Pius VII was succeeded by Annibale della Genga (1823–1829), who took the name of Leo XII.Footnote 1 Born near Ancona, he had a long history of diplomatic and administrative service. His piety edged over into fanaticism. He was especially noted for the new restrictions that he imposed on the Jews of Rome. However, he was not without intellectual interests, and the Vatican Library benefited greatly from his patronage.
Given the strong religious devotion of Leo XII, it was appropriate, although accidental, that an ancient Christian monument rather than a pagan one should become the central focus for his concern for the antiquities of Rome. With the fire at St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome had experienced one of the greatest cultural disasters of its modern history. The church was so badly damaged that its structure had to be almost totally rebuilt.
The key question was what form that rebuilding would take. Should the new basilica be an archaeologically correct reconstruction, reflecting in general terms, but not in detail the spirit of early Christianity; or should it be a structure that was new in design. The history of Rome’s great churches had been one of accretion and evolution. However, the nineteenth century saw a growing interest in architectural historicism and the recovery of past forms. It was the era of Viollet-Le-Duc and John Ruskin. Debates and decisions about St. Paul Outside the Walls would shape the culture of restoration for both Christian and classical monuments in Rome for decades to come.
The presiding abbot Angelo Uggeri was a cultured cleric, knowledgeable in architectural history. He wanted the church rebuilt in pristinum, as close as possible to its pre-fire early Christian form. A group of influential architects led by Valadier pushed for a more thoroughly redesigned basilica, early medieval in spirit, but innovative in form. Leo XII was drawn into the debate. After much patient listening, he decided that the basilica would be rebuilt as closely as possible to its original appearance. Pasquale Belli was appointed the architect. At his death in 1833, he was succeeded by Luigi Poletti (1792–1869), who would carry the project close to completion.Footnote 2
The reconstruction process extended over several decades. Design debates continued. They were part of a wider discourse on early Christianity, and early Christian art, which helped stimulate a renewed interest in Christian archaeology. The new church attempted to reproduce the spirit of the original building but articulated that spirit in a distinctive nineteenth-century style.Footnote 3
Leo XII did not have the strong classical interests of his predecessors. However, he made one major archaeological decision. In 1827, urged on by the antiquarian community, he authorized the complete clearing of the Forum down to the ancient levels. Special emphasis was placed on the exploration of the areas toward the Basilica of Maxentius and the Arch of Titus. His new excavations were directed by the young antiquarian-archaeologist Antonio Nibby (1792–1839). The omnipresent Valadier served as architect.Footnote 4
Nibby was a rising star on the Roman antiquarian scene.Footnote 5 At age twenty-eight he had become professor of archaeology at La Sapienza in Rome. He had already cooperated with William Gell on a book about the walls of Rome and had excavated for the Torlonia family on the Via Appia. He published in 1838 a synthetic description of ancient and modern Rome.
He was a leading figure in an emerging generation of topographically oriented archaeologists active in Rome. It was a competitive and contentious business. Nibby made his mistakes. However, his scholarship was sufficiently respected for him to be selected in 1829 as a member of the Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica. Nibby died in 1839, leaving a young family in considerable need. His death marked the end of a golden age in Roman topographical studies. Most of the great figures of the previous generation had already passed away. Filippo Aurelio Visconti died in 1831, and Fea in 1835.Footnote 6 Their collective contribution to our understanding of ancient Rome had been massive.
Leo was succeeded in 1829 by Francesco Saverio Castiglioni, who took the name Pius VIII. He reigned for only a year. In 1831 Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari was elected pope and assumed the name of Gregory XVI. He would reign until 1846. The papacy of Gregory XVI became the most controversial of the post-Napoleonic era. Our view of Gregory has been heavily influenced by the savage satires of the Roman poet Belli. He was depicted as an arch-conservative, who opposed the railway as an “invention of the devil.” That view of Gregory is oversimplistic, for he was interested in technology and encouraged certain innovations.Footnote 7 He was also an intellectual, who surrounded himself with scholars. He continued the traditions of papal archaeological patronage and made important contributions to classical, Etruscan, and Christian archaeology.Footnote 8
The most important archaeological figure during the years of Gregory XVI was Luigi Canina (1795–1856).Footnote 9 In 1839 he was appointed the pope’s chief archaeologist. He was already a well-established architect, who had designed for the Borghese family in Rome.Footnote 10 He was also a respected antiquarian. In 1830 he published Pianta topografica di Roma, a reconstructed plan of the ancient city. It was the first work to use extensively the fragments of the Severan Forma Urbis.Footnote 11 He also produced more general studies of ancient architecture, which incorporated Greek and even Egyptian monuments.
Gregory continued the work in the Forum. Early in his papacy he struck a medal to celebrate the completion of the clearing of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina.Footnote 12 However, he was wedded to older notions of the Forum as a place of dignified display rather than the site of scientific archaeological investigations. As the antiquarians pursued their topographical investigations, complaints increasingly arose about the numerous unsightly pits that defaced the area. In reaction the papal authorities ordered that excavations deemed unnecessary for an understanding of the ruins be filled in, the dumps removed, and some sense of physical decorum returned to the area.Footnote 13
Contemporary renderings depict change but also continuity in the appearance of the Forum. A view from the Campidoglio, done in 1838 by the Englishman Samuel Palmer, showed the excavations around the Column of Phocas but depicted the remaining areas of the Forum as largely uncleared. An 1841 painting by the Italian Ippolito Caffi highlighted the extensive excavations around the Arch of Septimius Severus. The rest of the Forum was shown as an urban village complete with a few wandering cows.Footnote 14
Gregory financed extensive clearings and restorations at other classical and Christian monuments. Some fifty architects were employed in his various projects. Some of the most visible operations centered on the Porta Maggiore. By the nineteenth century that ancient Roman city gate had been enveloped by accretions, which dated from Late Antiquity onward.Footnote 15 The pope authorized the clearing of the outer face. That revealed the remains of the first century bc tomb of Eurysaces the Baker. Valadier directed the work, which was his last great project. On July 17, 1838, Gregory visited the site. By 1840 both gate and tomb had been restored.Footnote 16 Two neoclassical pavilions with offices for guards and customs’ officials were erected just inside the gate itself. Instead of a scruffy medieval agglomeration, Rome now had a dignified entryway which recalled the classical past.
