The Roman Temple Nobody Knows: Temple of Minerva Medica

 

Paolo Anesi, 18th century

The Temple of Minerva Medica, as it's called, is one of the most easily accessible ancient structures in all of Rome. It's right there on via Giolitti, the busy street that runs along the south side of Stazione Termini and the tracks beyond. Not far from Piazza Maggiore, and just a stone's throw from Santa Bibiana, the also-neglected baroque church whose facade was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. 

A Yale University website describes the temple as "forlorn," and that description isn't inaccurate, in that the building is uncomfortably sandwiched between a streetcar line (and via Giolitti) on one side and a swarm of railroad tracks on the other. 

But it's also quite imposing, and reasonably well preserved for a 4th-century CE edifice. And it may be architecturally significant, in that (we read) its decagonal design, which included an oculus, occupies the architectural space between the octagonal dining room of the Domus Aurea--and the Pantheon. The Temple's dome collapsed in 1828, lasting only about 1400 years. The photo below makes it look like the oculus is still there--but it's only one of the arches. 

One might call it the Other Pantheon. 

So you'll want to see it, even if only through the fence by which it is surrounded. (Right, Dianne, wishing she could just walk in.)

The problem is that you won't be looking at the Temple of Minerva Medica. It's called that, yes, but only because, in the 18th century, a statue known as Athena Giustiniani (below) was presumably found there. That statue of the goddess had, and has, a snake at her feet. And because snakes were identified at the time with healing, the "Medica" name was affixed to the Temple. (Minerva is the Etruscan counterpart of the Greek Athena.) About the time the Temple was erroneously named, the artist Paolo Anesi painted the picture of it at the top of this post.

The misunderstanding all started with this statue. 

On Wikipedia and the like, the Temple of Minerva Medica is often described as a nymphaeum, or a "ruined nymphaeum" (as if there were lots of pristine ones around). Because the Temple is not mentioned (at all, apparently), in the ancient literature, no one knows for sure that the building was, in fact, a nymphaeum. That's only one theory among three. It may have housed a dining room, say some, although that seems a curiously minimal use for so large a structure. Others note that a heating system has been discovered beneath the floor, and that a sacred spring once ran under it, allowing the building to serve as a bathing facility for the elites of the day--though that use, too, is far from certain. 

In the right light and from the right angle, the Temple can look quite dramatic. 

Centrale Montemartini, the Ostiense museum that is #22 on RST's Top 40, houses two statues of Roman magistrates that were excavated from the Temple. 

Above: a recent partial restoration used a lot of new brick. 

Below: a newish storyboard, left, in English as well as Italian, provides some history of the Temple. Get there--if you can!--before the taggers render it illegible.

Bill 

"A Jewel of Italian Technology" pre- and post-WWII: Stazione Termini's Cabina ACE

How does one get a great photo like this - of one of the towers in the Termini train yards?  From the stairway up a contiguous building which, it turns out, is the "Roma Termini - Cabina ACE" - or the building housing a railway control system dating from 1939 and in operation for 60 years.

Anyone who has taken a train in or out of Stazione Termini (which has to be almost anyone who has been to Rome) has seen this building as the train pulls out or in. We had the rare opportunity to go inside it as part of 2018's Open House Roma, the first time it had been open to the public; OHR called it "a jewel of Italian technology of the era." ACE stands for "Apparato Centrale Electrico" - Central Electric Apparatus. And, we learned, one objective of this center was to provide a back-up method of switching the railroad tracks in case of a bombing or other failure of the train switching systems..

The great hall where the 700+ levers still exist.

 

Close-up of the manual levers.

That failure originally was foreseen by the Mussolini regime as a possible result of Allied bombing in World War II. The original project, begun in 1939, was the child of engineer and architect Angiolo Mazzoni, who designed most of Stazione Termini (although the station's front was substantially modified post-war). The work on the station, and this particular building, was interrupted in 1943 "because of the war."

The project was taken up again and completed in 1948. As the state railroad foundation (Fondazione FS Italiane) proudly stated in a news release just after our visit: this was "the control tower that regulated the railway traffic at Roma Termini. Over 40 meters long, large luminous screens, 730 levers and a breathtaking view of the station: an electro-mechanical masterpiece created in the '30s and in operation for over 60 years."

View towards Termini from Cabina ACE.

The central room we saw (photo above) has fantastic views of the tracks and their environs.

A duplicate set of machinery was set up below ground - another of Mussolini's bunkers.

