ID AND LOCATION
| Stanford #
| 557abc |
| AG1980 #
| 557a-c |
| PM1960 #
| 557 a-c |
| Slab #
| unknown |
| Adjoins
| none |
CONDITION
| Located
| false |
| Incised
| true |
| Surviving
| true |
| Subfragments
| 3 |
| Plaster Parts
| 0 |
| Back Surface
| smooth |
| Slab Edges
| 0 |
| Clamp Holes
| 0 |
| Tassello
| no |
TECHNICAL INFO
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| ANALYSIS
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| Description A street traverses the entire fragment group from bottom left to top right where it makes a sharp turn left and continues along the top of fr. a. Along its top course, the street is flanked on the right by an arcade and on the left by a row of tabernae. One of these shops has an opening in the back which gives access to a large courtyard onto which additional rooms seem to open. Along its main course, the street is lined on the left by a series of rooms, all of which open onto it. Those on the far left also have openings in the back, through which there is access to a corridor(?) and additional rooms. The right side of the street, along its main course, is flanked by rooms as well. Some of these open onto the street, others don't.
Identification Rows of tabernae are ubiquitous on the Plan, and the type depicted along the top left course of the street are of the most common type seen on the FUR. Each shop consisted of a single room with a wide opening towards the street that could be screened off at night. The owners may have resided with their families on a wooden platform in the back of the shop. Those shops with additional openings in the rear (bottom left) may have had a wooden partition in the middle, separating the front shop off from the rear, residential section of the room. This rear opening seemed to give access to a corridor and other residential spaces. The rooms that line the right side of the street seem to have been a mix of shops and apartments, the shops having direct access to the street, the apartments being harder to access directly. The luxury of having a covered sidewalk or portico in front of a row of shops as along the top section of the street in this fragment was apparently not restricted to such grandiose areas as the slopes of the Palatine, facing the Circus Maximus (see fr. 8bde). Frs. 33abc, 34a, 34b and 34c depict a large, predominantly commercial area by the Tiber which abounds with rows of tabernae and arcades. These covered arcades or porticos signify that there was a second storey or a mezzanine level above the shops, which would have provided the shop owners with additional living room (Reynolds 1996, p. 158).
Significance This fragment provides an interesting view of a mixed residential and commercial area of Rome. The skewing of the otherwise rectilinear architecture demonstrates the map makers' difficulty with mosaicking the surveyed areas together. |
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| HISTORY OF FRAGMENT |
| Like the majority of FUR fragments, these three now joined pieces were discovered in 1562 in a garden behind the Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian. From here, they were transferred to the Palazzo Farnese and stored there. They were not among the fragments that were reproduced in the Renaissance drawings that are now kept in the Vatican, but Giovanni Pietro Bellori included them in his 1673 publication. In 1742, the fragments were moved to the Capitoline Museums and exhibited with some of the other known fragments in wooden frames along the main staircase. Since then, they have been stored with the other FUR fragments in various places: the storerooms of the Capitoline Museums (1903-1924), 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. (The history of these fragments corresponds to Iter E as summarized in PM 1960, p. 56.)
Text by Tina Najbjerg |
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| KEYWORDS
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| tabernae, apartments, street, arcade |
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