Rome's newest park and museum

Hey everybody this is Darius Aria and today I'm really excited because I'm going to be able to share with you a grand reopening of a museum. It's on the Kylian Hill and it also features an enormous archaeological park which has hundreds and hundreds of artifacts from Republican and Imperial Rome. So we will explore this park but I'm also going to take you inside the Antiquarium. What does it feature? The Forma Urbis. This is the world-famous marble plan depicting Imperial Rome at the time of the Emperor Septimius Severus. So let's explore these two incredible sites. The assembly of the pieces is is breathtaking just staggering in terms of the amount of material they have here and they have them arranged by the various different materials. So is it an architectural feature? Is it a sarcophagus? Is it public dedication? Is it you know a large piece of architecture? And it's just it's just the sheer volume of it is really really impressive and it's just really fun to come and explore because there are just so many inscriptions that are legible. There are so many stories that are told here and actually coming down to the center what I really like are these three kipi. So a kipis is a marker and a kipis is designating an area. You do this here. This happened here. Well these are the kipi of Rome that indicate the extent of that magical boundary line that protected Rome. The first one is created by Romulus circumscribed around the Palatine Hill of course as Rome was successful certain generals and then emperors said I have the right to extend the pomerium. Here are three. This one is by Claudius. Then we have this one by Vespasian and finally we have one by Hadrian. And that for you should really underline just how important this collection is. You have you know not just choice or exemplary pieces that are giving us a bit of the history of ancient Rome. We have a multitude. We have multiple versions and that underlines the depth of what you have available to you open to the public. Anyone can walk through this park when it's open daily. So it's an extremely amazing opportunity that we have to explore the Cayenne Hill, the Antiquarium and of course the former Erbis Plan. This is one of my favorite tombs in the entire collection of so much artwork, so much marble, so many tombs. But this one is the tomb of Galba and it's actually been located on the former Erbis Plan. And it was incredible because which Galba was this? Maybe the one in 144? The one in 108? We're not exactly sure but it's from the family of the Galba who is eventually going to be emperor in the year of the four emperors. You can see the fasces. You can see the the tuft material of the tomb and then you can see that travertine inscription. So I think it's a fascinating republican tomb that we have so well preserved. We don't have that many this well preserved of people that were very famous in the republic in the middle of the second century BC or so. And we know exactly where it was located on the former Erbis. It was excavated then in the confines of the Joria of Galba. So in other words he had a large warehouse in the district today we called Monte d'Estatio at the foot the base of the Aventine Hill by Mons d'Estatius. And we have the extent of that massive warehouse preserved on the former Erbis. We also have a little square incision telling us where the tomb was and that tomb was excavated and eventually brought here and now on display in this beautiful park on the Chilean hill at the foot of the terrace for the temple of Claudius in the shadow of the Colosseum. When you're coming into this archaeological park of the Antiquarium of the Caelio you're not just getting archaeological remains gathered here, tombstones, statue bases, and so forth. You're getting an archaeological site. So this wall right here in particular, look at the base of it. You can see conglomerate concrete poured in layers, little celche pieces. So this is actually taken from the Via Appia area and poured into as aggregate for the concrete. We're looking at none other than the base of a large series of walls that was sustaining a gigantic terrace on top of which was placed the temple of Claudius. So we're actually getting a little bit, a little taste, a little tease of what was really a magnificent temple complex dedicated to Claudius the god. And then of course it took over a huge portion of the Chilean hill. So you do get a connection to the archaeological ruins on the Chilean hill always then facing toward the Colosseum over there. Now let's jump inside the new museum space which is called the Museum of the Former Urbis. We're going to discuss and learn what the former urbis actually was. In this new space we have the remains of an ancient marble plan of the city inserted into the floor surrounded by the Noli plan which dates to 1748 and it depicts the same extent of the ancient city 3,300 acres. Now here we have a depiction of the wall where the original former urbis was attached and here we see it within the context of its original location inside the Forum of Peace which was built by Vespasian but