Beginning with the Porta del Popolo, and following in the direction of the sun, I have taken you in succession out of the different gates; but we will now set out by the gate of St. Sebastian, and return by that of San Giovanni, which would precede it in regular order. Before arriving at the gate, we meet with three objects deserving notice, which though within the walls, were too distantly situated to be included in our former walks. The first of these is the great ruin of the Baths of Caracalla. The general plan of the Roman thermæ seems to have been that of a large, rectangular, central building, placed in a spacious enclosure, surrounded by smaller edifices, and on one side of this court there was a large open theatre, or rather cavea. This disposition may be traced in the three which exist the most perfectly; of the others we have not sufficient materials to decide whether it was adopted or not; and only conclude it to have been so from analogy. It is very conspicuous in the Baths of Caracalla, only the cavea, instead of being semicircular, is in the form of half a stadium, or circus. The ruins of these baths are very considerable, and are impressive by their vast square mass; and internally, the immense piles of brick and rubble give it a solemnity of character with which the deep, still blue of an Italian sky is in perfect harmony, though the tints of the ruin are of rich and glowing colours. However often one may visit them, it is always with repeated pleasure that we ramble among their massive constructions. The great central chamber seems, like the great hall still remaining in the baths of Dioclesian, to have been covered with groined arches. It was probably the first instance of groined arches covering a space of any considerable extent, and as there can be no doubt that so striking a novelty would be admired and repeated, we are not surprised at finding it in all the later thermæ. It is true that Palladio introduces this disposition in his plans of all the baths, but he appears in this, as in some other instances, to have supplied the deficiencies of one, by adapting to it the parts of another, without sufficient authority. The great central building was composed internally of two large colonnaded courts, one at each end, and vast halls, and a multitude of smaller chambers between, and on each side of them; on each side of the outer circuit of buildings, there seem to have been other edifices disposed circularly, and an octagonal room, which has the appearance of a hall of entrance, occurred at each end. In one of these the celebrated Toro Farnese is said to have been found, but I believe the fact is doubtful. We find in the part which now remains horizontal lines, which probably mark the situations of the marble cornices, and many other indications of the enrichments which have been taken away: we trace also pipes in the wall in various places, some apparently intended to take off the smoke, while others were to introduce water.
The Conte di Velo has been at the expense of excavating a considerable part of these baths. Many fragments were found of sculpture and of architecture, and an immense quantity of pieces of different coloured marbles. The white marble of the architecture was Pentelic. At the depth of six or eight feet, the ancient mosaic pavement was discovered, and even below this are several curious arrangements of walls and conduits which I do not comprehend. At the exhibition in the French academy, there were some beautiful drawings of all the discoveries here made, with a complete restoration of the edifice; in some parts very happy; in others very doubtful. The artist has carefully commemorated some comparatively trifling excavations made by the French academy, and does not even mention the name of the Conte di Velo, by whose means he has been enabled to give interest to his drawings.
The ancient Romans did not permit their dead to be buried within the city, or if there are a few exceptions, they were granted with a very sparing hand, and the tombs of the Campus Martius are obliterated, except a few great ones, by the modern city. The sepulchre of the Scipios is without the ancient walls, in an opposite direction, but within those of Aurelian. An inscription was dug up here so long ago as 1616, but the antiquaries having fixed upon a building considerably farther on, as the tomb of the Scipios, were unanimous in their opinion that it must be a forgery, and it was not till 1780, that the proprietor of the Vigna, working to enlarge his cellar, dug into the ancient excavation, and found the remarkable sarcophagus now in the Vatican, and many other inscribed tablets, which put the matter out of all doubt. It appears originally to have been a quarry of pozzolana, or more probably of tufo, before it was appropriated as a tomb. The ancient entrance is formed by an arch of peperino, adorned with half columns, and this is nearly all the masonry of an early date. Some additions in brick and tufo, seem to have been made afterwards; and still later constructions, of a style of masonry corresponding with that of the circus of Caracalla, were carried through it, or along one side of it. The falling in of the earth had not only covered, but had completely obliterated all traces of the ancient entrance; and a small casino for the vine-dresser, one of those little things so often constructed on the ancient tombs, still farther tended to conceal from the observer any object of interest; a few pieces of old rubble-work are too frequent about the Campagna to excite attention.