The duplicate system in the "bunker."

Again, quoting from the Fondazione FS: "To manage the movement of trains, teams of more than 60 railway workers climbed every day about 20 meters high, in the tower, each positioned in front of their own 'levers' and awaiting the orders of the 'station chief' who like an orchestra director directed them to prepare the correct track layout."

And, the news release continues: "But when the sirens sounded, announcing an imminent airstrike, the whole team ran down into the bunker, ten meters deep--the "antigas" doors were hermetically sealed behind their backs-- and remained there until the danger ceased. There was no time for fear, we had to resist because our only goal was: to guarantee the movement of trains."

This board, when in use, would have the train lines lit, showing where each
train was, including (we think) trains going to and from other cities, such as Florence.

Former railway employees were among the guides
during our visit.

With respect to Mazzoni as an architect, Wikipedia (English) has a short but pithy bio of him that explains his work for the Fascist government (he was a card-carrying Fascist) and the later rehabilitation of his reputation as an architect.

And if you really want to get into the weeds, the Fondazione has Mazzoni's drawings for the building ("Fabbricato I") online - as well as hundreds of other archival materials.

More photos below. Dianne

Our OHR guide - the Cabina is the building back right.
This photo faces away from the station.

Inside the bunker, which was designed to be hermetically sealed,
and have its own air supply.

Nice views from our walk up to the Cabina of the
lovely 17th -century, Bernini-enhanced (portico,
facade, statue of the saint) church of Santa Bibiana,
totally hemmed-in by the 20th century train station
buildings and about which we've written.

Is this Eataly? Nope, it's the Train Station!

We were shocked--in a good way--to discover Mercato Centrale Roma.  We had seen notice of its "Trastevere" night in the newspaper, but our expectations were low (and we never did figure out what the evening had to do with Trastevere).  We thought we might find some folks selling home-made jewelry and stands marketing healthy "bio" products. 

Instead we found an enormous multi-story food and entertainment complex, set inside the already spectacular, high-ceiling architecture of the postwar Stazione Termini. The designers somehow succeeded in keeping the spectacle of the curved brick ceiling while creating a comfortable, sheltered, human-size space below, like Eataly on a smaller scale. 

The American Bar

A great place for dinner (we had a savory cacio e pepe and a raw-artichoke salad), a sandwich, drinks (at American Bar"": a Ribolla Gialla for E5), or just hanging out while waiting for a train.

Our guess is that most of the thousands of people going through the station don't even know the 'mercato' is there, because it's so far from the front of the station (about three short blocks) and only on one side (the south/west side).  Mercato Centrale Roma is best accessed front the sidewalk along via Giolitti.    Bill
And if you are looking for 15 things to do within 200 meters of Termini, try these 2 posts: http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2010/07/10-things-to-do-within-200-meters-of.html
and http://romethesecondtime.blogspot.it/2010/08/5-more-things-to-do-within-200-meters.html.

Music on an upper floor 

Stazione Termini: Spectacle of Mid-century Modernism

In 1937, the Mussolini regime decided it was time for a new central-Rome railroad station.  It was to be ready in time for E42, an enormous fair with permanent buildings in what is now EUR, all designed to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the March on Rome.  The war intervened, Mussolini was thrown out of power in 1943, and construction stopped on both E42 and the new Termini Station. The station's enormous side structures, designed by Angiolo Mazzoni del Grande, had been completed, and these remain.

The rest of the building was subject to a 1947 design competition.  Two teams emerged victorious--nobody really famous among them--and together they re-imagined the structure, which was inaugurated in 1950.

Inside, the great hall was covered by a concrete roof, which one source describes as a modernist version of the barrel vaults used in ancient Roman baths.  This roof is integrated with a cantilevered canopy over the entrance.  Spectacular, we think.  The station was, and is, one of the largest in Europe.

The postcard view shown here captures the modernist allure of the Stazione Termini in its first decade.  The automobiles offer the possibility of a more precise dating, but we're not car buffs, and to be reasonable accurate, one would have to identify the newest car in the lots.  Not easy.  Still, perhaps a reader can help date the photo more precisely. [See the wonderfully detailed comment below from Roger H. who identifies a couple cars and concludes the photo was taken close to when station was inaugurated.]

