Subterranean Rome - an engineering feat from 2500 years ago

 

At one time, one could visit,
but would you want to?

  Rome's - if not the world's - most famous sewer showed up on our RST Top 40 list, admittedly at #40, almost 9 years ago. We're revisiting it today, because it fits into our you-can't-go-there-anyway category; in this case, because it's underground.

Better to view it from the outside, here, today, as it exits into the Tevere.

 The sewer, or Cloaca Maxima (also spelled Cloaxa, as we did 9 years ago, but Cloaca is more common, we've learned since) - meaning "big sewer" - was constructed about 2500 years ago, even before the Romans as we know them. It was designed to canalize water coming down from streams on Rome's 7 hills into the Forum. It ran straight through the Forum and was first open, with small boards as crossing points (must have smelled lovely).

In the photo at right is a reconstruction of what the Cloaca Maxima looked like during the time of the Tarquinian kings (6th century BCE).

When we wrote Rome the Second Time in 2008, we were fascinated by the large mouth of the Cloaca on the Tevere that one can still see today (it shows up in Itinerary 3: The Strange Career of the Tevere, p. 48 in the print copy) - see photo above,"Lo sbocco nel Tevere." There are many views of that 2500 year-old opening, including by Piranesi (etching below), who apparently inspired Goethe to visit the Cloaca in April, 1788. There's evidence Goethe was able to go inside the sewer, though we don't know if he entered it from the Tevere. 

There are more, quite lovely, paintings and etchings at the end of this post.  Amazing a sewer can be so inspirational.

We, who are always finding ways to tie Rome, Los Angeles, and Buffalo, NY, to each other, offer to tie at least Rome and Buffalo together with the tracing above ground of the waterway below-ground. The photo below shows the route of the Cloaca Maxima, above ground, as it would look today. Recently, Bill took the two of us on a route following an important creek in Buffalo, the Scajaquada Creek, where it was placed - a mere 90 years ago -  underground, but can - more or less - be followed above ground. 

So that's our challenge to our readers and to us the next time we are able - to follow the Cloaca Maxima's route above ground.  Part of that route, of course, still wends its way through the Forum, and one can today find evidence of it above ground there, as in this photo:

These (above photo) are the remains of a small "chapel" ("Sacello") to the Sewer Venus ("Venere Cloacina"), evidenced also in a coin of the period (photo right). 

Other fun facts.  Most of the sewer is in use today, 2,500 years later, although not the part that opens onto the Tevere. Etruscans started building it by carving into the very useful tufo (photo left). It was finally (!) covered over in the 2nd century BCE, as Rome grew and there was need for more space. Agrippa (1st century BCE) took a boat and explored it. 

People who were sewer-keepers were proud enough to have this on their tombstones (photo right). 

One of the San Sebastiano stories has him thrown into it. Left, Ludovico Carracci's 1612 painting of San Sebastiano being thrown into the Cloaca

Parts of the Cloaca Maxima are built with the classic Roman marble, travertine (tons used by Richard Meier to construct The Getty Museum in LA - see, I got LA in there - as well as the Ara Pacis structure in central Rome). Photo right.

There have been visits "down there" from time to time, including the photo at the top of this post from the 1960s, as I recall. Now, small robots are used to investigate the caverns, called "robotini" or "archeorobots" - photo left.

Most of the information in this post is from a Zoom lecture by Daniela Pacchiani, a specialist in ancient archaeology, as part of Turismo Culturale Italiano's Roma Inaccessibili ("Inaccessible Rome") series in January and February.

Dianne (more 18th and 19th century paintings below!)

This is a nice "capriccio" or fantastical image
of the Cloaca's opening onto the Tevere. It is 
not too far from the temple, whose ruins are fancifully shown here,
but which are obviously not exactly in this location.

RST Top 40. #9: Piazza Augusto Imperatore - Rome's most abused piazza

Piazza Augusto Imperatore – the piazza named after the dominating Roman emperor, Augustus – comes in at #9 on our Rome the Second Time Top 40 list, even though it sits smack in the middle of the old Roman city.

Augustus' tomb

We know it’s a bit hard to love. The piazza is dominated by Augustus’ tomb, a tomb so mistreated over the years (bull fighting arena, concert hall, planned tomb for Mussolini) and so degraded – graffiti, garbage, fences - that almost no one looks at it. The last time we met friends at the piazza for a drink our view was of construction fences. Perhaps that’s the good news – that the government is trying to rehab the tomb.