Gregory revived the ancient papal custom of reusing ancient fragments to embellish newer structures. Material recovered from excavations at Veii were brought to Rome and installed in the façade of the Palazzo delle Poste in the Piazza Colonna. A Latin inscription celebrated the recycling.Footnote 17 He also continued the tradition of creating classically inspired displays to commemorate papal accomplishments. A faux Column of Trajan was erected at the Milvian Bridge to celebrate his return in 1841 from a trip to central Italy.Footnote 18
Gregory made his own additions to the Vatican Galleries. Especially important was his promotion of Etruscan archaeology. Etruscomania was hardly new, for the pursuit of an Etruscan identity in certain circles went back to the Renaissance. Pius VII in one of his “archaeological” paintings commemorated a gift of “Etruscan” vases to the Vatican Museums.Footnote 19 The enthusiasm had intensified in the 1820s with the major new discoveries made at ancient Vulci.Footnote 20 The greater interest in Etruscan archaeology and an increased flow of artifacts into the papal collections stimulated Gregory to create the Etruscan Museum.Footnote 21
The Etruscan enthusiasm had both ideological and political dimensions. Etruscology, as a tool of anti-Roman ideology, had a long history in the areas north of Rome. The cause revived in the early nineteenth century. Works like Micali’s 1810 L’Italia avanti il dominio Romano portrayed the Roman conquest as a disaster, which had suppressed local languages and cultures.Footnote 22 Needless to say, such discussions intensified, as Italian nationalism strengthened. The Etruscan debates also had a specifically papal dimension. Important sites like Veii, Tarquinii, and Cerveteri were located in lands belonging to the Papal States.Footnote 23 By affirming his identity with the Etruscans, Gregory strengthened his own claims to territories that bordered on the Duchy of Tuscany. Gregory’s Etruscan Museum was an important statement in the debates about “Who Owned the Etruscans.”Footnote 24
The new Etruscan Museum opened in 1837. Pietro Ercole Visconti, the latest archaeological star in that venerable family, was its principal designer.Footnote 25 The presentation of objects in a manner partly typological and partly decorative was typical of the era. Innovative was the display of reproductions of tomb painting.Footnote 26 Visconti continued to build the collection, cooperating with dealers and excavators.Footnote 27 In 1842 Gregory sponsored the publication of a sumptuous, two-volume catalogue of the Museo Etrusco Gregoriano.Footnote 28
Gregory created another archaeological museum, the Museo Gregoriano Profano. It was located in the Lateran Palace and devoted to Greek and Roman antiquities. The displays centered on recently acquired collections and on finds from current papal excavations. Casts were used to fill out the collection. Material continued to be added in subsequent decades. The Museo Profano became the most focused archaeological museum in papal Rome.Footnote 29
During those years archaeological scholarship in Rome and on the wider European scene was changing. In the early nineteenth century, antiquaries like Fea and Nibby still dominated the city’s archaeological community. Their contributions were impressive, but there was a narrowness and parochialism to what they did. The poet Leopardi commented sarcastically that “non ho ancora potuto conoscere un letterato romano che intenda sotto il nome di letteratura altro che ‘archeologia’” (“I have not yet been able to find a Roman litterateur, who when using the term literature means anything other than archaeology”) and that “fuori dei sassi non si capisce altro” (“Outside of rocks, they don’t understand anything else”).Footnote 30
Meanwhile, north of the Alps and especially in Germany, a new scientific rigor came to dominate research in classics, ancient history, and archaeology. These “new” German scholars began making their way to Rome. Some were professional academics, but others were members of the diplomatic corps. The Roman historian Barthold Niebuhr (1776–1831), who challenged many of the traditional interpretations of early Roman history, was Prussian minister to the Holy See from 1816–1823.Footnote 31 Baron Bunsen, another respected scholar, was long a key ambassadorial figure in Rome.
The most important of the new academics was Friedrich Wilhelm Eduard Gerhard (1795–1867).Footnote 32 He had received the best classical education available in Germany, and in 1822 arrived in Rome to continue his research. He joined an international community of savants, scholars, and artists, who sought to make the study of archaeology reflect better the new scholarly values. On Rome’s birthday (April 21) in 1829, Gerhard organized the meeting that would lead to the formation of the Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica, the ancestor not only of the present-day German Archaeological Institute, but also of all the foreign schools at Rome.Footnote 33
The founding group was international, with Carlo Fea the only Italian invited to join the Committee of Directors. They were a blend of the old and the new. New “professional” scholars like Gerhard mingled with neoclassical artists like Bertel Thorwaldsen and respected amateurs like the Duke of Blacas. The Italian savants, however, were not overly enthusiastic about this new foreign presence. The Instituto initially met strong opposition from the indigenous antiquarian community, and especially from those associated with the Roman Academy of Archaeology. The prestige of the Instituto’s membership and diplomatic pressure from scholarly ambassadors gradually overcame those obstacles. The Instituto began holding regular meeting in the Prussian enclave on the Campidoglio. There its headquarters were established. Its neoclassical façade was graced by busts of Winckelmann and Goethe (Fig. 15). A publication series soon followed.
