Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the CampagnaBurn, Robert
History
Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the Campagna
Burn, Robert
Rome (Italy) -- Antiquities; Rome (Italy) -- Description and travel
A hundred years after this, the restoration by Septimius Severus, recorded
in the extant inscription, took place A.D. 195. Honorius closed this
temple, with the other temples of Rome, in A.D. 399, but it was not
consecrated as a Christian church until two hundred years afterwards, when
Boniface IV. dedicated it to All Saints in allusion to the pagan name of
Pantheon, giving the name of S. Maria ad Martyres. Two acts of plunder
perpetrated upon the building deserve mention. In the middle of the
seventh century, A.D. 650, Constans II. took off the gilded bronze tiles
of the roof, and was carrying them to Constantinople, with the plunder of
the Forum of Trajan, when he was intercepted at Syracuse by the Saracens
and killed. His act of plunder was imitated by Urban VIII., who in 1632
took away the bronze girders which supported the roof of the pronaos and
had them melted down and used partly for the pillars of the baldachino in
S. Peter’s, and partly for the cannon of the castle of S. Angelo.
[Sidenote: Aqua Virgo.]
Not far from the Pantheon the arches of the Aqua Virgo projected from the
side of the Pincian Hill and crossed the Via Lata. Some remains of these
arches are still to be seen in the Via del Nazareno (No. 12) at the back
of the Fountain of Trevi. They bear an inscription which was copied in the
ninth century by the anonymous chronicler of Einsiedlen, recording the
restoration of the arches by Claudius after they had been partially
destroyed by Caligula, who intended to build an amphitheatre in this
neighbourhood. The arches are now entirely covered with rubbish, and the
conduit of the aqueduct itself, which formerly was raised upon them, is
consequently now upon the level of the ground. The inscription stands on
the side of the conduit, and was formerly at the spot where some principal
street passed under the aqueduct. Above it is a simple cornice, and below,
an architrave, with the upper part of some Doric pilasters, appears above
the surface of the water, which is here tapped to afford a washing trough
to the laundresses of the neighbourhood. The masonry is of solid
travertine blocks, carefully cut and fitted.
[Sidenote: Dogana in the Piazza di Pietra.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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