Heading south in the historic center shortly before one encounters a rhino in front of a quadrifons arch, there’s a lovely palazzo off Piazza Campitelli on the Via Montanara. The first time I happened past it was when I went to the Museo della Mura at the Porta Appia. That was Sunday and the portellone (big ol’ door) was closed so it was just a felicitously located building. I barely noted it because it was clearly new (well, new for Rome).

When I returned down that path for the Wednesday excursion which took me past the rhino, the portellone was wide open and I saw a beautiful courtyard with a fountain and a few handsome pieces of ancient marble work. That was notable and how. I popped in to have a quick look around, as one does in open doors in Rome, and I saw this:

That is what the employees of the Municipal Department of Culture see every morning when they trudge in to the office. The door was open for randos like me to wander in because there’s a little information booth with a bunch of pamphlets about cultural activities sponsored by the city and oh yeah, a freaking incredible view of three important ancient sites and a cool Renaissance building.

The view from the courtyard stretches from the slopes of the Capitoline to the Velabrum valley. This was always a busy area, even before the Cloaca drained the marsh, because it’s where the Isola Tiberina divides the Tiber making a convenient ford for a commercial harbor. The remains of the first bridge built on the river, the Ponte Rotto, still stand in front of the island.

Once the marshes were dried up, the area filled with temples and monumental structures. The Theater of Marcellus was built in by August in 13 or 11 B.C. in memory of his beloved nephew who died at a young age under suspicious circumstances (did Livia poison him?). It was originally three levels high, the first level supported by Doric columns, the second Ionic and the third adorned by Corinthian pilasters. It seated 15,000.

A Temple of Apollo was first built on the site in 431 B.C. by consul Gnaeus Iulius Mento in thanks for the conclusion of a plague. It was the first and for centuries the only temple to Apollo in the city. The remains visible today date to a rebuild of the site during the Augustan period, a rebuild made necessary by various demolitions done to accommodate the Theater of Marcellus.

You will not be surprised to hear that the theater, like sooo many other ancient Roman buildings, was converted into a fortress by local potentates. In the Renaissance the fortress got an architectural upgrade into a palace, designed by Baldassarre Peruzzi for the noble Savelli family, later owned by the Orsini.

In the 1930s, the Fascist thirst for creating a grandiose vision of the ancient Caput Mundi led to the demolition of much of the medieval and Renaissance construction in the area. The columns from the Temple of Apollo, incorporated into a later building, were reconstructed in their original location and raised on April 21st, 1940, Rome’s birthday. Other remains were released from the bondage of the structures built on top of them.

So what you see from the courtyard is a remarkable cross-section of Roman history. The tower in the left middle ground is the Torre dei Pierleoni, a medieval defensive tower once linked to all the fortressification of the Theater of Marcellus. A block or so behind it, past the tree, is the facade of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, of Bocca della Verita’ fame. On the right is the Theater of Marcellus, only two of its original three ancient storeys remaining, with the Renaissance palazzo taking up the third storey now. The columns and hill they’re on are the site of the Temple of Apollo. The mass against the fence in the left foreground is the podium of the Temple of Bellona, originally erected in 296 B.C. to celebrate a victory over the Etruscans and also reconstructed under Augustus (5-15 B.C.). The building with the tile roof overlooking the Temple of Apollo is the Albergo della Catena, an active inn from at least the 16th century until 1931 when it was bought by the city of Rome.

In the Forum Boarium across from the Theater of Marcellus and a block or so from Santa Maria in Cosmedin where crazy people who have seen Roman Holiday one too many times line up for hours to get a picture of themselves putting their hands in an ancient manhole cover, lies one of those gems that is so large it’s weird to call it hidden. And yet it is, at least in the sense of being little known these days.

It is the only surviving quadrifrons arch in Rome. Quadrifons literally means “four fronts” and that’s how the arch was designed: four pylons supporting a cross vault, like the way you set up the central double wicket in croquet. That gives it the look of a cube with a gate on each side. It’s the four faces that earned it the appellation Arch of Janus, a deity sometimes depicted in Roman iconography in the form of Ianus Quadrifons, so with four faces instead of two. The arch wasn’t dedicated to him. The Latin word for door, “ianua,” is derived from the god and is the likely reference in the name.

There are no records of it going by the Arch of Janus in antiquity. Historians think it might be the “arcum divi Constantini” listed as one of the monuments in the Velabrum in the regionary Notitia urbis Romae in which case it would have been dedicated to Constantine or his one of his sons Constantine II, Constans or Constantius II.