rebuilt by the emperor Septimius Severus. That's the time period in which we date the former urbis. Maybe there was an earlier one. Most probably there was. Here is a reconstruction of the Forum of Peace and here is a reconstruction of the hall where the actual former urbis was on display. We want to think of it as a public display of the grandeur of Rome how big that city was. Of course there would have been documents and paper this was an accurate plan and it occupies 150 slabs of marble originally on the wall 42 by 59 feet. It was enormous it was legible and many of the great monuments were actually labeled. Here's a schematic that shows you those actual individual slabs of Proconnesian marble that were once affixed with metal clamps. Now they've fallen down over time and 10 percent were recovered. Where did the majority of the panels of marble go? Well they were burnt down for lime but the discovery of this marble plan was something fantastic and it's in a scale of 1 to 240. Only 10 percent still remains on the 700 fragments that have been gathered together. Only 200 have been labeled and identified and we'll see then here in the museum those identifiable fragments have now been inserted into a copy of the Noli plan that you can walk over and get a really good sense of those individual fragments. So let's look down at some of these incredible details now available to us. You can see it much better than you could in antiquity. Here is a fragment from the Aventine hill and the highlight is a temple of Diana and a temple of Minerva. These haven't even been excavated yet they've never been revealed yet with excavations of the modern era. Here we have the porticos of the theater of Pompey culminating with Largo of Argentina. Here is temple A, round temple B, and a portion of temple C. You can see a video on that archaeological site at Ancient Rome Live. Here is the remains of the theater of Marcellus next to the Circus Flaminius, nicely labeled, and of course even the portico of Octavia is labeled. We see it today still standing that very porticus of Octavia entrance. So this is something really to be excited about. And of course we see the amphitheater of the Flavians, the Colosseum, and next to it, so well preserved, the Ludus Magnus. This is where Maximus was locked up in the movie Gladiator. Now here we have this fragment that shows us it's in entirety. We go to the archaeological site today, it's only partially excavated. But the precision of the former herbus fragment is so great that we know what still lies beneath, still waiting to be excavated. There are so many things that you can see when you come to Rome. You've got the Colosseum just down the street here, you've got the Forum, the Palatine Hill, the Circus Maximus. Why are you going to come here? Well one of the reasons why you're going to come here is because it's free and it's pleasant, it's pleasing. You're away from all the traffic, you're away from the massive tourism. What do you get to experience? I'm looking around here and I'm seeing incredible artifacts from Republican and Imperial Rome. So you have great examples of the colored marbles and stones of Imperial Rome, large blocks of porphyry, unfinished columns. You've got a whole row of kipi, the tombstones of soldiers. You've got pomerium boundary markers of the city. You've great architectural features from public monuments. You've got incredible marble coffered ceilings, a rarity. So as you walk around here, you're going to make new discoveries. You're going to learn a lot about Republican and Imperial Rome. We've got two pristine Republican tombs made of tuff. We know exactly where they're from. And then we have sarcophagi, then we have public inscriptions. We have a lot of reused multiple generational use of marble pieces. So it's a really great opportunity. I think when you come and explore here, it's pleasing, it's pleasant, and it gives you a new experience different from the crush of tourists over at the Colosseum. And then you're on the Kylian Hill. You can walk up the street and visit the houses underneath the church of Santissimi Giovanni and Paolo. So I think it's a great area to explore. It's a new place to familiarize yourself with you. It's just opened up. You really should put it on your list. And of course, take the stroll in the park here, but make sure you go into the Antiquarium because you will see some incredible work. The Romans were so pleased with their city. We know in antiquity, they had a map of the empire that you could see in the campus marshes first created by Agrippa. But we know definitely in the reign of Septimius Severus, you have the Forma Urbis, this grand map of the city, and it's labeled. And you can see the Colosseum, and you can see the Lutus Magnus, and you can see the Basilica Amelia, and you can see the Basilica Julia, and so forth. It is a great way to connect your knowledge or to further your knowledge of the topography and the architecture and the urban design of Imperial Rome. For a more complete study of the Forma Urbis plan, please join me over on Ancient Rome Live for a dedicated video. See you there!