Just before passing the walls, we find the Arch of Claudius Drusus, built by the senate in 745 A. U. C., eight years before the Christian era, and ornamented, as is said, with trophies of German victories. Over the arch, on the face towards the city, one may perceive indications of a frieze and architrave, and the bed moulding of the cornice, but none of the corona: there are also remains of a small pediment, hardly extending across the opening of the arch. All this belongs to the original edifice, and is easily distinguished from the aqueduct of Caracalla carried over it; to execute which, it appears to have been necessary to cut down the work internally, nearly as low as to the key-stone of the arch. On the external face are two marble columns of the Composite order. The architrave of these remains, but nothing above it, and all the rest of the edifice has been stripped of the marble covering with which it was once coated.
I have already described to you the gate of St. Sebastian. Immediately after passing it, you enter a vineyard on the right, to see, as you are told, the Sepolcro di Marte; it is of neat brickwork; the bricks on the external facings being cut to a sharp edge, as in some other buildings which I shall describe to you: internally, we find a simple waggon-headed vault, with slight caissoons in stucco, but no other ornament; and niches for cinerary urns. After this are other fragments, all of sepulchres, for we are now on or near the Appian way. Names have been given, but without authority, and the ruins are mostly mere masses of rubble, to which no form can be assigned. Some however are larger, and contain vaulted chambers, others are domed. Indeed the form, the extent, and the materials of the more perfect remains all vary, but it would be tedious to enumerate them. On the left-hand side of the road, opposite to one of these, which is of considerable comparative importance, and formerly attributed to the Scipios, is the little church of Domine quo vadis, so called because St. Peter, having escaped from prison at Rome, met here our Saviour bearing his cross; and in these words, for he preferred Latin to Hebrew, Syriac, or Greek, asked him where he was going. Our Saviour replied that he was going to be crucified a second time. St. Peter it appears understood the hint, and returned to submit to the martyrdom required of him. This is not to be found in the Acts of the Apostles, but is not the less firmly believed on that account; and moreover you are shown the impression of our Saviour’s foot in the stone on which he stood. It was politic, at least, to weave all these little circumstances into the history of St. Peter; they became united to all the earliest impressions of the Romans, and are easily connected with the idea of St. Peter having been bishop of Rome, and of the consequent superior dignity and authority of that church.
There is nothing to claim your attention in the architecture of the Church of St. Sebastian; but in a subterraneous chapel is a beautiful bust of the saint, by Bernini, full of expression; and here also is the entrance to the most extensive catacombs about Rome. They consist of crooked winding passages in tufo and pozzolana, in three stories, which as the levels are not always exactly preserved, are easily made into seven by those who wish to increase the appearance of the marvellous. The niches for the bodies are mere square recesses, about the length of a human body, and just big enough to receive it; but there are some larger ones forming an arch, at the bottom of which the body was placed: wherever these larger arched niches are found, there is a little apartment, whose rude sides have been coated with stucco. I will not however venture to say that there are no stuccoed rooms without niches, but the two circumstances generally go together. They pretend to have found here, the bodies of 174,000 martyrs. A collection of itself sufficient to stock all Europe with relicks.
A little beyond this is the Spoliarium, or Mutatorium; or it is a temple, according to Palladio, or anything else you please. It has been generally supposed to have supplied some purpose dependent on the circus of Caracalla, with which it has however no connexion. It consists of a round edifice inclosed in a court. The central building is formed by a circular wall, with an octagonal pier in the middle supporting a vault; the whole forming doubtless the basement of a large domed hall above, which no longer exists. The work is of rubble, which within the vault is faced with bricks, laid regularly, but with a great deal of mortar; the vault is altogether of rubble. There are niches in the middle pier, and its octagonal form seems not essential, since the vault rises upon a circle described within it. The surrounding wall of the court is built of alternate layers of brick and stone, or rather of tufo, for it hardly deserves the name of stone. Within it, are remains of piers formed of brick only, and there are some vestiges of the vaulting with which the intervening space was covered, forming a continued arcade round three sides of the court, or perhaps all four, but that towards the road is quite destroyed. Close on the outside of this court is a sepulchre, long attributed to the Servilian family, but as the true burying-place of that family has been since found at a considerable distance, and determined by inscriptions, this remains without a name. It is of a square form without and within, and is covered, not with a proper vault, but pyramidally, on the principle of the dos d’âne. There are, however, rough arches to some of the openings; a passage is carried all round the building in the thickness of the walls. The whole construction is certainly very singular, and appears to be of high antiquity, but I cannot pretend to assign a probable date.
