The Palatine Museum, (, is a museum located on the
Palatine Hill
The Palatine Hill (; la, Collis Palatium or Mons Palatinus; it, Palatino ), which relative to the seven hills of Rome is the centremost, is one of the most ancient parts of the city and has been called "the first nucleus of the Roman Empire." ...
in
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus ( legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
. Founded in the second half of the 19th century, it houses sculptures, fragments of frescoes, and archaeological material discovered on the hill.
History
Pietro Rosa
Pietro Rosa (November 10, 1810 in Rome – August 15, 1891 in Rome) was an Italian architect and topographer. He studied the settlements of the ancient Roman countryside and carried out a systematic series of excavations on the Palatine Hill in R ...
created the first Palatine Museum in the late 19th century in the ground floor of the
Farnese building on Palatine Hill. It housed sculptures excavated on Palatine Hill during the reign of
Napoleon III
Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A neph ...
.
Rodolfo Lanciani razed the Farnese building in 1882 to allow a connection between the Roman Forum & the Palatine Hill. At that time, Gherardo Ghirardini (1854-1920) cataloged its holdings and transferred them to the Museum of the Baths of Diocletian (which became the
National Roman Museum in 1889).
In the 1930s, on the initiative of the archaeologist
Alfonso Bartoli, director of excavations on the Palatine and discoverer of numerous objects on the site of the Domus Augustana, a new site was created, using the remaining parts of the demolished
Villa Mills.
Bartoli managed to bring back on the Palatine a part of the sculptures from here that were in the Museum of the Baths, which in the meantime became the National Roman Museum, and exhibited them in a building built starting from 1868 for the Visitation nuns above the structures belonging to the ancient imperial palace of
Diocletian, where the
Domus Flavia and the
Domus Augustana joined. The collections were moved again during the Second World Warfor security reasons, becoming the object of a new conflict of attribution between the Antiquarium of the Palatine and the National Roman Museum. The latter wanted to keep the most beautiful works inside. The Ministry of Education, owner of both institutions, agreed with the Roman National Museum, justifying the choice with the fact that visitors to the Palatine are first of all interested in the places and, only in a very secondary way, in the museum that is housed there.
The Antiquarium therefore now exhibits only materials directly linked to the history of the Palatine. The reorganization of the Roman National Museum, following the 1981 law on the archaeological heritage of Rome, leads to the return of the sculptures that have been found to the Antiquarium. The museum was entirely reorganized under the aegis of the Special Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of Rome to present a panorama of imperial artistic tastes, from Augustus to Late Antiquity.
Since 2016, the Antiquarium belongs to the newly established Colosseum Archaeological Park.
Collections
The building comprises two floors, each consisting of four rooms. The ground floor is dedicated to the Palatine from its origins to the Republican era, while the first floor is dedicated to works from the imperial era.
Ground floor
The rooms from I to III contain stone objects (room I), which attest to a human presence on the Palatine from the Middle Palaeolithic and, continuing, into the Upper Palaeolithic. Traces of a village of huts dating back at least to the eighth century BC have also been found: they consist of vases and other impasto utensils, locally made. Among other things, the rooms also include the models of the huts, the contents of an infantile tomb dated to the beginning of the 7th century BC and a wall that allows the reconstruction of the stratigraphy of hut A, i.e. the various discoveries ordered from the most recent to the most ancient, following the order in which they were found.
In room IV the works of the Archaic and Republican periods are exhibited. Among them is an altar from the Silla period dedicated to "a god or a goddess", a vague formulation found elsewhere and which is probably destined to hide the true name of the revered god from its enemies. There are also several antefixes in polychrome terracotta from various eras, representing Juno Sospita and, perhaps, Jupiter and Apollo.
First floor
In room V, works from the time of
Augustus
Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pr ...
are exhibited. In particular, there are an eclectic statue of Hermes, which refers to the Greek sculptors
Lysippus and
Polykleitos
Polykleitos ( grc, Πολύκλειτος) was an ancient Greek sculptor in bronze of the 5th century BCE. Alongside the Athenian sculptors Pheidias, Myron and Praxiteles, he is considered one of the most important sculptors of classical ...
, and a statue of a victorious athlete in basalt, probably commissioned by Octavian after the
Battle of Actium
The Battle of Actium was a naval battle fought between a maritime fleet of Octavian led by Marcus Agrippa and the combined fleets of both Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII Philopator. The battle took place on 2 September 31 BC in the Ionian Sea, ne ...
. Some
antefixes and some bas-relief plaques testify to the practice of the art of terracotta, inherited from the
Etruscans
The Etruscan civilization () was developed by a people of Etruria in ancient Italy with a common language and culture who formed a federation of city-states. After conquering adjacent lands, its territory covered, at its greatest extent, roug ...
. A fresco, unearthed in 1950 among the excavations of the ''Scalae Caci'', depicts Apollo crowned with laurel, seated on a throne, with the citarain hand, near the
omphalos
An omphalos is a religious stone artifact, or baetylus. In Ancient Greek, the word () means "navel". Among the Ancient Greeks, it was a widespread belief that Delphi was the center of the world. According to the myths regarding the founding of ...
.
In room VI there are paintings and decorations in opus sectile from the
Domus Transitoria, built by Nero and then covered by the
Domus Flavia.
Rooms VII and VIII group together works from the
Julio-Claudian age up to the
Tetrarchy
The Tetrarchy was the system instituted by Roman emperor Diocletian in 293 AD to govern the ancient Roman Empire by dividing it between two emperors, the ''augusti'', and their juniors colleagues and designated successors, the '' caesares'' ...
. Among them there are several portraits, of which the main ones are those of Nero, Agrippina Minore, Antonino Pio, Adriano, and Marco Aurelio.
There is also the famous
Alexamenos graffito, discovered in the
Paedagogium in 1857, transferred first to the
Kircherian Museum and then to the
National Roman Museum, before being finally returned to the Antiquarium of the Palatine in 1946. The drawing, coarse in its features, represents a figure with the head of a crucified donkey and to his left another character with his arm raised. The two figures are separated by a Greek inscription which reads: "Alexamenus venerates
isgod". The work, dated to the third century AD,
[Michael Green, ''Evangelism in the Early Church'', Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004]
p. 244
/ref>[David L. Balch, Carolyn Osiek, ''Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue'', Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003]
p. 103
/ref>[B. Hudson MacLean, ''An introduction to Greek epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman periods from Alexander the Great down to the reign of Constantine'', University of Michigan Press, 2002]
p. 208
/ref> gave rise to multiple disputes. In general, it is considered that it was a representation for the purpose of derision against a Christian accused of practicing onolatry, that is to say the adoration of a donkey, the Onocoete, a belief also reported by Tertullian
Tertullian (; la, Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus; 155 AD – 220 AD) was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He was the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of ...
.
Room IX is a gallery that groups Roman copies of Greek statues, coming from the imperial palaces of the Palatine.
References
Bibliography
* Maria Antonietta Tolomei, ''Museo Palatino'', Electa, 1997. .
External links
* https://parcocolosseo.it/en/area/museums/the-museo-palatino/
{{Authority control
Museums in Rome
Palatine Hill