Roman constructions in concrete were both urban and public, serving as primary expressions of Roman power and affiliation with the State. Hydraulic-setting cement was an attractive ceramic medium for imperial buildings. It could be processed at ambient temperature from readily available raw ingredients, and cast into… Expand. Save to Library Save. Create Alert Alert. Share This Paper. Background Citations. Citation Type. Has PDF. Roman Architectural Revolution.
Look at other dictionaries: Roman concrete — The Pantheon in Rome, Italy, is an example of Roman concrete construction.
Dictionaries export , created on PHP,. Mark and share Search through all dictionaries Translate… Search Internet. The decision of Augustus was to get this more expensive stone, bring it from Tivoli, and use it for this structure. Blocks of stone, ashlar blocks of stone, as you can see here, and interspersing, among the arcades, columns; columns that, as were pointed out before, have no structural purpose whatsoever; columns that serve only as decoration, and the fact that they were decoration is apparent in the fact that they have varied the orders here.
We see the Doric order used for the first story and the Ionic order used for the second story, and we think there may have been a third story; today what you see up there is part of the later construction. Because that is exactly the scheme that we see on the later Colosseum: Doric, Ionic and alternately Corinthian. View of the barrel-vaulted, annular corridor on the ground level of the Theater of Marcellus in Rome. Ulrich, Creative Commons.
So these columns have no structural purpose whatsoever; purely decorative. If you go into the building you will see the corridors of the Theater of Marcellus. You will see what first looks like a barrel vault, done out of concrete construction, resting on stone, on travertine piers. But you see that that barrel vault curves. A curving barrel vault is technically called an annular vault.
You see an annular vault here, or a diagram of an annular vault here. We sometimes refer to it as a ring vault, because of its shape. So you see those annular vaults used in the Theater of Marcellus.
These are the same vaults that will be used ultimately in the Colosseum. A quick view of a typical Roman theater, the Theater of Marcellus in Rome, and a typical Greek theater. This is the famous Theater at Epidaurus, of the mid-fourth century B. And I show you — just wanted to point out the main differences. They look superficially alike in that both of them have an orchestra, they have an area of seats, they have a stage building, but there are some important differences.
Both of them have seats, the cavea. Here you can see these wedge-shaped sections of seats called the cuneus , that both Greek theaters and also Roman theaters had. Both of them have stage buildings, although the stage building is more prominent in the Roman context. The Romans build theirs on hills made out of concrete — not always, there are some exceptions to that.
We do have some Roman theaters built on hills, when the hill happened to be in a good location and particularly beautifully sited, but for the most part Romans build them on their own concrete construction. His name was Victor Emmanuel I. It was put up in , and you see it here, again, a major landmark in the city. This is a Google Earth image once again. But the reason I show it to you in this context today is that it is in a sense terraced on the slope of the Capitoline Hill.
Staircases leading to terraces, leading to other terraces, leading to the top of the building, decorated with statuary. It has the Tomb of the Italian Unknown Soldier here, with guards and an eternal flame and all of those things. The views of Rome from there are among the most spectacular that one can see in the city. But nonetheless some of the most spectacular views you can see of the city.
But I show it to you in this context because of all of this terracing up a hill. The idea for this kind of thing goes way back to the second century B. This is, without any question, the masterpiece of Roman concrete architecture, concrete construction, sanctuary design, in the second and first centuries B. For a long time—this is, by the way, the Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia, at a town called Palestrina. The date is very controversial.
There are many who long associated it with the Roman general Sulla, and said that it dated to 80 B. C, and if it dates to the second century B. I taught it as a Sullan building for quite awhile. It is an incredible—it is part of an incredible hill town.
Just like Cori, the city of Palestrina is a beautiful hill town. You can see it here with all the wonderful red roofs of the town that tie the design of the town together. The culminating monument of that town is still the Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia. Once again the Romans have found a spectacular locale for this sanctuary cum theater cum shopping mall, mecca for Romans of its day, on this hillside.
Once again they have in fact taken over the entire hillside. It is pretty well preserved today. The Temple of Fortuna herself, which was at the apex and was located probably in what may have been a kind of mountain alcove, at that particular time, was transformed in the seventeenth century, by the famous Barberini family—famous Italian family; popes came from that family and so on—transformed into—they were very smart too—transformed into a nice little palace that they could go and stay in when they felt like it.
A small palace but one that takes the exact shape of that uppermost part of the sanctuary. But you can see it actually here. You can go to Palestrina and see it on Google Earth. These are the various tiers, with the palace at the uppermost part. You can see the entranceway was down here, a small arched entranceway. But you really needed to go up the ramps. You could go up on either side. So we see this composite, just like we saw at the Tabularium, this combination of ramps and staircases to make your way up; varied experiences, but at the same time a pre-determined path.
Because while you had some choice when you first arrived, you could go up the ramp on either left and right—and you can see it was a covered ramp in antiquity—but when you got here you had one choice, you had to go up the stairway, to this level, and then there were some shops here you could explore. But then if you wanted to go up to the next level, you had to go back to the central stairway, up to this level, back to the central stairway, and then to the stairway in the shape of a theater at the uppermost part.
So again, experience is stressed, your experience of the building was stressed, but at the same time your path was determined by the Roman designer. This is another view of the same, where we can see the entranceway, the ramps, the staircase leading you from one to the other; the uppermost staircase. Here you can well see the theatrical — the way in which the theater, the semi-circular theater is used both as an attractive entrance stairway to the structure, but at the same time as a place where performances could actually take place.
You see several hemicycles here, these curved areas. The columns follow that curve. You see that hemicycle at the very top, and then at the apex of the structure the shrine of Fortuna herself, a small round shrine.
How did the Romans achieve this? They created, as you can see here, a series—or they converted the hillside into a series of man-made terraces. They built those terraces up, in some instances, by barrel vaults. You can see the series of concrete barrel vaults here, as they have built some elements up along the way.
And the ultimate result was what you see here — the same sort of thing we saw before, the ramps, the staircase, the hemicycles with columns supporting a curved wall, a series of shops, the spectacular theater-like staircase, the curved hemicycle at the uppermost part, and then peaking up at the top the Temple of Fortuna herself.
A forest of Doric columns holds up a sloped roof, which stands over the building where the cult statue of the goddess resides. It's made of hewn blocks, quarried on Mount Pentelikon, laboriously transported to the acropolis and clamped together. Now consider the Pantheon: although it appears similar from the front with its porch of columns supporting a sloping roof, this porch is attached to a massive cylindrical building, covered by a breathtaking coffered dome.
Through the circular opening at the dome's apex, sunlight beams in, revealing the immense volume contained by the structure. Instead of a dark inner sanctum, we enter an expansive, ethereal space. This is the miracle of concrete. UH Architecture student admiring the Pantheon in Rome. Photo by Richard Armstrong.
From the second century BC through the second century AD, the ancient world went through what's been called the Concrete Revolution. The Romans' dynamic civilization required ever larger and sturdier structures, and they excelled in the use of concrete to make buildings that would have been unthinkable before their time.
Roman concrete isn't the runny stuff you see poured for sidewalks today.
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