Warming up

1. What architectural forms did the Romans prefer?

2. What greatest temples of Roman architecture do you know?

3. Why are the Romans called the great builders and engineers?

4. What ancient Roman towns do you know?

5. What was the influence of Roman architecture on the resulting styles?

Read the text and tell about the architecture of Residential and Public Structures of the Roman Empire.

Modern knowledge of Roman architecture derives primarily from ex­tant remains scattered throughout the area of the empire. Some are well preserved, and other are known only in fragments and by theoretical res­toration. Another source of information is a vast store of records. Especially important is a book on architecture by the architect Vitruvius. His De Ar-chitectura (c.27 BC) is the only treatise survived from ancient times. It con­sists often books and covers almost every aspect on architecture.

Pervasive Roman predilection was for spatial composition -— the orga­nization of lines, surfaces, masses, and volumes in space. In this the Ro­mans differed from their predecessors in the ancient Mediterranean world, and, however freely they used the elements of earlier styles, in Rome or in the provinces they recast them according to their own taste.

In Roman architecture there were three types of houses: the domus, the insula, and the villa.

The domus, or town house, consisted of suites of rooms grouped around a central hall, or atrium, to which were often added further suites at the rear, grouped around a colonnaded court, or peristyle. The atrium, a rect­angular room with an opening in the roof to the sky, and its adjoining rooms were peculiarly Roman elements; the peristyle was Greek or Middle East­ern. There were few windows on the street, light being obtained from the atrium or peristyle.

In Rome the chief examples of domus are the House of Vestals in the Forum in Rome and that of Livia on the Palatine Hill.

Great blocks of flats or tenements were called insulae. Excavations at Ostia, Italy, have revealed the design of these blocks. Planed on three or four floors with strict regard to economy of space, they depended on light from the exterior as well as from a central court. Independent apartments had separate entrances with direct access to the street.

The Latin word villa pertained to an estate, complete with house, grounds, and subsidiary buildings.

Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, began about AD 123, was a sumptuous resi­dence with parks and gardens on a large scale. The unevenness of the site necessitated large terraces and flights of steps. There are remains of great brick and concrete structures. All the buildings are Roman in style and method of construction, though with Greek names.

The Romans were great builders and engineers famous for their facto­ries, roads, aqueducts and bridges, grand thermae and amphitheatres, the­atres, and temples.

The greatest surviving circular temple of antiquity, and in many respects the most important Roman building, is the Pantheon in Rome. It consists of rotunda about 142 feet in diameter surrounded by concrete walls 20 feet thick, in which are alternate circular and rectangular niches. Light is ad­mitted through a central opening, or oculus, about 28 feet across, at the crown of the dome. In front is a porch with an inscription commemorating an earlier building of Marcus Agrippa (12 BC—AD 14) but built with the existing rotunda (AD 120—124) under the emperor Hadrian. The rotunda and dome are among the finest examples of Roman concrete work. The interior was lined with precious marbles, the coffers (decorative recessed panels) of the dome itself once was covered externally with bronze plates.

The largest and most important amphitheatre of Rome was the Colos­seum, built by the emperors Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian in about AD 70/75 —82. Covering six acres (2.4 hectares), it had seating for about 50,000 spectators, and its 80 entrances were so arranged that the building could be cleared quickly. The whole is built of concrete, the exterior faced with travertine and the interior with precious marbles.

Other important amphitheatres are those at Verona, Italy; Pula, Yugo­slavia; and Aries, France.

Imperial thermae were more than baths. They were immense establish­ments of great magnificence, with facilities for every gymnastic exercise and halls in which philosophers, poets, rhetoricians, and those who wished to hear them gathered.

The best preserved are the Baths of Caracalla (begun c. AD 217), which covered an area about 1,000 feet square, and those of Diocletian (c. AD 298—306), with accommodation for 3,200 bathers.

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