Roman Architecture Course

By Diana E E Kleiner | Roman Architecture Lecture 24 of 24 Lecture Description Kleiner presents the three options for the course’s term paper, which fall into two main categories: a research paper or a project to design a Roman city. For the research paper, she suggests cities and monuments not covered or mentioned briefly […]

By Diana E E Kleiner | Roman Architecture Lecture 23 of 24 Lecture Description Professor Kleiner presents the architecture of Constantine the Great, the last pagan and first Christian emperor of Rome, who founded Constantinople as the "New Rome" in A.D. 324. She notes that Constantine began with commissions that were tied to the pagan

By Diana E E Kleiner | Roman Architecture Lecture 22 of 24 Lecture Description Professor Kleiner characterizes third-century Rome as an "architectural wasteland" due to the rapid change of emperors, continuous civil war, and a crumbling economy. There was no time to build and the only major architectural commission was a new defensive wall. The

By Diana E E Kleiner | Roman Architecture Lecture 21 of 24 Lecture Description Professor Kleiner explores the architecture of the western provinces of the Roman Empire, focusing on sites in what are now North Italy, France, Spain, and Croatia. Her major objective is to characterize "Romanization," the way in which the Romans provide amenities

By Diana E E Kleiner | Roman Architecture Lecture 20 of 24 Lecture Description Professor Kleiner discusses the rebirth of Athens under the Romans especially during the reigns of the two philhellenic emperors, Augustus and Hadrian. While some have dismissed the architecture of Roman Athens as derivative of its Classical and Hellenistic Greek past, Professor

By Diana E E Kleiner | Roman Architecture Lecture 19 of 24 Lecture Description Professor Kleiner features the baroque phenomenon in Roman architecture, in which the traditional vocabulary of architecture, consisting of columns and other conventional architectural elements, is manipulated to enliven building facades and inject them with dynamic motion. This baroque trend is often

By Diana E E Kleiner | Roman Architecture Lecture 18 of 24 Lecture Description Professor Kleiner discusses two Roman cities in North Africa: Timgad and Leptis Magna. Timgad was created as an entirely new colony for Roman army veterans by Trajan in A.D. 100, and designed all at once as an ideal castrum plan. Leptis

By Diana E E Kleiner | Roman Architecture Lecture 17 of 24 Lecture Description Professor Kleiner discusses the increasing size of Roman architecture in the second and third centuries A.D. as an example of a "bigger is better" philosophy. She begins with an overview of tomb architecture, a genre that, in Rome as in Ostia,

By Diana E E Kleiner | Roman Architecture Lecture 16 of 24 Lecture Description Professor Kleiner focuses on Ostia, the port of Rome, characterized by its multi-storied residential buildings and its widespread use of brick-faced concrete. She begins with the city’s public face–the Forum, Capitolium, Theater, and Piazzale delle Corporazioni. The Piazzale, set behind the

  By Diana E E Kleiner | Roman Architecture Lecture 15 of 24 Lecture Description Professor Kleiner features the architecture built in and around Rome during the reign of Hadrian. The lecture begins with the Temple of Venus and Roma, a Greek-style temple constructed near the Colosseum in Rome, which may have been designed by