Event

The Basilica Aemilia at the Forum Romanum is one of the most important buildings of ancient Rome due to its location, size and splendor. Compared to most other buildings, it is particularly well preserved. However, it is only in recent years that the surviving parts of the imperial building have been documented and examined. On this basis, a very detailed reconstruction of the building and its history has been achieved.

The lecture 1) justifies a new method for dealing with dislocated finds at the Forum Romanum, 2) provides an insight into the work behind the reconstruction in case studies on individual components and 3) discusses the limits of stylistic dating in Augustan Rome. Building on this, the lecture 4) will deal with the qualities of the architecture itself.

While research in recent years has mainly described Augustan architecture in Rome diachronically as a power-political argument to justify the Principate, relying heavily on literary and numismatic sources, the exceptionally good state of preservation of the Basilica Aemilia offers a unique opportunity to examine in detail the visual strategies with which an architectural complex of superlatives in Augustan Rome generated aesthetic pleasure and appropriate atmospheres.

Penn Museum L1