The arch was built in the second half of the 4th century A.D. in the Velabrum, the valley connecting the Roman Forum with the Forum Boarium (the cattle market). Once a marsh fed by the Tiber, the area was drained by the construction of the Cloaca Maxima, and the arch straddles the large drain leading to the great sewer. It was constructed of concrete and faced with marble taken from earlier structures. The marble cladding of the pylons have two rows of three niches on each side. Empty now, they originally contained statues. Today the only figural decoration remaining is a different goddess on each keystone: Roma on the east pylon, Minerva on the north, and possibly Juno and Ceres on the remaining two (identification is uncertain).

In the Middle Ages the Frangipani family occupied it, filling in the gates and using it as a fortress. Those alterations were corrected in 1827-1830 and the arch became an arch again. There was just one wee little problem. The restorers mistakenly believed that an attic atop the arch was a Frangipani addition and tore the whole thing off. It was original, part of the ancient arch now lost forever.

Through the opening of the gates you can see the church of San Giorgio al Velabro right behind it. In 1993, a car bomb went off in front of the church, after which the arch was fenced in and visitors locked out. While other buildings in the Velabrum were restored in the 90s and early 2000s, the arch alone remained untouched, blackening under the constant assault of Roman traffic. It was included in the World Monuments Fund 2014 World Monuments Watch, and with funding from private sponsors, the WMF and the Superintendency for the Coliseum were able to start an in-depth study and restoration of the arch.

In May of 2017, visitors were invited to see the work in progress at a WMF-organized Watch Day. This video shows tantalizing but not satisfying snippets of the restoration.

A year and a half has passed since that Watch Day, and as of 9:00 AM October 24th, 2018, the Arch of Janus is still fenced in. A sign on the gate warns that visitors are not allowed due to the ongoing restoration work. There was no work visible. No workers. No scaffolding. There was, however, a rhino.

Rome, ladies and gentlemen.

This morning was all about the city of Rome as an easily accessible museum with no tickets to buy. After the de rigeur breakfast caffe’ at Sant’Eustachio, which, just by the by, is a miracle wondercoffee touched by the gods, it was off to see a couple of little things plopped in the middle of random alleyways in the centro storico. First up: a lump of marble with what looks like a cut in it. According to legend, that cut was put there by the Roland, knight of Charlemagne and hero of France’s national epic, the chanson de geste The Song of Roland. This is why the tiny, otherwise unremarkable alleyway is called Vicolo della Spada d’Orlando (Alley of the Sword of Roland).

There are actually two legends attendant this lump, both star not just Roland, but his trusty sword, Durendal. Durendal was the sharpest sword in the world and unbreakable because it was filled with the power of four relics: one tooth of Saint Peter’s, some blood from Saint Basil, a piece of the Virgin Mary’s robe and a hair from Saint Denis. Charlemagne had received it directly from an angel and gave it to his loyal warlord Roland.

Roland was fighting a Muslim ambush at Roncesvalles in northern Spain, slaughtering thousands with his great skill in combat and his unbreakable, sharpest of sharp sword. Even so, the Franks were tremendously outnumbered and when he saw that he was about to be overrun, Roland tried to destroy Durendal to keep such a powerful weapon out of their hands. He struck a powerful blow against a solid marble column. The sword did not break. It just cut the column instead. Roland would die at Roncesvalles from blowing his horn Oliphant, calling to Charlemagne’s forces that they avenge him. He blew so hard his temples exploded and his brains popped out. Somehow, the piece of marble with the cut in it made its way to a Roman alley. That niggling detail is not recorded in this iteration of the legend.

The second version cuts the whole mysterious transport of a column chunk out of the picture and instead simply declares that Roland was in Rome this one time. He was attacked and in defending himself against said attackers, he slashed vigorously in all directions at his many enemies, inadvertently cutting through a nearby column.

Now, it is reasonable that a whole column might have been in that wee streetlet, because the remains of a wall have been found there that once belonged the Temple of Matidia, a temple built by Hadrian in 119 A.D. dedicated to his mother-in-law Salonia Matidia, niece of Trajan. Almost none of that temple remains, but there are a couple of columns embedded into a palazzo at the end of the alley in Piazza Capranica. That Roland happened to be walking by only to be beset upon by foes and stabbed his invincible sword in the stone may be less reasonable but it’s even more awesome.

Amusing anecdote typical of Rome: there were three workmen lounging around at the entrance to the alley. They were very busily engaged in smoking in conversation. I bid them good morning and stepped between them to sidle into the Vicolo. One of them told me there was no entry. I pointed out that I had already entered, really, and only wanted to catch a glimpse of the Roland thingy. He was all “Eh. Might as well go through since you’re there.” AGREED, KIND SIR!

