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The round dome building type, just like the basilican type was to be very
important in the Constantinian period, and also in later times.
And I show you, I remind you of some of the important domed rooms that we've
looked at in the course of this semester,
at the frigidarium at the Stabian Baths of Pompeii.
At the temple of Mercury from the spa at
Baia, the so-called Temple of Mercury. The the octagonal room
of Nero's Domus Aurea, and the dome of the Pantheon here on the far right.
There is no more important form in Roman
architecture than the domed room, very characteristic of
the Romans and a special gift that they
passed on to posterity as you well know, and
this, this type of building began to be
explored, continued to be explored in the Constantinian period.
I could show you several examples but I have chosen to show you just one of those.
And it's the one that you now see on the screen in plan, a plan from Ward Perkins.
This is the so-called temple of Minerva Medica in Rome.
It's not a temple at all.
It dates to the early fourth century AD.
It's not a temple, but what it was was a pavilion and a garden.
We know that an emperor of the third century AD by the name of
Gallienus, G-A-L-L-I-E-N-U-S, Gallienus
was responsible for building some imperial gardens in the third century AD.
So this was another actually, you know actual this was
another project that did happen in the third century AD.
The building of some imperial gardens for the
enjoyment of the emperors and of the imperial family.
And it was in these gardens that were created in the third century that
this pavilion was added during the Constantinian
period in the early fourth century AD.
And I show you a plan of that temple, that so called temple of Minerva Medica.
Or this pavilion in the the so called
Licinian, L-I-C-I-N-I-A-N. The Licinian Gardens.
As commissioned by Gallienus. The Licinian gardens.
And we see it here, and it's very interesting because although it
clearly, it's a, it's a building made out of concrete faced with brick.
And although it clearly is based on some of the buildings that
I just showed you the round, the typical round structure with oculus.
The frigaradia, the spa,
the octagonal room, and the Pantheon.
You can see that the architects of this period
were still able to innovate and have gone further by
creating not a round building, although at first it
looks round, or an octagonal building, but a decagonal building.
A ten sided building.
And you can see ten, you can see radiation
apses, nine and then the entrance way over here.
So ten sided structure.
If you look very carefully at the plan you
will notice, though, that the that the uppermost apse, the
one that is located directly across from the, from the
entrance way, is a tiny bit larger than the others.
So that gives the the building a little bit, even though its
a round building, a little bit of a, a, of a longitudinal
axis which is very interesting, this incorporation
of a longitudinal axis into a round structure.
You can also see the way in which the radiating apses, the two on either side,
left and right are screened by columns in
a way that we've also become accustomed to.
And I believe that those columns, yes I'm
pretty sure that those columns have a triple arcuation
up above. So that yeah you can see in plan.
A triple arcuation above that has,
we've seen also is characteristic of, of late Roman architecture.
Not only in the, in the private sphere as
this is but also in the more public sphere.
But going back to that longitudinal axis, look also at the entrance vestibule.
This is another
one of these narthexes, this cross, this
transverse vestibule, in this case with apses
on either end that is characteristic of
these these early fourth century A.D. Roman,
Pagan Roman buildings but is going to
become a hallmark of Christian architecture, not
only basilican architecture, that is, churches in
the form of basilicas, but small religious
structures in, that are done that are circular in general plan.
So a very interesting plan in that regard.
And a very innovative plan in the early fourth century AD.
The building is still preserved.
I can show it to you.
It dates set, I could show you the outside as well as
some details of the inside of the building, as you see here.
this, it was made out of concrete faced with brick as I mentioned before.
We are looking at the interior up toward the dome.
You can see something very interesting here, which was, is the
addition of ribbed of bricks to create ribs in the dome to
give it something of a sense of a segmented dome, which
is a building technique that we see sometimes in late Roman architecture.
And you can also see, although it looks like it has an oculus,
that's just because the, most of the roof has fallen in.
It did not have an oculus.
Instead the lighting was provided through these round headed windows that we
see, very large round headed windows at the base of the dome.
So again this move away in late antiquity from the oculus, to using
these very large round headed windows to light the interior of the building.
And this is a view of
the so called temple of Minerva Medica as it looks today from the outside.
Where you can see those red, same round-headed buildings.
Where you can see those same sort of piers that are not so different from the ones
that we saw at Trier used rather than columns to decorate the structure.
Large round-headed doorway down here.
very, you can see the scale, this is a pretty big pavilion
in a garden, you can see its scale in relationship to the cars that surround it.
So continued innovation in round architecture under Constantine the Great.
And a building type that is going to have a long
history in the Medieval period, in the Byzantine period and well beyond.
I show you just one example of the impact that it had on later church architecture.
This is the church of San Vitale, a very famous church in Ravenna in Italy
that was that honors Justinian, the famous Justinian Theodora.
It was built in the sixth century AD.
And I think you can see by looking at a view of the exterior, a plan
and also a view of the interior how
important architectural experiments under the Romans were for buildings
like this.
The massing of the outside, the geometry, the interest in geometry, simple forms.
Round headed windows.
So similar to the aesthetic that we saw in [UNKNOWN] or in the basilica at Trier.
The plan above in this case an
octagon, with a central area with radiating alcoves.
Very similar to the sorts of things that we see not
just in the dome of [UNKNOWN] but also in the temple
of Minerva Medica.
And you can see the narthex here, just as we saw in the temple of Minerva Medica.
And you can see in this view of the interior, for
example, the triple arc arches on top of the two columns.
All of these motifs taken over clearly from Roman architecture,
ancient Roman architecture and exploited in the medieval and Byzantine periods.
Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