From these remains we pass to the Circus of Caracalla, not that it was built by that emperor, for it is probably of a much later period, but it was known from medals that Caracalla erected a circus, and the antiquaries could not tell where to find it, while here they had a circus without a name. Whoever built it, it is a very interesting ruin, because it exhibits more perfectly than any other, the arrangement of the ancient circus. The surrounding walls are constructed like those of the court of the mutatorium, with alternate layers of brick and small stones; the continued vault which supported the seats, is of rubble, but with large earthen vases in the upper part, to lighten the work. The line of Carceres which forms the square end, if I may use the word square so loosely, is oblique in position with respect to the side walls, and curved in itself, in order to put all the chariots upon an equality at starting; and the spina for a similar reason is neither along the middle of the arena, nor exactly parallel to one of its sides, but so disposed that the passage gets narrower through its whole progress. At the semicircular end is the Porta Triumphalis,[6] through which the victor left the circus. The obelisk which now embellishes the Piazza Navona, once decorated the spine of this place.
Overlooking this circus, are various ruins, of which we may reckon five distinct fragments, each at some distance from the other; and a long terrace, supported in part upon vaults, to one of which you still find an entrance. The stucco is still remaining, and we observe painted lines drawn very neatly and correctly round panels, of which the ornaments in the middle have been taken away: from what remains, we may conclude that the whole was well finished. Some of these fragments of edifices have been supposed to belong to the temple of Honour and Virtue, built by Marcellus, after the conquest of Sicily, in the year of Rome 544; for this, however, there is not the shadow of proof, and the style of construction, of rubble faced with brick, is similar to that of imperial times.
We will now make a diversion from the road, in order to visit some antiquities which occupy a retired situation to the left, in or near the little valley called the Caffarelli. The first we meet with, just on the brow of the hill, is the little edifice called the Temple of the Tempest. There are some small buildings about Rome, covered with the sort of vault which the French call dos d’âne, but I do not know that we have any correspondent English term. The rubble and mortar of which it is composed, seem to have been laid on planks rising in a triangular form, and to sustain themselves when these are removed, entirely by the cement. This little building is one of them. It is said to have been erected A. U. C. 547, (before C. 206.) by P. C. Scipio, in consequence of a vow which he made when overtaken by a storm in returning from Spain; and I have observed two tombs, one of which I have just described to you, the roof of which is constructed on the same principle, in the form of the frustum of a pyramid; both very much dilapidated. I am inclined to attribute to all three a high antiquity, probably as high as that assigned by tradition to the temple of the Tempest; but of this building I must observe, that only a small part can by any possibility boast a claim to the name: additions have been made at different times. The oldest part is formed of rubble-work, of fragments of lava; the later (and these walls are built close against the others) of a rubble-work of tufo, faced with reticulated work, and since that, a dwellinghouse has been erected on the top, which is now in ruins. At a little distance is a building called the Temple of Bacchus, or by Uggeri, and some others, the Temple of Honour and Virtue. Four Corinthian columns of pretty good design and workmanship form the front, but they are spaced wide apart, and surmounted by a miserable architrave. Above this is what may be considered as an enormous frieze, which, as well as the cornice, is of brick. On one side is a fragment of a wall of alternate brick and tufo, not close against the wall of the temple, or parallel to it. The walls of the present building are all brick, at least as to the facing; and in converting it to a church, the spaces between the columns have been filled up with an ill-built wall of brick, and fragments of stone. The original brickwork is neat and good, but the bricks are not cut to a sharp edge, as they are in some other examples. Internally, a range of stones projecting from the walls, forms a series of corbels supporting flat arches of brick: above every alternate stone is a pilaster, and there were probably columns below, so that it was a room adorned with two orders of architecture. Some stucco panels remain on the vault, and along the springing there is a row of trophies in considerable relief. The columns alone belong to a building of good time, but the edifice, in its first state, is probably not much earlier than Constantine, and perhaps later: the alterations and conversion into a church are not recorded; we only see the fact. Something was done in 1634, but I do not know what.
