ID AND LOCATION
| Stanford #
| 202(*) |
| AG1980 #
| 202 |
| PM1960 #
| 202 |
| Slab #
| unknown |
| Adjoins
| none |
CONDITION
| Located
| false |
| Incised
| true |
| Surviving
| true |
| Subfragments
| 1 |
| Plaster Parts
| 0 |
| Back Surface
| smooth |
| Slab Edges
| 1 |
| Clamp Holes
| 0 |
| Tassello
| no |
TECHNICAL INFO
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| ANALYSIS
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| Description The upper edge of the fragment is a slab edge. A long wall separates a building complex on the left side of the fragment from two rows of tabernae on the right. The tabernae face each other across a wide street, in the middle of which lies a small, rectangular feature. The building complex to the left consists of a central courtyard with a rectangular feature in the middle, around which various rooms are clustered. At top, two groups of tabernae are separated by the street or long alley that leads to the central court. Each group has a set of stairs and a back court, but only one of these courts provides access to the central courtyard. To the right, the courtyard is framed by another group of open and closed rooms, with one staircase visible.
Identification The two groups of tabernae from the building complex in this fragment are typical of tabernae with rear courts (cf. Reynolds 1996, fig. 3.15). Shops that face each other across a street are also common on the Plan (see for example fragments 40cdefgh, 245, and 433). The rooms that surround a central courtyard on the left may be a multi-storeyed apartment complex. The two rectangular features visible in the central courtyard and in the wide street may represent fountains or basins, similar to the one visible in fr. 451. The former would have provided the inhabitants of the building complex with water, while the latter would have served the public in general.
Significance This piece is a typical example of unidentified fragments of the Plan. No monumental buildings are represented, and the fragment instead provides a view of the lesser known structures that made up the urban fabric of Rome: the residential and commercial buildings. |
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| HISTORY OF FRAGMENT |
| Like the majority of FUR fragments, this piece was discovered in 1562 in a garden behind the Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian. From here, it was transferred to the Palazzo Farnese and stored there. It was not among the fragments that were reproduced in the Renaissance drawings that are now kept in the Vatican, but Giovanni Pietro Bellori included it in his 1673 publication. In 1742, it was moved to the Capitoline Museums and exhibited with some of the other known fragments in wooden frames along the main staircase. In 1903, museum curators included the fragment in a reconstruction of the FUR mounted on a wall behind the Palazzo dei Conservatori (1903-1924). Since then, the fragment has been stored with the other known FUR fragments in various places: the storerooms of the Antiquarium Comunale (1924-1939), the Capitoline Museums again (1939-1955), the Palazzo Braschi (1955-1998), and since 1998 in the Museo della Civiltà Romana in EUR under the auspices of the Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturali del Comune di Roma. (This fragments history corresponds to Iter E as summarized in PM 1960, p. 56.)
Text by Tina Najbjerg and Jennifer Trimble. |
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| KEYWORDS
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| tabernae, apartments, fountains, basins, stairs, shops, street, |
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