Figure 15 The Casa Tarpeia, Headquarters of the German Archaeological Institute on the Campidoglio.
The formation of the Instituto represented more than just the creation of a new archaeological society. While it had its antiquarian qualities, it also looked to the future. The leader was not a cardinal or a learned Italian priest but a scientifically educated German. In the years that followed, Gerhard made the Instituto ever more closely identified with Berlin. In the debates over “who owned Roman antiquity,” the Germans laid special claims, not based on the sentiments of historical roots and identities but on the ability of their scholarship to reconstruct a past that was the property of all civilized European society.
The new academic professionalism did not end the long-standing interconnections between archaeology and the arts in Rome. The current star was Bertel Thorwaldsen (1770–1844), the last great representative of the artistic neoclassical tradition.Footnote 34 He had honed his artistic skills and his classicizing aesthetics in Copenhagen. However, he made his career in Rome, where he lived from 1797 to 1838. His most famous works included the tomb of Pius VII, the pope who had done so much to keep classical taste alive in the city. His presence continued to make Rome a center for the production of neoclassical sculpture through much of the early nineteenth century. His departure in 1838 and that of the neo-classical painter Ingres in 1841 signaled the beginning of the end of that era.
Thorwaldsen was a dominant figure in the expanding artistic community in Rome. By 1835 Rome had 543 artists in a total population of 160,000. They formed both national colonies and an international society.Footnote 35 The painters worked in diverse traditions, ranging from the landscape sentimentality, inspired by Claude Lorrain, to the neo-medievalism of the German Nazarenes and the cool classicism of Ingres.
While the painters varied in style and ideology, the sculptors tended to follow the classical values of Canova and Thorwaldsen. Their works, which ranged from portraits to public works, were enormously popular throughout much of the early and middle nineteenth century. As early as 1809 the exports of “modern sculpture” from the Papal States were valued at four times that of ancient sculpture.Footnote 36 Artistic lineages developed. The English sculptor James Gibson was a student of Canova. He, in turn, mentored the American Harriet Hosmer, who became the center of a group of female sculptors, Henry James’s “white marmoreal flock.”Footnote 37 Largely forgotten today, those sculptors did much to keep classical artistic values alive for the cultural elites of Europe and America.
The world of tourism was also changing. The rich, the noble, and the artistic were complemented and partly replaced by the bourgeoisie tourists from Europe and America. Their numbers were swelled both by the expansion of the middle class and by improvements in sea and land transport. Those visitors were often very earnest folk. They were less profligate in their spending but caused less trouble. They required better amenities and were more disciplined in their touring. Their desire to be seriously informed stimulated the production of serious “pocket” guidebooks. The first such a guide for the Capitoline Museums was produced in 1817 by the museum director Agostino Tofanelli. It continued to be published through multiples editions.Footnote 38 More general guides also appeared in English, French, and German. That new touristic world was captured in an 1840s painting by Ippolito Caffi, where small columns of well-dressed men and women make their dusty way toward the Colosseum.Footnote 39
It was significant that Caffi included women as well as men in his painting, for female travelers now represented an important part of the Rome tourist scene. Woman tourists of the Victorian age brought a greater earnestness to the exploration of the city and its monuments. Outfitted with their John Murray guides (first edition in 1843) and their Baedekers, they systematically studied the monuments and museums.Footnote 40 Their new disciplined empiricism increasingly conflicted with the more relaxed tourism still pursued by many males. The gender contrast was, not surprisingly, captured in the writings of Henry James.Footnote 41 Well-read and articulate the women played a major role in shaping the Euro-American reaction to the city. Their cultural agendas can be seen in the paeon to the Vatican museums that Fanny Kemble Butler (1809–1893) published in 1847:
Each era of modern Rome has had its illustrator, who captured continuity and change in its monuments and the cityscape. Rome of the decades between the return of Pius VII and the restoration of Pius IX is best represented by the artist and printmaker Luigi Rossini (1790–1857). Rossini was trained in Bologna, but as a young man migrated to Rome. He worked as a painter but was most successful as a printmaker. While his early work showed the influence of Piranesi, Rossini’s vision of monuments became increasingly “domesticated.” The archaeological sites were depicted closely integrated into the living urban fabric. There was less emphasis on the contrast between magnificent past and wretched present. His Romans bustle about their daily activities, engaging in dancing, worship, and the festival life so popular with contemporary tourists.Footnote 43
The Long Reign of Pio Nono
Gregory XVI passed away in 1846, little lamented. The conclave elected Giovanni Maria Mastai, who took the name of Pius IX. He was to have one of the longest reigns in the history of the papacy, and one of the most controversial. He became the last pope to rule Rome, and the last one to shape archaeology in the city. He identified with both the classical and the Christian past. Those early evident interests were captured in a print which memorialized his first papal procession through the city. Prominent were images of both the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine, symbols of the greatness of pagan and Christian Rome.Footnote 44 A special triumphal arch was erected in the Piazza del Popolo in September 1846.Footnote 45 On April 21, 1847, the birthday of Rome was celebrated with an elaborate festival held in the Baths of Titus.Footnote 46
The first years of his papacy were filled with turmoil. Pius initially tried to present himself as a more open pope, pursuing change after the stifling reign of Gregory XVI. Events soon overwhelmed him, as much of Europe, including Italy, was caught up in the Revolutions of 1848. The uprising in Rome sent the pope into exile and led to the installation of a Republic. As in 1798 the political imagery of this new Republic was replete with references to ancient Rome. The equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Campidoglio was appropriately draped with a tricolor.Footnote 47 The leaders declared ambitious plans to excavate that symbol of the free Republic, the Roman Forum.Footnote 48 French intervention expelled the Republicans and brought back the pope. From then until 1870, the papal temporal power survived through French military protection.Footnote 49
Pius did not abandon his archaeological agendas. On his return to power, he commissioned Luigi Canina to resume excavations in the Roman Forum. By the time of his death in 1854, Canina had made significant progress. A painting by the British artist David Roberts, completed after a visit to Rome in 1853–4, showed that much of the Forum between the Temple of Castor and Pollux and the Column of Phocas had been cleared. The cattle were gone, and the ruins were now peopled by clerics and tourists.Footnote 50 However, much of the Forum village remained intact. In a photograph taken in 1856–57, a grove of trees planted between the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina and the Arch of Septimius Severus gives a more park-like appearance to the area.Footnote 51
The monuments of the Appian Way received special attention. Those evocative ruins had long fascinated artists, antiquarians, and tourists.Footnote 52 The French had included it in their dreams of an extensive archaeological park which would make the monuments accessible to the people.Footnote 53 Important restorations had already taken place. Canova had done reconstructions on the mausoleum of Servilius Quartus at the fourth milestone.Footnote 54 In 1824 Cardinal Pacca authorized Valadier to incorporate ancient fragments into a decorative wall placed by the tomb of Caecilia Metella.