Below this, in the valley, is the Grotto of the nymph Egeria, a cavern, perhaps originally formed by nature in the side of the hill, but enlarged and made regular by art, and the soft rock everywhere covered with brick, and reticulated work. It appears to have been formed into a symmetrical building adorned with niches; in one of which, at the end of the grotto, is a fragment of a male statue. The supply of water is but small, but the vault and walls, covered with the beautiful Adiantum Capillus Veneris, show the general moisture of the soil.
Continuing down the valley, we meet with the Temple of Rediculus: the body of the work is of rubble, but it is faced with very neat brickwork, in which the horizontal surfaces of the bricks have been rubbed or cut away, in order to give room for the mortar, when the edges externally were almost in contact, as in the tomb called the sepulchre of Mars, and in some others near the mutatorium, which I have not particularly mentioned. I did not observe that any of the bricks were broken in consequence of this process, an effect which I think would certainly follow if a modern architect were to direct such a mode of proceeding. It has Corinthian pilasters at the back, which is the most conspicuous part, the foliage of whose capitals is also cut in brick. On one side are portions of two octagonal columns recessed in the wall, while the other side is plain. It has windows; and many of the ornaments round them, and in the cornice, and also a band, ornamented with a fret, which surrounds the edifice between the pilasters, seem to have been moulded in the clay, before being burnt. There are evident traces of a portico, towards the streamlet which waters the valley, so that the whole together must have formed a complete little prostyle temple. Within, the vault which separates the basement, from what would have been on such a supposition the floor of the temple, is broken away; and in this basement, on the west side, or end, is a row of small arches, which some antiquaries say are not parts of the building, but have been put up to support fodder for the cattle. As, however, traces of similar arches may be observed in the construction of the wall on the south side, whose surface is destroyed, I suspect that they were for the reception of cinerary urns. Whatever was the purpose of the erection, there are several buildings of a similar disposition about Rome, and therefore probably intended for a similar object. Most of them have been supposed to be temples, but I believe all contain appearances in the basement story, (for each has a basement story) of having been used as places of sepulture after burning: yet they are not placed immediately on the great roads, as sepulchres usually were, nor is there any certain sepulchre in which this form has been adopted. This little building was probably of as correct a design, and of as finished an execution, as any of them; and by a fortunate coincidence is the best preserved.
A. B. Clayton del. from Sketches by J. Woods
Edwards. Sculp.
Temple of Rediculus.
London. Published by J & A. Arch. Cornhill March 1st. 1828
Returning to the Appian way, and ascending the ridge, along which it is carried for several miles, we arrive at the Sepulchre of Cecilia Metella, the wife of Crassus; probably of the rich Crassus, for after every allowance for individual wealth, and Roman luxury and ostentation, we are still, in spite of the inscription, at a loss to believe that such a mole should have been erected to contain the bones of one woman. The vast square basement is of rubble, formed of fragments of peperino, with large blocks of travertine built into the mass, to unite with and support the facing of travertine, which once covered the whole, but of which only these heading-blocks remain. In this part there are said to be three small chambers, (to which however I could discover no entrance) and in one of these was found the sarcophagus now in the court of the Palazzo Farnese. The circular part of the edifice rose abruptly, as far as we can judge from the remains, from this square mass, without any preparation to reconcile the change of form: this upper circular part forms a tower about 60 feet in diameter, and of which the walls are 20 feet thick at the bottom, and more higher up, since the opening diminishes upwards in a conical form. Uggeri assigns 87 French feet to the whole diameter, and only 20 feet to the circular chamber; perhaps he is right: I did not measure it. Like all other ruins of any consequence, this was converted into a fortress, or rather made part of a large castle, during the wars of the Roman barons, and was the eyry of the Gaetani family. These sons of rapine and spoil seem to have troubled themselves little about the mal aria. After leaving this monument, and the Gothic fortress in which it was afterwards included, the tombs become very frequent. The fortress occupies exactly the brow of a range of hill extending in a direct line from Albano, and evidently formed by a current of lava, and there are considerable quarries just by it, which supply Rome with paving-stones.
