Walk 4

Santa Sabina to the Theatre of Marcellus

PART 3 - The Church of St. George to The Theatre of Marcellus

13. Head back past the Arch of Janus and brave the traffic to cross the main road to the garden containing the round Temple of Hercules and the Temple of Portunis. Both now contain small churches but these are rarely used. The Temple of Hercules used to be called the Temple of Vesta because it looked like the one in the Forum, but that was wrong. This temple, built in the 2nd.C. BCE, was the first marble temple in Rome (all previously in tufa), the stone imported at huge expense from Athens and is one of Rome’s few round temples. Hercules was considered a protector of butchers, hence its proximity to the cattle market. The roof is modern and a marble frieze over the columns is missing, giving the temple a disturbing out-of-proportion look. According to legend, neither flies nor dogs will enter this temple. Probably has something to do with the heavily locked door.

14. Just along is the Temple of Portunis, god of harbours, but also grain and livestock. Built between 120-80 BCE and converted to a church in 874 dedicated to Saint Mary of Egypt, it features a mixture of columns… some marble, some tufa. The Ionic capitals and fine symmetry have made this temple the subject of many engravings.

15. Time to brave the traffic again, but this time across the Lungetevere towards the river. To the right of the busy Ponte Palatino is the Ponte Rotto, or “broken bridge”. This was originally the Ponte Aemilius, Rome’s oldest stone bridge, built in the 2nd.C. BCE. The Tiber’s current is so strong here that the bridge has twice collapsed and been rebuilt, the last time in 1568. It then fell again in 1598 and has remained ‘broken’ since. Walk out along the left side of the Ponte Palatino to get a view under the bank of the river to the exit of the Cloaca Maxima, the 5th.C. BCE sewer which runs (now thankfully redirected) from the Roman Forum.

16. Retrace your steps to the end of the gardens and the beginning of the Via Luigi Petroselli. Here you come to one of the last surviving examples of Roman medieval domestic architecture, the Casa dei Crescenzi.  Built by the Crescenzi family between 1040 and 1065, its architecture sees the extravagant use of volutes, coffering, putti and sphinxes. At the time, families throughout Rome attempted to rival one another in their use of appropriated antiquities to flaunt their Roman lineage.

Continue to walk along the Via Luigi Petroselli, a road build by Mussolini as part of his grand scheme to modernize Rome, past Fascist style government offices. Across the road are the foundations of the Forum Holitorium, this being the center of the vegetable markets of the Velabrum. Little remains, but just further along past the Forum is another over-restored medieval house.

17. Crossing the Via Foro Olitorio, you come to a three-temple complex that now houses the Church of St Nicola in Carcere (St. Nicholas by the Gaol), a reference to a nearby 7th.C. prison. Disentangling the temples from the church is not easy, particularly as the left and right temples are barely visible, but the church basically sits atop the three, with columns from each visible in its exterior and interior walls. The temples are from the 2nd and 3rd.C.BCE, while the church was built over their remains in the 7th.C.CE. The church is dedicated to St. Nicholas who is patron saint of sailors and children, and of course, is Santa Claus.

18. At last we approach the Theatre of Marcellus, but to get to it you first walk past the theatre to the three columns that are all that remain of the Temple of Apollo Sosiano, first dedicated in the 5th.C.BCE, then rebuilt by Augustus in the 1st.C.CE. The medieval brick building behind is a 13th.C. hotel.

The site has long been populated by random buildings and houses, covering all of the area.  Between 1926 and 1932, as part of his grand plan to restore the majesty of Imperial Rome as a forerunner to his Fascist government, Mussolini cleared the area to allow a better view of the Theatre of Marcellus, uncovering the fallen columns. In 1940, the columns were raised again, although doubt exists as to their exact original positions. Interestingly, the capitals are Greek Corinthian with some extra Roman vegies added, and the columns feature the first examples of the new ‘Italic’ style with alternating wide and narrow flutes.

19. Walk down the ramp to stand in front of the enormous Theatre of Marcellus. Started by Julius Caesar but completed by Augustus (who dedicated it to his nephew Marcellus) in the 1st.C.BCE, this was 80 years before and possibly the inspiration for the Colosseum. The interior is now inaccessible but little remains of the open-air theatre that once held 15,000 people. The network of arches, corridors, tunnels and ramps that gave access to the interior was ornamented with a screen of Greek columns: Doric at the base, Ionic in the middle. It is believed that Corinthian columns were used for the upper level but this is uncertain as the theatre was reconstructed in the Middle Ages, removing the top tier of seating and the columns. The theatre fell out of use in the early 4th.C. and the structure served as a quarry for building materials to be used all over Rome.

However, the statues located inside the building were restored in 421 and the remaining structure then housed small residential buildings. In the Early Middle Ages the theatre was used as a fortress of the Fabii family, saving the complex from further destruction. The Savelli held it in the 13th.C. Later, in the 16th.C., the residence of the Orsini family was built atop the ruins. By the 19th.C., rises in the street level meant that almost half the ground floor was below it. Now the upper floors are divided into multiple apartments (got a spare couple of million euro?).

You can walk further around the base of the Theatre and exit at some further excavations and the ghetto, which I will attempt to describe some time soon.

Thanks for much of the information used in this walk to sometime resident of both Rome and Sydney, Jeffrey Hilton, his recommendation for an excellently detailed guidebook “The Rome Guide” by Mauro Lucentini, and the Wiki “Churches in Rome” site.