In 1850 Canina was entrusted with a major commission that involved the clearing, study, reconstruction, and graphic recreation of the monuments on the Via Appia all the way to the Latin town of Bovillae.Footnote 55 Here, too, he built on the French legacy. With his suggestive but accurate renderings of the contemporary ruins, his reconstructions of their probable ancient appearances, and his physical reassembly of the membra disiecta (scattered fragments), Canina created the nineteenth-century vision of the regina viarum which is still operative today.Footnote 56
Canina’s project moved forward with great vigor.Footnote 57 The pope declared the road and its adjacent monuments public property. That state-protected land extended back ten meters on either side of the road. The rights of the adjoining landowners were severely circumscribed. The Appia itself was cleared of obstacles, important areas were excavated, and standing monuments restored. Fragments of ancient architecture, sculpture, and inscriptions were mounted on wall pastiches. Order was created without the loss of romantic appeal. An 1853–54 map by Canina’s assistant Pietro Rosa shows the regular procession of road and monuments advancing through the still empty Campagna.Footnote 58 An 1856 print captured the tidied, if still desolate, monumental landscape of the Appia. The main human presence is a party of tourists, who are examining the monuments.Footnote 59
The most important archaeological official in the service of Pio Nono was Pietro Ercole Visconti (1802–1880), the last scion of the family that had for so long been central to the archaeology of Rome. He was the last papal antiquarian, holding that position from 1839 until the Italians seized Rome in 1870. He was also director of papal museums and professor of archaeology at La Sapienza.Footnote 60 He was regularly selected to show visiting dignitaries around the archaeological sites. The German savant Ferdinand Gregorovius described him as “a clever courtier, sophist, and improviser; … learned, however, and endowed with an enviable presence of mind.”Footnote 61 His good standing with Pius IX was highlighted by a gold medal that was struck in his honor.
Ercole presided over a last mellow age of antiquarian studies and antiquities dealing. One contemporary collector noted that “under his paternal administration everything was easy, and done with the best grace in the world.”Footnote 62 Discrete excavations and a low-key antiquities trade flourished.Footnote 63 Diggings in villa gardens and in the Campagna yielded a steady supply of artifacts for collectors and for the more general market.Footnote 64
The most respected of those archaeological facilitators was Francesco Martinetti, who acted both as a restorer and as a dealer. Such was the sophistication of his archaeological knowledge and the quality of his objects that his shop became the gathering place for the leading archaeological scholars in Rome. There one might find the Christian archaeologists Giovanni Battista de Rossi and Father Garrucci and learned Germans from the Archaeological Institute.Footnote 65
Another important, if more controversial, figure on that papal archaeological scene was Pietro Campana (1808–1880).Footnote 66 Along with the Torlonias he represented the last in a tradition of great private collectors that went back to the Renaissance. Through purchase and private excavation, he amassed a great collection of antiquities, which decorated his elegant residence.Footnote 67 Contemporary photographs captured his love of opulent, antiquarian display.Footnote 68 Especially evocative is a photograph of the interior of his villa with a banquet table set to celebrate the birthday of Rome. The atrium-peristyle was crowded with statuary. A bust of Pio Nono was prominently displayed.
Campana was deeply involved in Vatican finance, and that was to prove his undoing. He ran afoul of the powerful Cardinal Antonelli, who directed so much of papal policy. In 1857 Antonelli secured his condemnation for financial fraud. Campana was disgraced, briefly jailed, and forced to spend the last years of Pius’s papacy in exile. His great collection of antiquities was sold to foreigners, an ironic violation of the pope’s policy of limiting the export of antiquities.Footnote 69
More fortunate were the Torlonias. With the downfall of Campana, they became the most important private collectors in the city. The dynastic founder Giovanni Torlonia (1754–1829) accumulated a fortune by lending to both sides in the late eighteenth-century French-Papal conflicts.Footnote 70 He created a lifestyle to rival the old noble Roman families. His son Alessandro (1800–1886) expanded the family fortune and consolidated its social position. The gatherings at the Torlonia townhouse or villas became some of the most brilliant in the city.
