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14.6 The Markets of Trajan and The Succession of Hadrian
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Del curso dictado por Yale University
Roman Architecture
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The Mother of All Forums: Civic Architecture in Rome under Trajan
Trajan’s monumental architecture in Rome references his expansion of the Roman Empire to its furthest reaches. Highlights include the Baths of Trajan and the Forum and Markets of Trajan, built on land that engineer/architect Apollodorus of Damascus created by cutting away part of the Quirinal Hill. The complex also includes the celebrated 125-foot Column of Trajan with a spiral frieze commemorating the emperor's military victories in Dacia.
Conoce a los instructores
Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
History Of Art
Just to show you again,
the location of the Markets of Trajan in relationship to the Forum of Trajan.
While the Market,
while the Forum was the Romans imposing a rectangular plan on nature.
Remember they have to cut back the hill to make way for it.
The Markets are something quite different.
They are the Romans accepting the shape of the remaining Quirinal Hill,.
And allowing the shape of that hill to determine,
the irregular shape of the markets.
The markets, unlike the, the, the the forum that is made out of marble for
the most part as we've seen variegated marble.
The markets are made out of concrete faced with brick.
A very different material, but a material that is
absolutely appropriate when you want to cover a hillside with tiered buildings.
Looking back very much to the spot via looking back to
the Fortuna Primigenia at Palestrina.
The same idea, to chain, to turn this hill, what remained of the Quirinal Hill,
into essentially the precursor of the modern shopping mall.
You have shopping, there are 150 shops in the markets of Trajan.
the, all of these things date by the way to the same period around AD 113,
the forum and also the markets.
We see 150 shops here on a variety of levels.
This is the bottom level that is located where the exedra,
the first exedra is on the right side.
A great hemicycle with shops here a street called the Via Biberatica,
that name is on your monument list.
And then a covered bazaar up here.
All of this on different levels,
all of this done in a very innovative way, with concrete faced with brick.
You can also see here the very large windows,
a semi dome that I'll show you in detail in a moment.
These large windows indicate to us that the architects are real masters of
the concrete medium here.
Able to dematerialize the wall by putting up these very very large windows.
That's how good they were in building this at this point.
The building block here is essentially the Teberna,
not unlike what we saw in Pompeii.
This small space with a barrel vault, an attic window above, and
in this case, with, a post scheme.
Made out of travertine to mark the entrance way into the shop.
They took this individual, motif, and they, they replicated it throughout
this building, over and over and over again, offering 150 possibilities.
Here, you see a series of these in a row.
Series of these to bear.
And now, with their attic windows, with their travertine decoration with their
sidewalks, a kind of mini-city within a city.
And then over here,
the polygonal masonry of the streets, looking very much like streets in Rome.
Here is a view of the Great Hemicycle.
Down on the first story you see the shops again.
What's interesting here is in the second story you see archiweighted elements.
You can see the con, the facing with the brick facing,
although we do believe this was stuccoed over in this case.
Here pilasters, but
look very carefully you'll see these pilasters support in the center.
An arcuated pediment and then on either side these broken triangular pediments.
As if the pediment has broken been broken to
allow the the arcuated pediment to show through.
We have never seen that before.
Yes, we saw it in the paper topics, but that stuff is later.
We have not seen that up to this point chronologically in built architecture.
We have seen it in painting.
Cubiculum at the Met over here for example,
is breaking the triangular pediment to allow something else to show through.
This is the beginning of this experimentation that ultimately leads
to this baroque element in Roman architecture that I'm going to talk about.
Behind the semi, semi, semi, hemicycle, annular vault,
with an additional set of shops, and attic windows, there as well.
This is the most famous street, from the forum, from the markets of Trajan.
Trajan's incredible place to wander, by the way.
And they have just recently in the last couple of years opened an entirely new
museum here.
Which has a lot of remains from the forum and, and from the markets.
And a great deal of very useful information.
An absolute must see for anyone going to Rome.
This is the famous via Biberatica of the markets of Trajan.
Where again, you get the sense once you're in here that you're in a kind of city
within a city.
Of but with all these wonderful shops.
You can see how skilled they are in using ramps with polygonal masonry.
As well as sidewalks and
stairs so that you can make your way up with either alternatives here.
Again, the tabernae on either side,
the opening up of the walls with these incredible windows throughout.
A, a restored view of what the whole thing looked like in antiquity, the hemicycle.
that, the, the the decoration here of the central arcuated penement,
broken triangular penements over here.
A very interesting space that I'm going to show you in a second,
vaulted with a semi-dome.
Dome out of concrete with very large windows opening up the space.
Viv Biberatica that we already saw here and then the covered bazaar up there.
Quick view of the semi-dome made out of concrete.
It doesn't have an oculus, but otherwise it looks kind of like the dome of
the Temple of Mercury at Baiae as you can see.
And over here this wall that I've already described that shows you
how well the Romans can work concrete now.
Enabling them to open up the wall much more than they've been able to do so
before and allow even more light into the structure.
