Art & Architecture: Those Old Familiar Places
by Peter G. Miller
It was in 179 B.C. when Emilio Lepidus and Fulvius Noblius decided the world needed a better place to meet and greet, so they built the basilica Emilia (Aemelia) in the center of Rome, a structure in use for more than six centuries. While the basilica Emilia is long-gone, you can still see where rows of columns stood in the forum area of Rome until the fifth century when the building was destroyed by fire. The basilica Emilia might be just another ruin were it not for the fact that its architectural descendants can now be found throughout much of the world. The term "basilica," says the Oxford English Dictionary has its roots in both Latin (for "royal palace") and from the Greek term "basilikos" or "royal." The basilica Emilia was what we would today call a "multi-purpose" building. The idea was to use a single edifice for court proceedings in the morning and then convert the building for use as a covered marketplace later in the day. The rectangular structure had a large central court or "nave" with a high ceiling held up by large columns and then outer rows of columns which created covered "aisles." As Christianity was first established, it was necessary for this new faith to have a distinctive architecture for its buildings, something different from the Roman structures and Jewish synagogues of the time. (Jewish envoys first came to Rome in 161 BC and Jewish synagogues were subsequently built in the city. Today the main synagogue in Rome is a massive structure overlooking the Tiber with a square sanctuary and great dome, a century-old building which includes a museum tracing the history of Jews in Italy for more than 2,000 years. This is the synagogue Pope John Paul II famously visited and addressed in April 1986.) Basilicas represented a known and usable architecture, one easily adopted for religious purposes. With the new churches, the long central nave remained but at one end was now the narthax (entry vestibule) while at the other were the transept and apse, areas where services are conducted. Above the sanctuary one could often find a dome -- an arch turned 360 degrees. While arches, columns and domes may seem simple, they can be enlarged to enormous size even without steel beams and modern construction technology. The Pantheon -- completed in its current form by Hadrian in 118 AD, is bigger than the much-later domes at St. Peter's in the Vatican, St. Paul's in London and the U.S. Capitol. And the great vaults of the 4th century basilica of Maxentius and Constantine -- which still stand in the Roman forum -- influenced Bramante and his plans for the "new" St. Peter's, the structure we see today that was begun some 500 years ago. "Bramante," says the Catholic Encyclopedia, "wished to pile the Pantheon upon the Constantinian basilica, so that a mighty dome would rise upon a building in the form of a Greek cross." The huge buildings erected by the Romans were possible not only because they held a growing body of engineering skills, but also because they made a key discovery: waterproof concrete. "Near Vesuvius and elsewhere in Italy were deposits of a sandy volcanic ash which, when added to lime mortar, made a cement that dried out to a rock-like hardness and even hardened under water," says L. Sprague De Camp, author of The Ancient Engineers. Add sand and gravel to cement and you have concrete. "Here for the first time was a completely satisfactory waterproof concrete," says De Camp, "which formed a synthetic rock as hard as most natural rocks. In fact, samples of Roman concrete that have come down to modern times in buildings, conduits and the like are harder than many natural rocks would be after so many centuries of exposure." It is said that Italy contains 60 percent of the world's art treasures, a percentage which may be understated. Even isolated mountain villages and small churches are routinely filled with art that would be welcomed by the greatest museums. As one example, at the Santa Maria del Popolo church (on the Piazza del Popolo) you can find two Caravaggio paintings in a small nave. Here is art worth tens of millions of dollars -- conservatively -- that anyone can walk in and view. But perhaps the best example of hidden art and architecture in Rome itself is the Basilica of Saint Mary and the Angels of the Martyrs. Located near Republic Plaza, the entrance to this church appears to be little more than a bland stone wall with no hint of what awaits inside. Renovated in the 1500s, this architectural effort by Michelangelo is located within a portion of what used to be the thermal baths established by Diocletian in the third century AD, a structure so huge that in Roman times it held 3,000 bathers at once. Today the massive columns inside the building rise toward vaulted ceilings and great skylights 10 stories above a vast marble floor illuminate the entire interior. The art, the architecture, the size, the history, the columns, the acres of polished floor and the natural light combine to create one of the most remarkable interior spaces imaginable. Until you get to the Pantheon. It's difficult to believe that such a structure has stood for nearly 2,000 years. The interior is vast, unobstructed and dwarfed by a dome that rises more than 140 feet. Adding to the sense of space, at the top of the dome is a huge oculus -- a circular opening that allows sunlight to bathe the great floor below (There are little rectangular openings in the floor to remove rain). Today, as you look around your community you can no doubt see much that would have been intrinsically familiar to Emilio Lepidus and Fulvius Noblius. And why not -- people are people, a dome is a dome and the world still has a need for great art and architecture. | 