Piazza A Imperatore with Augustus' tomb

Okay, so why #9 – as if being an epicenter of Roman history is insufficient? Piazza A. Imperatore has also a) amazing Fascist buildings, mosaics, and design, b) many restaurants and bars inside and out (mostly run by ‘Gusto), c) an outdoor arts and antiques market on some Sundays for much of the year (we found some wonderful Gio Ponte plates there – and even bought them), d) the Ars Pacis, one of ancient Rome’s most famous artifacts – a monument to peace, or should we say, war, housed in Richard Meier's controversial building that surrounds it (see Bill's Nov. 24, 2010 post on Italy's "Starchitects").  Add in a couple churches, shops, walks along the Tiber, and that’s our #9.

The Ars Pacis inside Meier building

One more tip – if you don’t want to imbibe at ‘Gusto’s rather overpriced, tho’ well-located places, try “cheap bar” around the corner. The nickname is ours. We found “cheap bar” during a driving (as in drove us, soaked and running for cover, off our scooter) rain storm one day, had a great hot lunch and Euro 2 glasses of wine. It’s a stone’s throw from the Ars Pacis at the corner of via di Ripetta and via della Frezza – apologies, but we don’t even know the name.



Inside "cheap bar"

Dianne

Rome's Starchitects: Meier, Piano, Hadid, Fuksas, Portoghesi

Our thoughtful daughter-in-law sent along an article from amNewYork on New York City's "Starchitects," the flashiest of the architects who have built in the city, those who design projects that "capture the imagination," as a fellow architect put it. 

The article divides the New York stars into three categories: Elder Statesmen (Frank Gehry and Henry Cobb, both in their early 80's); Europeans (Sir Norman Foster, 75; Santiago Calatrava, 59, who is building what promises to be a spectacular transit hub at ground zero; Renzo Piano, 73, whose New York Times Building and addition to the Morgan Library, both of which we took in last month; and Jean Nouvel, 65; and Gotham Stars (including Bruce Fowle, Bob Fox, and Richard Meier (for his Perry Street Towers).  The age info is in the article, though why it's important--or relevant--we're not sure. 

Rome has a magnificent architectural heritage dating to the Republic and the Empire, and includes major contributions in the Renaissance and, less well known, in the 19th and 20th centuries.  But the past decade or so, and especially under the liberal, arts-oriented former mayor, Walter Veltroni, Rome has been active again, hiring Starchitects to design major museums, performance spaces, and--most recently--a convention center.  As far as we know, there are currently five Starchitects who have built or are building in Rome: Richard Meier, Renzo Piano, Zaha Hadid, Massimiliano Fuksas, and Paolo Portoghesi.  Three are Italians.  (And, several - including Piano, Hadid and Fuksas - are featured in our new book: Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  More information on the book is at the end of this post.)



Cleaning the paint of Dadaist vandals  from Meier's
box for the Ara Pacis, June 2009

Richard Meier, 76, was born in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey.  Like Piano and Hadid, he's a winner of one of architecture's most prestigious prizes, the Pritzker (1984).  His best-known project is the Getty Center in the hills of Los Angeles, a monumental if somewhat sterile complex that recalls the grandeur and splendor of ancient Rome as well as the Italian villas and gardens of the 16th century.  Other admired buildings include the tourist center in New Harmony, Indiana, the Hartford Seminary of Theology (late 1970s) and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (early 1980s).   He's known for not caring much for architectural fashion and for sticking with the tried and true ideas of mid-century European and American modernism.  A purist, most of his buildings are rectilinear, box-like forms--not a bad description of his Rome container for the Ars Pacis, a building whose modernist ordinariness has infuriated the city's right wing politicians and even some of its residents, who can't believe it cost 25 million Euro.  He's a Rome starchitect NOT for his Ara Pacis box, but for his sublime Jubilee church (2000), a gem built out in the suburb of Tor Tre Teste--a building so unusual for Meier that it must have come from a dream state, from the architect's subconscious (see Dianne's post on the church, which is #17 in our Rome the Second Time Top 40).  Even so, his Ara Pacis effort produced a strong backlash--against modernism, the particular building and its relationship to the site, and the arts.  In a statement that may have relevance for Meier's experience with an irate Roman public over his Ars Pacis building (photo above right), fellow Starchitect Massimiliano Fuksas (see below) notes: "When people are prepared to damage your building, you have failed." 





