painted the nave vault with the lovely Glory of Sant’Ignazio.

    • Piazza di S Ignazio

    • Open 7:30am–12:30pm, 3–7:15pm daily

    • Free




    Piazza Sant’Ignazio



  6. Column of Marcus Aurelius

    Trajan’s Column was such a success 
    that this 29.5-m (97-ft) one was erected in AD 180–93 to honour the
    military career of Marcus Aurelius. The spiral of reliefs celebrates his
    campaigns against the Germans (169–73) on the bottom and the Sarmatians
    (174–76) on the top. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V replaced the statues of the
    emperor and his wife with that of St Paul.

    • Piazza Colonna




    Relief, Column of Marcus Aurelius

  7. Augustus’s Mausoleum

    Augustus
    built this grand imperial tomb in 27 BC, his ashes later joined by
    those of emperors Tiberius and Nerva, and worthies such as Agrippa and
    Marcellus. Barbarian invaders later made off with the urns and locals
    mined its travertine facing for their palaces. The ancient rotunda has
    served time as a hanging garden, fortress, circus for bear-baiting, and
    concert hall. In the 1920s its crown was restored to the ancient style,
    covered with grass and cypress, and Mussolini laid out the Fascist
    piazza around it. Major architectural work is planned for this area.

    • Piazza Augusto Imperatore

    • Open by appt only

    • Adm




    Augustus’s Mausoleum

  8. Piazza di Sant’Ignazio

    Francesco
    Raguzzini laid out this masterpiece of Baroque urban design for the
    Jesuits in 1727–8, creating piazza carefully planned right down to the
    ornate iron balconies and matching dusty pink plaster walls.

  9. Bernini’s Elephant Obelisk

    An
    example of Bernini’s fun-loving side. This baby elephant, carved to the
    master’s designs by Ercole Ferrata in 1667, carries a miniature
    6th-century BC Egyptian obelisk on its back. It is a tongue-in-cheek
    reference to Carthaginian leader Hannibal’s war elephants, which carried
    tall siege towers across the Alps to attack the Roman Empire in 218 BC.

    • Piazza della Minerva




  10. Piazza della Rotonda

    The
    square in front of the Pantheon was filled with a boisterous daily
    market until 1847; some of the Pantheon’s portico columns still bear
    square holes from the stall posts once set into them. The square is now
    filled with tourists, outdoor tables of cafés, and horse-drawn
    carriages, all ranged around Giacomo della Porta’s 1575 fountain, which
    supports a tiny Egyptian obelisk dedicated to Ramses II.




    Piazza della Rotonda