A large townhouse, a suburban villa, and a country villa became the foci for their lifestyle. Those residences displayed their classicizing taste in architecture, decorations, and collections. The Torlonia city residence was located on the Piazza Venezia. Sadly, it was destroyed in 1902, but contemporary photographs allow a reconstruction of its classicizing décor. Some of the furnishings are preserved in the Museo di Roma.Footnote 71
The Torlonia villa on the Via Nomentana was even more sumptuous.Footnote 72 The core building, started in 1802, was designed by Valadier and included ancient materials extracted from the Baths of Titus. A monumental Ionic portico was added in the 1830s. For the main building Thorwaldsen created a frieze, whose style reflected that of the Parthenon but whose subject was the triumph of Alexander the Great. It was an appropriate display of flattery for the Macedonian’s namesake Alessandro Torlonia. The grounds were decorated with faux temples and ruins.
The Torlonias became the most avid collectors of antiquities of their day, and they pursued their passion on multiple levels. Their suburban lands, which included the sites of the ancient Villas of Maxentius, the Gordiani, and the Quintilii were systematically mined.Footnote 73 In 1856 Alessandro Torlonia acquired the site of Portus, the imperial harbor near Ostia. When he decided to pursue excavations there, he turned to a young engineer named Rodolfo Lanciani, a protégé of De Rossi and Carlo Luigi Visconti. That started an archaeological career that lasted into the era of Mussolini.Footnote 74
The Torlonias further added to their holdings by acquiring existing collections of ancient art. They bought out hard-pressed families like the Giustiniani.Footnote 75 Alessandro made his greatest coup in 1866 when he acquired the Villa Albani and what was left of its famous collections. The spirit of Winckelmann could now watch over the activities of the last great collecting family in Rome.
The corridors of townhouses and villas were not sufficient to display the increasing numbers of Torlonia marbles. In 1859 the family created its own private museum. Its public presence was short-lived. The Papal States, where they had made their fortune, disappeared. The Torlonias soon came into conflict with the new Italian archaeological bureaucracy. Its later history captures well the changing face of private collecting in national Rome.Footnote 76
The Rome of Pio Nono is often depicted as a sleepy place, a last idyllic moment before the massive changes of the post-1870 decades. To a large degree that was true. However, the decades of Pius IX did see some important changes and improvements. The pope sought to embrace “selective modernism,” when it did not clash too openly with his faith and his core conservatism. Among the inscriptions on the Via Appia is one that marked the occasion and place where Pius first used the telegraph.Footnote 77
A most important change came when the pope approved the railroad. No longer regarded as the “invention of the devil,” the “iron horse” was now seen as a practical means of bringing the city into the modern world, and the modern world to Rome. The long-term development of the railroad was to change the spacial dynamics of the city in a manner not felt for centuries. That in turn brought new archaeological challenges to Rome.
The first local line ended at the Porta Ostiensis. In 1857 another line to Frascati was added. Its tracks entered the city near the Porta Maggiore and terminated at a station placed in front of the Baths of Diocletian. Soon lines from Civitavecchia and Naples were extended into the same area.Footnote 78 By 1860 papal officials had decided to create a central railroad station to be located in the area of the Baths of Diocletian. Construction soon started. In 1862 the new station was inaugurated.Footnote 79 It proved a success, and almost immediately planning began for a larger, more comprehensive facility. Work started in 1867. It was completed in 1874 shortly after papal rule in Rome had come to an end (Fig. 16).
Figure 16 The first railway station at Rome. Photograph after T. Kirk, The Architecture of Modern Italy, Reference Kirk2005, p. 221, fig. 4.20.
The creation of a rail hub on the eastern edge of the city accelerated the transformation of that part of the city. In 1857 the area around the Baths of Diocletian was a wasteland, populated largely with villas and religious institutions. Massive ancient ruins stood in stark contrast to its modern marginality.
However, shrewd developers began to see the potential of the zone that would link the new railway hub to the old city. The most important of those was Monsignor Francesco Saverio de Mérode (1820–1874). He had long been a confidant of Pius IX, an unctuously pious promoter of papal intransigence in the face of challenges to the Temporal Power and the advance of the Italian state.Footnote 80 Mérode came from a family of Belgian real estate developers and was ever interested in finding new ways to combine piety and profit.Footnote 81 He saw that, in the new world of railroad tourism, most visitors would enter the city from the east rather than through the ancient Porta del Popolo. As early as 1859 he and his family began accumulating large real estate holdings around the Baths of Diocletian and the Castro Pretorio.Footnote 82 Some of the land Monsignor de Mérode donated for catacomb research. Most of the rest began to be surveyed, divided, and sold for building lots. The last papal plan of Rome, executed in 1866, shows that real estate development already underway.Footnote 83
Pius IX was more interested in realizing the public potential of the area. Most important for his mission would be the development of the Baths of Diocletian, the first remains of the ancient city that the railway traveler would encounter on entering Rome. Its grand spaces had the potential for innovative public uses. In February 1870 the pope opened an exhibition of sacred art there. It was laid out in the great courtyard of the Certosa, the monastic complex that embraced key sections of the ancient Baths.Footnote 84 That display of the sacred had certain political dimensions. The French occupiers made generous contributions, while the government of Italy prohibited any of its artists from participating.Footnote 85 Appropriately, the lavishly illustrated photographic catalogue Antiquités Chrétiennes de Rome au XVIe Siècle was written in French.
Developments in the railway station zone would have serious archaeological impacts. The area had been part of an important urban district in antiquity. That meant that important archaeological discoveries would be made as soon as construction began. The papal government stipulated that the finest objects and one-third of the general finds were to go to the Vatican Museum. The rest became the property of the designated development company, Società Pia Latina. As construction advanced, and the pace of discovery accelerated, Pius IX became increasingly concerned that much information was being lost, and too many objects were finding their way onto the antiquities market. He intervened to ensure that at least some minimal recording took place.Footnote 86 That papal intervention was a forerunner of the complex intersections of developmental pressures and archaeological conservation, which accelerated after 1870 and continue to challenge the city down to the present day.