Renzo Piano's Parco della Musica

Renzo Piano, 73, was born in 1937 in Genoa.  Piano acknowledges several architects that have influenced him, including Louis Kahn and Pier Luigi Nervi, a Rome Starchitect of an earlier era, and one of whose masterworks, the Palazetto dello Sport, is across the street from Piano's own contribution.  Piano made his name as a co-designer of  the Pompidou Centre in  Paris--intended, Piano says, "to be a joyful urban machine, a creature that might have come from a Jules Verne book."  Other well known buildings of his include the 1982 museum for the De Menil Collection in Houston, and a much-ballyhooed addition, recently opened, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA - where we've spent a lot of time).  The addition is highly functional but, like Meier's Ara Pacis container, essentially a nice box (and the same applies to Piano's Morgan addition in NYC).  Fortunately, Rome got the best out of Piano; his Parco della Musica complex in the quartiere of Flaminio is both functional (except for some maze-like approaches to upper-level seating) and, in the Pompidou Centre mode, playful, combining traditional modernism with shapely organic motifs.
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Aerial View, MAXXI gallery (lower left)

Hadid's MAXXI, from the rear

Zaha Hadid, 60, was born in 1950 in Baghdad.  She practiced with Rem Koolhaas before opening her own shop.  As a child, she was influenced by a tour of ancient Sumerian cities in southern Iraq.  "The beauty of the landscape," she explains, "where sand, water, birds, buildings, and people all somehow flowed together--has never left me.  I'm trying to discover--invent, I suppose--an architecture, and forms of urban planning, that do something of the same kind in a contemporary way."  Hadid's first major success was the Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati (c. 2000).  Another was a museum adjoining Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, a commission she was awarded because she is sometimes understood as Wright-like in her enthusiasm for futuristic designs and, according to one writer, her "visionary rethinking of the relationship between humans and buildings."  Her recently opened MAXXI gallery--a 10-minute walk from Piano's Parco della Musica--has made her a Rome Starchitect.  It's typical of Hadid's work in that it looks wonderfully inventive from the air (photo above left, lower left), a perspective available mostly to pigeons.  However, as our readers have heard more than once, we aren't fond of the way the building relates to its surroundings or to human beings seeking access to it.  From certain angles it looks sensational; from others it's a forbidding hunk of windowless cement.  Some nice spaces inside.  (BTW, one can do a nice architectural tour of Nervi, Piano and Hadid within a couple blocks of each other.)

  

Architectect's rendering of Fuksas' "Cloud" building,
 under construction in EUR

Proposed Italian Space Agency

 Massimiliano Fuksas, 66, was born in Rome in 1944, while the city was occupied by the German army, and he earned his degree in architecture from La Sapienza (Rome's historied university) in 1969.  Fuksas is the loner/rebel type.  "All my life," he has said, "I have fought against form, shape and style," and he denies any "evolution" to his work: "I use a different language each time."  He admits to being an admirer of Francesco Borromini.  Fuksas is well known for the Zenith Music Hall in Strasbourg, France (2008), a bold structure in orange, and  for the Milan Trade Fair complex (2005); we also like his modernistic renovcation of the former stables in Frascati, neaer Rome.  Fuksas is scheduled for Rome Starchitectdom when his EUR "Cloud" building--apparently a meeting and convention center--opens; it's currently under construction and, somewhat surprisingly, his first major building in Rome.  (See Bill's post on our exploration of the "Cloud".) Fuksas is also designing a new unhomelike home (above right)  for the Italian Space Agency (we didn't know the Italians had a Space Agency), to be built near the 1960 Olympic Village and Hadid's MAXXI.   

Paolo Portoghesi, 79, was born in 1931 in Rome, where he earned a degree in architecture at La Sapienza in 1957.  For much of his career he has been in private practice while teaching architectural theory at the University.  His inclusion among Rome's Starchitects is appropriately suspect; his deep interest in the history of architecture--in Borromini, the baroque, and Michelangelo, especially--has given his work strong links to tradition and history, as in his Casa Baldi (1957-62), a house built an hour from Rome in the village of Olevano Romano.  Nonetheless, he's earned the designation of Starchitect for his striking mosque, built 1974/75  in the north end of the city, near Acqua Acetosa, at the behest of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia (and it comes in at #24 on Rome the Second Time's Top 40).  It is said that the building strikes a balance between modernism, Roman forms, and the traditions of mosque architecture, which surely functioned here as a restraint on the architect's creativity and innovation.  Dianne believes the building rises to the Starchitect threshold and "captures the imagination,"  and the interior photo at left would seem to confirm her view.
  

Bill

Hadid's MAXXI and Piano's Parco della Musica are on the Flaminio itinerary; and Fuksas's Cloud is on the EUR itinerary in our new print AND eBook,  Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  Modern Rome features tours of the "garden" suburb of Garbatella; the 20th-century suburb of EUR, designed by the Fascists; the 21st-century music and art center of Flaminio, along with Mussolini's Foro Italico, also the site of the 1960 summer Olympics; and a stairways walk in Trastevere.

This 4-walk book is available in all print and eBook formats The eBook is $1.99 through amazon.com and all other eBook sellers.  See the various formats at smashwords.com. 

Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler now is also available in print, at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, independent bookstores, and other retailers; retail price $5.99.