The most simple form of the ancient sepulchre was that of a square, or circular tower, of no great height or size, on a square basement. Fragments of white marble remain in sufficient quantity, to shew that a large proportion of the tombs must have been covered with this material, but for the most part, the existing ruins are merely indistinct masses of rubble. Some are of brick, but these are usually of greater extent, and more complicated forms, with domes and arches; and are probably of later date. These sepulchral chambers are disposed in a single line on each side of the Appian way, but a little further on, we find a great number of fragments scattered over a considerable extent, and called Roma Vecchia.
There are about Rome several buildings more or less closely resembling what I have above described under the name of the temple of Rediculus. Many of these have evident traces of a portico of four columns: one of them has two orders in height, and there are other trifling differences; but in the whole, there is a striking similarity both of design and execution. The facing is uniformly of very neat brickwork, and they are probably all nearly of the same period. There are three such at this Roma Vecchia (for there is more than one Roma Vecchia); four more near the modern road to Naples, one of which has been christened the temple of Fortuna Muliebris, and two or three, out of the Porta San Lorenzo.
Beyond Roma Vecchia we meet again with tombs, and with a farmhouse, most of the walls of which seem to be ancient. Near this there has been a magnificent pyramidal sepulchre, surrounded in its original state by arches, and probably by a colonnade. I extended my walk to an immense round mass, which has formed the basement of some spacious mausoleum; it was unfortunately locked up, nor could I find anybody in the little cottage with which it is at present crowned to give me entrance. Then leaving the Appian way, though marked still further by its line of tombs, and crossing the modern road to Albano and Naples, I found myself again among the ranges of those aqueducts, of which I have already given you some description. The Marana, or Acqua Crabra, here runs among them, conducted on the top of a small mound, and crossing in some places both lines of aqueducts. In Italy, the Roman roads do not by any means adhere to the direct straight line which characterizes them in England. Our country was a forest when these works were undertaken: Italy was highly cultivated, and divided into private estates, and this perhaps has in many cases given rise to the windings, both of the roads and aqueducts: indeed it is difficult to account for the abrupt turns of the latter on any other principle. By the sides of these aqueducts there are other ruins occupying a considerable extent, but no one of them announces any building of much importance. There are vaults, domes, and arches, and one of those great niches so common in the Roman ruins; where the whole end of a building, or much the greater part of it, was made semicircular, and covered with half a dome. In the baths, similar large niches frequently stand quite insulated, but where they occur in the position above described, they seem at one time to have been considered as a decided proof that the edifice to which they belonged, was a temple, and hardly anything was acknowledged to be a temple, where enough remained to shew that no such niche had existed. It is unfortunate that we have only scattered fragments of the temples of Rome, but it seems probable that this arrangement did form in them a very usual termination. Nothing of the sort is found in any Greek temple; but though the Romans borrowed largely from the religious practices and observances of the Greeks, they must have drawn something from other sources. Their square cells (not oblong, as in the Greek buildings), their niches, their vaults, their round temples, and the windows they made in them, were perhaps derived from the Etruscans, together with many of the superstitious rites, and the haruspices, which history teaches us to have been derived from that people.
As I have already mentioned the Basilica, I shall find very little to describe out of the Porta di San Paolo. There is a place called Tre Fontane, where there are three churches, and in one of them, three springs of warm water, or rather I believe, one spring with three openings. The tradition of the place is, that St. Paul was here beheaded; that where his head fell, a warm spring burst out; that it bounded; and where it fell a second time, another spring arose, but not so warm as the first; it bounded again; and produced a third spring, which was nearly cold. There is however so little difference, that I persuaded an English gentleman who was with me that the one said to be the warmest was the coldest. How I hate these ridiculous additions to a story not in itself improbable! The great church is long and low, with some pointed vaulting. That containing the spring is handsome internally, but the best is an octagonal church by Vignola, which rises in a very fine pyramidal form.