The most important archaeological discoveries took place around the railway station site itself. Its construction required the leveling of a large mound of earth known as Monte della Giustizia, whose name derived from a statue of personified justice, which had long crowned its summit. Most of the upper fill was post-classical and yielded few antiquities. That changed as the workers penetrated into lower layers. Supervision was poor, and many smaller objects ended up in the pockets of the workmen. Count Tyskiewicz, one of the most active collectors of the day, described the complicated exchange system, which took coins, medallions, and other portable objects through a network of dealers into the collections of connoisseurs.Footnote 87
The new railroad station represented just one in a series of initiatives that the papal government took to improve the image of the city. Roman officials were aware of the fact that major cities in Europe were engaging in programmed urban improvement. The extensive French presence in their city made them especially conscious of how Baron Haussmann was reshaping Paris. Their effort to embrace this new urbanism was embodied in the 1864 Regolamento edilizio e di pubblico ornato per la città di Roma.Footnote 88 It started a long, futile history of aspiring to use planning to tame the chaotic city.
Other “improvements” were undertaken, many of which impacted the remains of antiquity. One was the creation of gas works, which would bring modern illumination to the city. The isolated, neglected Circus Maximus was chosen for the principal gas production center, one of the few industrial establishments in the city.Footnote 89 By the 1870s the gas works had been joined by a massive bakery. Not all were pleased by such sordid appropriations of one of Rome’s grand monuments. The English aesthete Augustus Hare protested the “perversity which amounts to malignity” by which “some exquisite view of water or of land is ruined by their deformity and stench.”Footnote 90
The pope, like so many of his predecessors, was interested in improving the city’s relation to its river. In the years 1868–70 he launched major construction projects in the ancient port area at the foot of the Aventine. Important archaeological discoveries were soon made. Pietro Ercole Visconti was called in to conduct his last excavation for the pope. Roman docking and storage facilities were unearthed.Footnote 91 So were quantities of ancient colored marbles. Pius, in a gesture that would have pleased the medieval Cosmati and the Renaissance architects, designed many of those stones for the embellishment of his current building projects.Footnote 92
Such gestures toward the new Rome did not totally destroy the old ways of papal interaction with his city. The adventus, the formal return of the pope to the city over the Ponte Milvio had long had special significance, and Pius IX continued that tradition. In September of 1857 he returned after a tour of the papal lands. To celebrate the occasion, the young architect Virginio Vespigiano created a temporary monumental entrance. It took the form of a miniature Circus Maximus fronted by a triumphal arch. The pope rode through the arch, traversed the faux Circus Maximus and entered Rome.Footnote 93
Certain outstanding archaeological discoveries were attended by papal rituals. Foundation work near the site of the Theater of Pompey uncovered an enormous bronze statue of the god Hercules. Rather like the relic of a saint, it was carried in solemn procession to the Vatican, where it was installed in a place of honor in the papal museum.Footnote 94 It was one of the last objects so celebrated.
Pius IX and Christian Archaeology
During his long reign Pius took important steps to strengthen his doctrinal authority. He is best known today for his assertion of the dogma of spiritual infallibility, a decree promulgated as the world of papal secular power was coming to an end. However, he was also interested in Christianity’s more humble roots, especially as they were preserved in the sites and structures of Rome. In pursuit of those interests, he became an important pioneer in the development of Christian archaeology.
The ideological importance of the early Christian remains for Pio Nono was represented in three contemporary paintings. The first, done in 1855, by Michelangelo Pacetti, depicted the pope praying at the Carcere Mamertino, long regarded as the place of imprisonment for early Christian martyrs. In the background the pagan monuments of the Forum were shown deserted and forgotten, as the pope and his entourage crowded around the cross that symbolized the triumph of the faith.Footnote 95
The second work was an allegory of pagan and Christian Rome. Its foreground was dominated by a statue of Dea Roma with Romulus, Remus, and the she-wolf placed at her feet. St. Peter’s Basilica, shown on the right, represented triumphal Christianity. Pagan Rome was embodied in the Colosseum, while the Arch of Constantine captured the key moment of religious transition.Footnote 96 The third painting, by Domenico Tojetti, was placed in the church of Sant’Agnese fuori le Mura and captured the Christian archaeological interests of the pope. It commemorated a moment of miraculous salvation when, during a visit to excavations in that church, the floor of the basilica had collapsed, pitching the pope down into the foundations.Footnote 97
The events surrounding the miracle at St. Agnese highlighted the importance of Christian archaeology for Pius. Christian archaeology had flourished during the heroic days of the Counter-Reformation, as antiquarian research and the cult of relicts assumed an important place in the doctrinal wars between Protestants and Catholics. It became a great age of catacomb studies.Footnote 98 As Counter-Reformation fervor cooled, so did interest in Christian archaeology. The subdiscipline during the eighteenth century had no great creative figure like Winckelmann.Footnote 99
That changed with Pius IX, and those changes can be closely associated with the most important archaeological scholar of his pontificate. That was Giovanni Battista de Rossi (1822–1894), who became one of the great founding figures of modern Christian archaeology.Footnote 100 He was a pious man, who advanced the serious study of the full range of Christian monuments. At the same time he was a master of the new scientific classical archaeological and ancient historical disciplines, a scholar, who won the respect of the great Theodor Mommsen.
