Muri dei bassi secoli in Rome: observations on the re-use of statuary in walls found on the Esquiline and Caelian after 1870

Abstract

After Rome was declared capital of a unified Italy in 1870, the fabric of the semi-rural Papal city was irremediably altered by a vast modernisation and expansion programme. Major new roads were cut through the mediaeval quarters of Trastevere, the Campus Martius and the Suburra; new ministries, hospitals and barracks were constructed; and great swathes of the largely unsettled disabitato were parcelled up for new housing. The zone chosen for the first wave of new buildings was, as E. La Rocca has pointed out, both closest to the main railway station and farthest from the Vatican, stretching from S. Maria Maggiore in a south-easterly direction over the brow of the Esquiline to Porta Maggiore (fig. 1). No standing ancient remains were spared demolition, with the massive exceptions of the Minerva Medica, the Trophies of Marius, and the Aurelianic Walls. Of the hundreds of new discoveries made during the works, only the so-called Auditorium of Maecenas and one or two stretches of the Servian Wall were preserved. Even archaeologists of the calibre of R. Lanciani and A. Pellegrini found it impossible to keep up with the vast amount of excavation, demolition, and new building. It is not therefore surprising that in a period which could not even supply clear documentation of such fabulous imperial complexes as the Horti Lamiani, details regarding late antiquity and the Middle Ages were never recorded.