Bill

A few postscripts from Dianne:
The piazza is no longer called "Piazzale della Stazione," as we see in the postcard photo above, but "Piazza dei Cinquecento" ("Piazza of the 16th century") - I assume that's the meaning, and not the piazza of the Fiat car, the 500 (i.e. cinquecento). [CORRECTION - Nope, that's not its meaning.  I should've known it would've been political and more serious.  Both Marco and Frederika pointed out the real meaning of the cinquecento - Italians soldiers killed in Ethiopia.  See their helpful comments below.] The national train service has a rather thorough, if somewhat glorified, history of the station on its Web site. (You'll get some different opinions about it on Yelp.)  And the station, because of its roof line, is sometimes called the Dinosaur.

Three centuries in one place: 6th Century BC Servian Wall, 1908 Palazzo, 2014 Hotel

Sixth Century Servian Wall in front of 1908 Palazzo Montemartini [more photos of the wall at the end of this post]

I thought I'd start with these two pictures - above, a 1908 palazzo in 18th-century style with the 6th- century BC Servian Wall in its courtyard, and below, the 2014 entry lobby of the Hotel Montemartini IN this palazzo.  Ah, Rome.  What a fabulous conflation of eras.

Registration Desk, Hotel Montemartini

We wanted to see this palazzo because the conversion to a 21st- century hotel was by the architectural firm of King Roselli, praised by one of our favorite contemporary Rome architects, Nathalie Grenon of Sartogo Architetti Associati. King Roselli also are the architects for the Radisson Blu es Hotel, which sports one of Rome's great rooftop bars. The Radisson Blu es Hotel is also near Stazione Termini, but about a mile away, on the other side of the train station.

It took us a while to find Hotel Montemartini, because it's not an obvious hotel building and the address doesn't make its location apparent.  Once we found it, and the Servian Wall, we were duly impressed.

Lobby view into "library"; note the use of see-through
stone block (i.e. Servian Wall) display

The hotel design has been up for awards and received good press when it opened a little over a year ago, January 2014.  King Roselli has commentary on its Web site about the conversion, which clearly wasn't easy.  It appears (see below - like many things in Rome, nothing is totally clear) the building was first designed as headquarters of the Rome transportation system, ATAC.

As the architects say:  "The structure and the original internal arrangement were not immediately suitable to the programme of a hotel.  This meant the design of the 87 guests rooms in seven or eight 'types' which were then adapted to the existing building one by one."

Looking through the stone blocks

Another Web site notes:  "The structure, an early example of a reinforced concrete, mixed with load bearing walls, with a large number of level changes, has given rise to a necessarily complex distribution of the hotel."

King Roselli state they tried to reflect ancient history with their use of stone (the Servian Wall) and water - the ruins of the Baths of Diocletion are, yes, a stone's throw, from the hotel (if not under it).




We think this all works, but then we haven't paid to stay in this 5-star hotel.  There are many meetings here, including those of an ex-pat group that seems particularly fond of the bar, and we would say, appropriate so (photo below).



A view out the entrance -a feel for the 18th century
style in a 1908 building (on ancient ruins)

Another mystery to me was the name of the palazzo.  "Montemartini" is known to Romans as the site of the ancient sculpture collection of the city housed in a former 1920s power plant - hence the name of the museum - Centrale Montemartini.  But that's way on the other side of the city in Ostiense.  Hmmm.  Now (not when we started this exploration) we know that the palazzo originally was a headquarters for ATAC.  And Centrale Montemartini was named for the then head of ATAC, Giovanni Montemartini.

restaurant, featuring the 18th century-style columns
and water streams at left (see next photo below)

Giovanni Montemartini, 1887

Aha!  As stated in one of the Web sites:  "The Palazzo was established by Giovanni Montemartini, first councillor of public transport of the municipality of Rome and, until December 2008, it was the headquarters of the transportation company of Rome, today ATAC."  Should we trust that info?  The same Web site says the building dates from the 1800s, which seems clearly to be wrong.  Was it first Montemartini's residence?  Some evidence suggests that; other evidence that it was built as an administration building.  As the hotel's own Web site says, it was an 18th-century design, in any event.

Seeing the Servian Wall here and having seen it in other places - the McDonald's under Stazione Termini among other sites - maybe our next project is  "walking the Servian Wall" - or at least connecting the dots of the few pieces left - one of which is also next to the hotel.

described as "table fountain," water reflecting
the proximity of the Roman Diocletian baths

Dianne

The bar - one can see its appeal

Another part of the Servian Wall, this one under wraps, at the
entrance area to the hotel.

Another view of the Servian Wall, this one from outside the
hotel grounds, complete with street vendors, which are plentiful
around Termini, this one appropriately selling luggage in front
of the hotel.