The greatest part perhaps of the markets of Trajan is this building here
it's the covered bazaar and it really is a market bazaar on two tiers.
You can see in this restored view the series of tabernae down below,
the attic up above.
You can see that growing vaults are used here and
in an incredible way, I'll show you in a moment how.
A second story up here with addition tabernae op,
opened almost completely to the sky.
An incredible feat on a part of Apollodorus of Damascus assuming he also.
Designed these markets.
Here is the market hall as it looks today.
What is it's ancestor?
the, Fiorentino market hall that we saw way back when with it's
single barrel vault.
Or some of the cryptoporticus that we also saw with their barrel vaults.
It's that idea, that market hall idea, but look how
sophisticated the Romans have become in their use of concrete faced with brick.
They have realized that they don't even need a wall to support vaults.
They can lift their vault on top of individual piers as they have done so
spectacularly here.
Lift them up, I describe this I think in the introductory level lecture as,
in a sense, opening up a series of umbrellas over the space.
They have opened it up.
So that light can flowing from the sides.
Light can flow in from, from either long end.
Just flooding the whole system with light.
Down below again the typical markets with there, with there, attic windows above.
But this is a real tour de force.
Probably the greatest, certainly the greatest vaulting we have seen thus far.
Again a test to just how far the Romans have
come from this to this by the time of the Emperor Trajan.
And any of you headed to San Francisco if you go to the to the market place there.
You will see that, that owes so
much to Roman antiquity with all the tabernae like structures on either side.
The vaulting.
I mean it's this sort of thing absolutely presupposes this kind of
architectural development.
In the one minute that remains, and
that's all I need for this, I just want to show you one last monument.
And make one basic point about it that really has more to do with
the transition from Trajan to Hadrian than anything else.
An arch went up in, not in Rome, but in a place called Benevento.
Which is about an hour's drive from from Naples in the south of Italy and Campania.
A place called Benevento, an arch went up between 114 to 118 honoring Trajan.
And all of Trajan's accomplishments.
You can see that's it's covered with sculpture, and
each of those scenes represents one of the accomplishments of Trajan.
It was put up on the so called Via Triajana,
taking Trajan's name, a road that was built from Rome to Benevento.
And was open, during Trajan's reign.
And again, a compendium of all his accomplishments.
You can see very clearly that it is based,
in general form, on the arch of Titus in Rome.
The single central arcuated bay,
the pedestals supporting double columns on either side.
The inscription at the top.
The receding, receding panels on either side of that inscription.
The major difference of course between the two.
That this has sculpture only on the inside and sparingly, in the center and
around the frieze, and this has much more sculpture.
Again, telling us in much greater detail, a list, or
describing, a list of the great accomplishments of Trajan.
The main reason that I show it to you today besides to show that,
that the, that the Flavians again served.
Flavian architecture served as an important model for Trajanic architecture.
Is that a couple of the scenes in the in the attic above are very interesting and
tell us something about the succession.
Had, tra, Hadrian does not appear in the lower part of the arch in any of
the scenes, but he appears in two of the scenes in the uppermost part.
Which has lead scholars, I think, rightly to conclude that the arch was finished up
to the, into the attic before Trajan's death.
And that Hadrian finished it.
And what did he do?
He put his own portrait up there with Trajan's.
Why was he motivated to do that?
Well, he had an ego, as we'll see when we talk about Hadrian's architecture.
But more than that, we know that it had something to do with the succession.
We know that Trajan died on, August 8th in 117 A.D..
We know that on August 8th he had no successor officially chosen.
Platina, his wife, was cra, she had no children of her own.
She was crazy about Hadrian, very much his sponsor and
wanted to see him succeed Trajan.
It's likely that Trajan had the same idea in mind, but
it's a little strange because wouldn't he then have adopted him before his death?
Why would he have waited.
But Platina decides.
She consults with advisors.
She said, we're not going to announce Trajan's death.
We're going to keep it a secret.
Tomorrow we're going to announce that Trajan has adopted Hadrian.
That happens on August 9th.
And then it was only on the 11th that 11th of August,
that Trajan's death was announced to the public.
So some hanky-panky was going on behind the scenes.
But whoever made the choice, whether it was Trajan himself, or
Platina, he, they made a great choice.
Hadrian an extraordinary archi, an extraordinary emperor as well.
And the point that I, the one point that I want you to hold and
keep with you over break and bring back.
When we, when we get back together and
talk, when we get back together about the pantheon in Hadrian's villa at Tivoli.
The main point that I want you to keep is what we learned from the Forum of Trajan.
And that is that Trajan combined in an incredible way,
with the help of Apollodorus.
Traditional architecture in the forum,
with its marble, marble columns and the like.
And innovative Roman architecture in the form of the,
of the brick face concrete market.
Brought those together in one building in a way that is
very different from anything that we've seen up to this point.
And we're going to see that Hadrian keeps that tradition alive,
not only in the Pantheon, but also in his Villa of Tivoli.
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