I have already given you something of the western bank of the Tiber in my first walk, where I returned by Monte Mario and the Valle d’Inferno. The only thing remaining on this side is the Villa Pamfili, which is one of the largest about Rome; that is, not the house, but the grounds and gardens. On the road are the remains of an ancient aqueduct, which are frequently brought in to support the modern Acqua Paolina. What in English we should call the villa, but which is here known by the name of casino, can hardly be called handsome, and yet it pleases, and the terraces and the flat garden below, cut partly into the hill, the fragments of architecture, the fountains, the groves of towering stone pines, and the views in both directions, make it a place to which you willingly return again and again. The situation of the house is not well chosen. The pride of the artist was to counteract nature, not to follow her, and gently bring her into his service; but the situation of the grounds is very fine. Though high, it has a terrible reputation for mal aria. To the botanist it has another interest, as being the station of several rare plants.
It is among the attractions of Rome, that the Studii or workshops of the artists, and especially of the sculptors, are so easily accessible. That of Canova is announced by the fragments of sculpture which are about it, and built up in the walls externally. The great excellence of this admirable artist lies in female figures, and in those of very young men, with a character rather of grace, than of strength. Hence his Cupid and Psyche; Venus and Adonis; the Graces; his Venus; Hebe; Magdalene; and others of this sort, attract universal admiration. Canova is not a mere sculptor, he also paints well, and is in all respects a most liberal man; witness the busts of the great men of Italy put up by him at the Pantheon. Liberal not only in giving what must cost him a considerable sum, but still more so, in permitting the young men who perform these busts under his inspection and direction, to affix their names as artists. He is about to build a church in his native town. The body of the building is to be like that of the Pantheon, while the portico will be imitated from the Parthenon. I asked his architect how much it would cost, he replied that he could not pretend to say, as in the country where it was to be erected, the stone is probably cheap, and a considerable portion of the labour, particularly in the carriage of materials, would be done gratis by the peasantry, who would consider it meritorious to forward so good a work; but that such a building could hardly be erected in Rome for less than 240,000 scudi.
Thorwaldson is celebrated for the grouping of his bas-reliefs, and for his busts, particularly of the male figures, which are admirable. The restoration of the marbles found at Egina is committed to his care, and has required no small attention and judgment to determine the places of the smaller fragments, but there are a great many still remaining, which cannot be connected together. The restorations are so perfect, that it seems to me impossible to distinguish the old work from the new, but I have already given you my sentiments on this subject. What are capable of restoration consist of seventeen statues, and the body and the limbs frequently exhibit very fine sculpture, but the faces are all alike, with a sort of smirk on each; they are devoid both of individual character, and of the expression of passion. Some are draped, others naked, and on some of the draped ones we may trace an appearance of scales, when exposed in certain positions to the light. The group at the front of the temple represented a combat, with a Minerva standing between them, entirely unconcerned at what is going on on each side of her. This latter is of a very ancient style, almost Egyptian. It appears, that on the immediate apex of the pediment, a small ornament was placed with a figure on each side, still small, but taller than the ornament in the middle, and there are fragments of two griffins, supposed to have stood on the angles of the pediment, the heads being turned from the centre of the building, so that in both cases the disposition of the ornaments contradicts the inclination of the architectural parts, instead of following it, as has been usually practised in modern times.
It is worth while, among the scattered objects of curiosity, to visit the fragments dug up at Veii, belonging to a Sig. Georgi, and now to be disposed of.[7] There is a remarkably fine sitting statue of Tiberius, and an erect one, said to be of Germanicus, with many busts, but nothing later than Nero. It is evident that these fragments have nothing to do with the ancient Veii. The inscriptions prove the existence of a later city of that name, which appears to have occupied a small part of the former site. No regular plan of excavation has been pursued, but the marbles were found in holes dug here and there. Bronze figures and medals were also discovered, but many of these are said to have been stolen.