Get Ready for Rome

We have already examined five of Augustus's major building project in Rome, but we have not yet considered how he changed the beating heart of Ancient Rome, the Forum. Today we do.

One way Mussolini tried to make Italians proud of their nation was by acquiring an empire in East Africa. After conquering Ethiopia, he brought an obelisk back to Rome and likened himself to the Ancient Romans. Today we review Mussolini and the monuments celebrating the imperial efforts of modern Italy.

When Constantine built the first St. Peter's Basilica, he buried a burial ground that was not excavated for over 1,500 years. It included tombs of both Pagans and Christians, perhaps including that of St. Peter himself. We visit it today.

Augustus and his imperial successors erected Egyptian obelisks in ancient Rome, and 13 of them are landmarks in the city today, though no one of them stands in its original location. Why were they so important for Augustus and his successors?

1932 was the tenth anniversary of the Fascist March on Rome and the Fiftieth Anniversary of the death of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the most lionized leader of the movement to unite Italy under liberal political principles. As a major part of his attempt to associate his Fascist Blackshirts with Garibaldi's patriotic Redshirts, Mussolini added a statue of Anita Garibaldi to the Janiculum Hill and hosted three days of celebrations as her mortal remains were interred in the base of her statue. But would Garibaldi really have thought the Fascists were good representatives of his principles?

From week to week, my topics jump from Ancient Rome, to Christian Rome, to Modern Rome. This rapid leaping across the centuries may lead to a sort of "historical vertigo," so why don't I just march through Rome in chronological order?

Recent episodes have followed Bernini as a preliminary guide to the spirit of Christian Rome in the time of the Counterreformation, when the new St. Peter's and the Galleria Borghese were built. But what about the earliest Christian Romans? Today we survey their burial places, the catacombs, to begin to learn how they understood the world and their duties in it.

Augustus boasted that he turned Rome from brick to marble, and I think he did. But did he also turn it from a republic to an empire and, if so, did his architectural projects help? We consider his majestic Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill.

Mussolini wanted to identify Fascist Rome with Ancient Rome, but more than this, he wanted to associate himself with Augustus, the first and founding emperor of the imperial period. To see how he did this in architecture, we today visit the Piazza of Augustus the Emperor.

We return to the Galleria Borghese to consider the remaining two of Bernini's four masterpieces, his Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanias, and his David. Both statues may represent the virtue of piety, one based on a Roman story and the other based on the Old Testament, though Bernini's David looks well equipped to defeat Goliath even if he should fail to receive God's support.