De Rossi came from a family with close Vatican connections. He was educated in Rome at the Jesuit Collegio Romano and at La Sapienza. His interest in epigraphy was stimulated by the Jesuit savant Giampietro Secchi (1798–1856).Footnote 101 De Rossi’s epigraphic mastery early won him the respect of the great classicist Angelo Mai, who provided him with easy access to the massive Vatican collection of inscriptions.Footnote 102
De Rossi also developed an interest in Christian archaeology and especially in the catacombs. He owed his education in that subject in large part to another Jesuit scholar Giuseppe Marchi (1795–1860). Marchi had started his archaeological career at that relict of Jesuit learning, the Museo Kircheriano. He was then appointed “Conservatore dei sacri cimiteri di Roma” by Gregory XVI, charged with supervising the early Christian burial places in and around the city. He brought to the study of early Christian monuments a new scholarly rigor. De Rossi attracted his attention, and in 1841 Marchi took his young pupil into the catacombs.Footnote 103
The experience stimulated De Rossi’s interest and helped launch his long and distinguished career.Footnote 104 Through his research on the Early Christian burial grounds, De Rossi joined Marchi and Bosio in the tradition of great catacomb researchers. The great monument of his scholarship is the three-volume study Roma sottoterranea.Footnote 105 That research brought the young De Rossi to the attention of Vatican officials. In 1849 he had his first audience with the pope. Pius appreciated the intellectual, spiritual, and propagandistic value of De Rossi’s discoveries and lent his support to the maturing scholar.Footnote 106
Early Christian archaeology took De Rossi in several directions. The first concerned the conservation of the sites themselves. In spite of their holy associations, many catacombs were sadly neglected. Some were even outside of Vatican control. Aided by Monsignor de Mérode, he launched a successful campaign for the pope to acquire the Catacomb of St. Callixtus on the Via Appia.Footnote 107 That catacomb became a major focus for De Rossi’s scholarly and spiritual life. He was ultimately buried there.
Pius’s growing interest in Christian archaeology, and De Rossi’s promotion of scientific study, conservation, and restoration led in 1852 to the creation of the Commissione di Archeologia Sacra. Its mandate was to promote scholarship and conserve the Christian heritage. It was presided over by the cardinal vicar of Rome. The membership was largely clerical but included De Rossi.Footnote 108 De Rossi further advanced the professionalism of Christian archaeology with the creation in 1863 of the scholarly journal Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana.Footnote 109
He established for himself an international reputation in both Christian and classical studies. The German medievalist Ferdinand Gregorovius described him as “the great scholar in Rome … has, as it were, grown up in the Catacombs … and has an amazing knowledge of Christian archaeology.”Footnote 110 Similar praise came from Theodor Mommsen, hardly a friend of clerical causes. In 1854 Mommsen called on him to collaborate with Wilhelm Henzen in the editing of the Roman volumes of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL).Footnote 111
De Rossi also undertook the comprehensive publication of the Christian inscriptions of Rome. The work was dedicated to Pius IX. He employed the format used in the CIL and brought to the Christian project the same scholarly rigor. The work not only provided much insight into the city’s early Christian community but also created an important tool for scholars wishing to reconstruct the world of the ordinary inhabitants of Imperial Rome.
In 1854 Pius IX further enhanced the visibility of Christian art and archaeology with the foundation in the Lateran of the Museo Pio Cristiano. It was the first museum of Christian art and archaeology created in Rome, since Benedict XIV had established the Museo Sacro early in the eighteenth century.Footnote 112 Its organization was entrusted to Marchi and De Rossi. Early Christian sarcophagi formed an important part of the collection. Another other major section consisted of Christian inscriptions, ranging from the dedications of early Christian buildings to the tombstones of the humble members of the early Christian community. The new installation was honored by a papal visit.Footnote 113
The papal interest in Christian archaeology was made visible through carefully staged visits to Christian sites and especially to the catacombs. In May of 1852 he toured the Catacombs of Domitilla and Callixtus on the Via Appia.Footnote 114 The Callixtus catacomb, the burial place of important early popes, received several other visitations.Footnote 115 Most publicized was the 1863 papal tour of the crypt of Saint Caecilia in the Callixtus catacomb. A painting was commissioned to commemorate that occasion. De Rossi is visible standing in the back row.Footnote 116
The papal patronage of Christian archaeology encouraged others to pursue such research. In 1857 the head of the Irish Dominican priory at St. Clemente, Joseph Mullooly, (1812–1880) began excavations in the subsoil of his church. Uncovered were the earlier phases of the church itself, the tombs of Cyril and Methodius, apostles to the Slavs, and a sequence of Roman remains that included one of Rome’s best-preserved Mithraea.Footnote 117 The Irish fathers continued the excavations after Mullooly’s death. Today San Clemente is one of the city’s few, fully accessible early Christian sites in the city.
This growing emphasis on the Christian monuments and especially on the catacombs found resonance among foreign tourists coming to Rome. They had a special appeal for Roman and Anglo-Catholics, but that also attracted worshippers from other sects. The fascination was reinforced by the era’s focus on morbidity and death. Catacomb visits became regular parts of the foreign tourist itinerary. Charles Dickens’s popular 1862 travel account Pictures from Italy shows a tourist, led by an intense-looking monk, making a torch-lit visit to the catacombs.Footnote 118
Pius’s concern with the physical remains of primeval Christianity produced an ambitious program of architectural restoration in many of the earliest churches.Footnote 119 The long process of rebuilding St. Paul Outside the Walls was finally completed. Even more important for Pius were his repairs at the early Christian church of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura. Like most old Roman churches, the original fabric had been hidden under centuries of accretions. Those additions were systematically stripped away, Constantinian era features including the original narthex were exposed, and the interior decorations restored to the spirit, if not the full reality of its early Christian phase.Footnote 120
Even with this growing interest in early Christian archaeology, classical Rome still received the most attention. The French were the most active of the foreign communities. From 1849 to 1870 they were the most important political and military force in the city. Pius IX was kept in power in Rome by their garrison, and he was ever interested in pleasing them.Footnote 121 When Napoleon III desired a set of casts of the Column of Trajan, Pius provided him with services of the Vatican’s expert mold makers.Footnote 122 Interest in ancient Rome reached to the highest levels of the French government. Napoleon III had a long-standing fascination with Julius Caesar. He wrote a scholarly biography of the first Roman emperor and sponsored excavations at Alesia, scene of the final conflict between Caesar and Vercingetorix.Footnote 123 Now he sought to excavate the Palatine palaces of the Caesars. Up to that moment the Palatine had seen limited archaeological activity. Proprietors like the Farnese family had mined it for portable antiquities, but there had been little systematic exploration. Renderings of the Palatine done by French architectural students in 1838 showed few ancient remains.Footnote 124 Perhaps its grim associations with the crimes of the Caesars deflected interest.
