Italian
The column “Art, Culture, History and Archaeology” curated by Carlo Franchini continues. A journey to discover the beauty, curiosities, and charm of Italy yesterday and today.
Text by Gloria Zarletti
Photos and videos by Carlo Franchini
ROME – In the 4th century A.D., Rome was experiencing a period of sumptuous decline, in which the imperial epic was already waning after the terrible crisis of the 3rd century and the attempt to control its immense territory with the tetrarchy, or division of power into four parts.
Yet the nobility, albeit a “certain” nobility, still lived in comfort and wealth, just as before. This is illustrated by the “domus” rediscovered in 1887 by Germano Ruoppolo in Rome, which provide a fine example of how daily life might have unfolded from the perspective of a well-off individual just over a century before the last emperor was deposed (Romulus Augustulus, 476 A.D.).
The area consists, in addition to a two-story domus, of a Portico, a Taberna, a wine cellar, a narrow street, as well as rooms intended for prayer and generally less pragmatic use. It was essentially a real neighborhood, “insula” in Latin.
The construction work began in the 2nd century, but it was in the 4th century that it was completed and took on the characteristics we can observe today. Above all, this residence with all its connected buildings, which the religious discovered by descending from the floor of the Church of Saints John and Paul, of which he was the rector and which had been built above it, marks an important moment of transition between two eras within the so-called “imperial age.”
The 4th century, to which the completion of the domus on the Celio dates back, is indeed that of Constantine, the tetrarch who reunifies imperial power in his hands after defeating his counterpart Maxentius, but above all it is the century in which Christianity becomes the common denominator of every choice, of every artistic expression.
The new religion coming from the East is on its way to becoming the most powerful in the territory conquered by the Romans and, in addition to supplanting paganism, it prepares society for the advent of a new era that will last a thousand years: the Middle Ages.
A second capital, Constantinople, rises in the meantime in the East, but no one can suspect that a little more than a century later it would replace Rome. Meanwhile, Rome would have been reduced to a shadow of itself: decapitated, plundered by barbarians, stripped of power, abandoned by its own inhabitants, emptied.
But the 4th century is also, apparently, a golden moment that stands out for its novelties compared to the origins of the Empire: in Rome, the first Christian literature is born, the Church takes its first steps as an institution, and Pope Sylvester inaugurates St. Peter’s Basilica.
The nobility itself is not immune to great transformations. Previously, it was composed of the “gentes,” the families of the founders of Rome. Now, however, Constantine chooses his senators from the followers of the new religion, which serves as a tool to “engage” the masses and consolidate imperial power that, with him, returns to its former glory, although after his death, the disintegration becomes inevitable.
The visit to this archaeological site allows, through a path that reconstructs the life of the Romans of that time, to immerse oneself in late imperial Rome with its noises, voices, human types, the predisposition to prayer, and a new attitude towards the sacred.
If some rooms, such as the Hall of the Geniuses and the Nymphaeum (photo), are frescoed with classical mythological subjects, we also find signs that confirm the adherence to the new religion with a new spirit: for example, the peacock has now become the symbol of the resurrection of Christ.
Even in the Hall of the Orant and in that of the Confessio, the perfectly preserved images unmistakably speak of the new cult as a language that has now established itself and as a form of communication that is free as it had not been until now, bearing the signs of a classical past but also approaching the new art that would soon impose itself.
The Domus, therefore, not only serve as a window into a bygone Rome, but also testify to the transition from paganism to Christianity at the moment when imperial power, temporarily reinforced, begins to crumble, paving the way for the barbarian Roman kingdoms and the Middle Ages.
For information and guided tours:
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