After all that ado, here is the mark of the spada d’Orlando, one as I found it with a tiny (empty) bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin on top, one as I left it, garbage removed.

The second stop on the random alleyway tour was Via del Pie’ di Marmo, Way of the Marble Foot. I wrote about that marble foot more than seven years ago when it got a shiny new pedicure transforming it from the gunky blackened thing I remembered from childhood to a clean white. The news accounts at the time said it had a new fence around it, and so it does, a simple black iron square band. It’s not as bright white as it was seven years ago, but frankly I think the lived-in look suits it better. I’m happy it got some attention amidst the unstoppable avalanche of work that always needs doing in so ancient a city.

Where were we? Right. The Aurelian Walls south where the Appia Antica begins. Today it’s known as the Porta San Sebastiano after the Christian soldier martyred by Diocletian whose remains are interred in the basilica that bears his name a couple of miles down the Appia, but its original name when it was built by Aurelian around 275 A.D. was the Porta Appia, for obvious reasons, and the museum’s labels and maps refer to it by the Aurelian name.

Before you reach the huge gate with its two crenelated towers that make it look like a storybook medieval castle, there’s a much smaller, rather hard-worn Roman arch called the Arch of Drusus. It bears no relation to your friendly neighborhood blogger and probably no relation to any of the other Drusi who have graced (or disgraced) the family name either. It was used as part of an extension of the Aqua Marcia added by Caracalla in the early third century to feed the enormous thirst of his new baths. It pre-existed the construction of the spur, however. All that’s left of it now is a single arch — it used to be a triple — with some concrete and brick on top that likely dates to after the Caracalla-era construction.

You can see from the picture that the arch appears as you approach on the Via Sebastiano (closed to traffic on Sundays, btw, so pedestrians and bikes get to spread out nicely). Click to enlarge the image because the arch almost disappears against the towering backdrop of the gate. Here it is as seen from the window of the first gallery in the museum:

Incidentally, the black and white mosaic inlaid in the marble floor of that first gallery (see pic from yesterday) is not ancient. The marble floor isn’t either. They were installed in 1942-1943 when the Porta Appia was used as an office by the Secretary of the Fascist Party Ettore Muti. There are no labels claiming that modification, needless to say.

Actually, there are very few in the way of information panels in the whole museum. The first room did have a nice touchscreen with photos and explanations of the walls (all of them) and the gates from the early Servian ones to the Aurelian, the modifications of Honorius, and later demolitions/reconstructions by a slew of Popes. It was comprehensive and the text is available in Italian and English. I wish they sold a version in book or DVD form, but they don’t sell anything. No gift shop at all. That makes me a sad panda, especially since I really want a foldout version of this model:

A few more details about the awesome wall walk. There are more stairs than you might expect leading up to and down from the towers, and they have pretty hefty rises. None of the information placards mentioned the steps, so they could date to Aurelian, Honorius or later alterations, or be a mixture. I bring them up because they very clearly employ recycled building materials, a practice that was done from ancient times all through to 20th century when laws against cannibalizing cultural patrimony were passed.

Here is an arrow slit just because I think arrow slits are cool, and this one is deep in an ancient wall therefore extra cool. The bow windows in the Porta Appia were modified as late as 1848 when they were made more rectangular to accommodate modern artillery, as you can see in this image. A pigeon gave me a brutal side-eye through one of those and it would have made such an awesome picture but the little bugger flew off before I could capture him.

The third tower along the wall walk route is nifty for two reasons: it retains its original configuration from the modifications of Honorius (401-402 A.D.) and because a hermit is believed to have lived there in the Middle Ages. A fresco of the Virgin Mary and Child was painted on the exterior during that time. It was recently restored and still looks pretty bad, not unexpectedly so given its exposure to the elements for centuries and the budget nature of the original work.

I mentioned in my bleary post yesterday that the interiors of the two massive flanking towers were cool. They are suffused with light, unlike the towers in the wall, and the west tower has a fascinating series of graffiti preserved and embedded in its new(ish) plaster walls. I assume these came from the outside of the gate which still has a bunch of medieval inscriptions carved into its marble, but there were no panels explaining them.

There you have it. A reasonably full account of my visit to the Museo delle Mura. Obviously I recommend it highly, and since the Appia Antica starts at its feet, it’s an excellent way to start off an excursion to the catacombs and many, many other important burial sites along Rome’s most trafficked ancient roadway.