The Palatine was put to other uses. A photograph taken in the 1850s shows the ruins surrounded by orchards and vineyards.Footnote 125 Its formal gardens, especially those of the Farnese, which overlooked the Forum, were a favored tourist spot. Eccentric residences like the Neo-Gothic Villa Mills and religious establishments dotted the hill.
In 1861 Napoleon III acquired the Farnese Gardens, which covered much of the imperial palace, and sought permission to start excavations. Political realities ensured that permission was rapidly granted. From 1862 until 1867 the archaeologist Pietro Rosa directed the emperor’s Palatine excavations.Footnote 126 Rosa (1810–1891) was an interesting choice. He had started his career as an artist. He had fought for the Roman Republic and as a result had been ostracized by the pope. He was rescued by Canina, who set him to work recording the monuments on the Via Appia.Footnote 127 By 1856 his archaeological accomplishments were sufficiently recognized that he was made a member of the Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica.Footnote 128 The directorship of the Farnese excavations marked his full rehabilitation.Footnote 129
When he started digging, knowledge of Palatine topography was very limited. A plan of 1828 showed only the remains of the so-called Stadium Garden and of the imperial box overlooking the Circus Maximus.Footnote 130 Rosa now cleared large areas of the hill. Most important was his discovery of the core of the imperial palace with its reception and banqueting rooms. He worked closely with architectural students at the French Academy, who provided both plans and visual reconstructions of the Palace of the Caesars.Footnote 131
Napoleon followed the diggings closely, questioning Rosa “as if he were a professor who did nothing else than pore over books.”Footnote 132 A pompous inscription, “after the French manner,” was set up to celebrate the excavations.Footnote 133 Napoleon III would, of course, disappear from the scene after the Battle of Sedan. Pietro Rosa continued his work and became one of the most important archaeologists in early post-unification Italy.
Compared to the Germans and the French, the archaeological activities of other nations were minor. None had formal study centers in Rome nor undertook major research. Yet there were other growing communities of archaeologically informed foreigners in Rome, and they sought to create their own venues for the exploration of the ancient monuments. The most successful was the British (later British and American) Archaeological Society. The Society with its mixed membership of diplomats, residents, and long-term visitors became the venue for lectures, tours, small excavations, and a modest publication series.Footnote 134
A leading figure in the Anglo-American Archaeological Society was the Englishman John Henry Parker (1806–1884).Footnote 135 He was the son of a famous Oxford bookdealer, who in 1864 began spending winters in Rome for reasons of health. He eventually settled in the city. There he combined his interests in archaeology and in photography. He conducted minor excavations and continued his photographic activities, creating one of our best records of continuity and change in the Rome of the era.
John Henry Parker was part of a growing community of photographers, both Italian and European, who operated in Rome during the papacy of Pius IX. They provided an invaluable record of the city in the decades immediately before unification. While early processes like daguerreotypes had limited commercial appeal outside of the portrait business, the development of negative-based photography in the 1850s allowed for multiple copies and the entry of the photographer into the tourist market.
Initially, the limits of exposure technology meant that people, animals, or other moving objects were excluded. Photographers could not record scenes of daily life. They created instead a new genre of “art images,” which depicted the monuments largely isolated from the living, urban world. It reinforced the taste for decontextualized monumentality, which had started with the sventramento of the French period and would gain momentum with the activities of architectural purists in the decades after unification.
The most important Roman photographer of the 1850s was Giacomo Caneva (1813–1865). He came to Rome in 1847 and spent the rest of his life photographing the papal city.Footnote 136 His Rome was captured in a view that he took from Monte Mario. The urban core had not changed much since the days of the Counter-Reformation. The surrounding countryside still extended well inside the Aurelian Wall. The desolate Campagna with its parade of ruined aqueduct arches remained unchanged. The unfettered Tiber flowed and overflowed through the city. Animals were still to be found in the old Cattle Forum.
The D’Alesssandri brothers were another photographic team who recorded that last era of papal Rome. They did portraits of high papal officials, but also views of the Capitoline galleries and the Forum. An 1863 photomontage combined the places and monuments most popular with the tourists. Depicted were the major churches and the most important archaeological sites with special emphasis on the Colosseum and the Forum. The collection was completed with a collage of the important fountains, gates, and piazzas.Footnote 137
The dramatic changes after 1870 give to the last years of papal Rome a nostalgic glow. Tourists remembered ruins still largely imbedded in the urban fabric and in the daily routines of the city. Art taste was changing, and the foreign art colony was shrinking to an increasingly marginal group of aging Europeans and Americans. However, trips to studios were still part of the cultivated visitor’s Roman experience. Extended sojourns in the galleries and collections were expected of the educated.Footnote 138 The Campagna with its ruins, sheep, and picturesque desolation still drew the artistically inclined.Footnote 139 Papal ceremonies linked past and present. In 1869 Pio Nono, as one of his last celebratory acts, staged a gigantic fireworks display, which took the form of the Mausoleum of Augustus.Footnote 140