Art in unlikely places - Pericle Fazzini in the Piazza dell'Independenza

Detail from Fazzini's frieze

Piazza dell'Indipendenza is a few blocks from the central train station, Termini, within the confines of Rome's Aurelian Wall, but fairly modern in its appearance.  It's primarily a large transportation piazza these days, and we've mainly scootered through it with our focus on successfully exiting the other side, but sometimes taking time to observe the supposedly Mussolini faces (they don't look like him) on one of the government buildings on the piazza (photo at end).

One day this year we stopped to look at another, what seemed to us fairly nondescript mid-century (as in mid-20th-century) building that looked like it had an interesting brass frieze on it.  And so we discovered the work of Pericle Fazzini.  The frieze depicts agrarian themes, as one can see, to honor the building which was then the offices of an agrarian agency, and still bears that name: Palazzo della Federconsorzi (short for Federazione dei Consorzi Agrari).  The building was constructed in 1952-57, and we assume the frieze dates from the 1950s as well.

The Palazzo as it looks today - offices for rent.  The Federconsorzi apparently went down in a scandalous blaze in the 1990s.
It was at its peak in the 1950s, when this was built, and when it was, apparently, privatized, but received public money (Welcome to Italy).  Information on the scandal is given in detail on the Wikopedia Italian Web site.

More detail - the title of the frieze is sometimes given as "Work in the fields."

Fazzini was a noted scuptor at the time he did this frieze.  He went on to do more monumental works, including the "Resurrection," for the Pope Paul VI Audience Hall, where Benedict XVI used to give his weekly audiences.  That work shows Christ arising from a nuclear crater in the Gardens of Gethsemane.  Monumental it is.

Fazzini to us is another "find," among "modern" artists in Rome.  Like our discovery of Amleto Cataldi's sculptures in the weeds of the Olympic Village, we discovered Fazzini's piece by accident, accidental discovery being one of the great joys of Rome.  Fazzini died in 1987, known by then as a "Vatican sculptor."  The Peggy Guggenheim Museum Web site has a nice biography of him.

Dianne

Pope Benedict XVI with Fazzini's work behind him.

Crowd-sourcing Pope John Paul II's statue in Rome

2011 statue

2011.  "It looks like a phone booth from this
angle," says Bill.  "Maybe a direct line
to the Pope."

This is the John Paul II statue in front of Stazione Termini (the main Rome train station) as it was unveiled, and as we saw it, in 2011.  Looked okay to us.  Yes, modernized; yes, stylized.  But decent modern sculpture, imho.  We certainly wouldn't consider it for our Worst Public Sculpture series.

But the critics - likened to ubiquitous soccer team critics in a NYT article - came out in force.  The NYT reported some called the statue a urinal.   Others a "bomb"and a "sin." (Imagine if it had gotten attacked on Facebook!)

close up of the Pope's head on the statue:
before the remake

Most of the criticisms focused on the head: not smiling enough, no neck, some said. Not representative of the beloved Pope, who is to be canonized Sunday, April 27 (2014).  We were in the crowds in 2005 in the days after he died - those crowds that shouted "Santo Subito!" "Saint Now!"

Crowds in Circo Massimo for John Paul II funeral services in 2005

2012, modifications in progress

We scootered by the statue in 2012 - now there's a real urinal, or port-a-potty, nearby, and the statue was so covered we couldn't even peak inside.  The powers that be, or the sculptor, weren't going to let the crowd come in on this one.

2013 - not much different, in our opinion

2013

smiley face - 2013

He is viewed now as smiling more, and with a bit more of a neck. His arm is straightened, they say, the greenish hue evened out, and the statue has its own pedestal.

The sculptor, Oliviero Rainaldi, said he has simply "corrected some mistakes." That the statue now more closely resembles his original vision.  Yeah, that and a bunch of soccer critics formed into a committee by the then right-wing mayor no doubt made him see these "mistakes" more clearly.

The critics seem appeased, but we don't see much difference.  (Bill: much improved cape, gently parting rather than squared off.)  And, the idea of crowd-sourcing a sculpture somehow rubs us the wrong way.



In any event, you can stop by and see for yourself, when your train comes in.



Dianne
PS - for more on preserving Popes, saints and their bodies, see Theresa Potenza's marvelous piece in the New York Post (and titled, per that paper's style), "Vatican's secret, and deadly, project to mummify saints."



2013