Our First Art History Tour

We went to Trajan's market. There is a glass door to enter the museum part of the ruins. I really loved the integration of ancient decayed architecture with modern materials. The inside of this room was not insulated at all around the edges of the glass, so it still had the illusion of being outside.

There were beautiful views...

Trajan's market (essentially a mega plex) actually functioned as a retaining wall in addition to being a smelly little marketplace. The place was beautiful though. I wish I had more time to sketch. Trajan had a huge chunk of space cut out of the hill in order to make room for his column and other buildings, so the structure held back the dirt. Amazingly it only took 5 years. It is mind-blowing to imagine all of that being done by hand. Trajan wanted to show how prominent he was next architecture built under Caesar. A fun and random fact: The first bible was translated in Armenian!

We also went to the Pantheon today. I already posted about that, so here is a picture of an Egyptian obelisk right in front of the Pantheon that the Romans took out of Egypt. Molto bellissimo! 

The Ara Pacis

Means "Altar for peace."It was meant to celebrate the peace established in the Roman Empire after the victories of Augustus. The altar is slowly being put back together. Pieces have been found all the way in Turkey. Many of its white marble pieces have been burned in order to make concrete, or just used for  materials (This is what happened to most stone structures unfortunately).

I also got to hear our architect chief critic's snarky comments about the design and layout of the modern building that housed the piece... "I'm like, dude, no one cares where the electrical box is placed. There is a 2,000 year old altar in front of us..."

"Thien's Dinner  Creation."