Be patient It’ll be a long thread
#Rome #archaeology
One day opening of a mythical place
Only a handful of lucky visitors under the expert supervision of Dr Simona Morretta
Basilica Sotterranea di Porta Maggiore is located under the main railway line that goes to Rome Central Station Roma Termini, Nine meters under today’s road level
It was discovered by chance in 1917 during works of construction of the rails
The engineers literaly fell into it
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Discussion
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Discussion
#Rome #archaeology The Basilica is an unicum even in an amazing town as Rome is:
1) first example known of this kind of edifice in Rome
2) the construction method was by digging the structrures in the soil then filling the trenches with calcestruzzo and the digging out the earth; it was sort of an inside out architetture; very few edifices built in this way are known and no one so big
3) the stucco decoration of a very high quality represents the most conspicuous and best preserved in Rome
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#Rome #archaeology The Basilica was probably built by one Tito Statilio Tauro, a General under Augustus, around 30 Bc, as a funerary chapel and turned into a neo pitagoric place of cult by a successor; when the Statili family was persecuted by the infamous wife of Claudius and mother of Nero Agrippina that wanted to steal the land the Basilica was in, the family very likely dismantled it ( no altars or tombs or their fragments were found though the places they were attached to are visible)
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#Rome #archaeology the decoration main theme is the possibility of life after death that was a staple of the Pitagoric cult: in the apse is depicted poet Saffo in the act of hurling herself into the sea, a suicide caused by an unrequited love but under her foot a sea god is ready to catch her with a cloth
The apse was partly painted with a costly blue pigment named fratta egizia that has been scratched off the wall(and now is only dimly visible)possibly in spite of the wicked Agrippina
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#Rome #archaeology funny vignettes of everyday life though intersperse the religious scenes : tricksters and musicians and athletes and children playing
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#Rome #archaeology the restoration ( still in course) has resurfaced the brilliance of the stucco ; two naves are now completed
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