Archaeology in Piazza Venezia - History of an urban context

SERIES: Landscapes of the Center of Rome
SPEAKER: Mirella Serlorenzi, Director of the Baths of Caracalla
DATE: Thursday, October 3, 6 pm

How has the area of Piazza Venezia changed over time? This is the question we will try to answer by traversing XX centuries of history. Thanks to archaeological excavation, it is possible to reconstruct vanished contexts of which historical sources leave no traces. Certainly, the area has always been inhabited, but few know that during the Byzantine reign, at the behest of Emperor Justinian, the mint that produced bronze coins was located here. On the same site, a few centuries earlier, stood the Athenaeum, a building for higher studies, debates, and lectures. Emperor Hadrian wanted to create a specific and functional architectural typology for that academic institute, a kind of university, in which the best lecturers were appointed by the emperor himself and salaried through the imperial treasury, to endow the city with a cultural organism of the highest level. In modern times the area sees a final use of the ruins of the prestigious Roman building to support the foundations of the Fornari Hospital, of which only the church of S. Maria dei Funari remains in view today. As in a kaleidoscope, the fabrics of the city are born, changed, destroyed, or partially preserved, giving rise to new landscapes that are the sum of many cities.

A journey through time that will allow us to discover this very central area of Rome.

Mirella Serlorenzi works at the Special Superintendence of Rome where she holds the position of Director of the Baths of Caracalla and is responsible for the Functional Area Archeology. Previously she directed the Museum of the Cripta Balbi, was head of the MNR office in Palazzo Massimo, and directed the National Museum of the High Middle Ages.

She coordinated archaeological research under the Enpam Palace in Piazza Vittorio and is the creator and scientific director of the museological project of the Nymphaeum Museum.

She is the scientific head and coordinator of major archaeological excavations in the Esquiline area, at Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II and Piazza Dante, and in other areas of Rome's historic center. In particular of the excavation of the Athenaeum in Piazza Venezia, and of the archaeological complex in Largo S. Susanna. At the latter site, she is overseeing the transformation into a museum of the area, which should be open to the public in 2025.

She has overseen major archaeological projects for the study and restoration of buildings: on the Palatine at the Domus Tiberia, in the Forum Boarium in collaboration with the Word Monuments Found, the restoration of the Temples of Portunus and Hercules, and the Arch of Janus.

She is carrying out many projects for the PNRR among them she has developed a master plan for a revival of the archaeological area of the Baths of Caracalla.

She is a member of the board of the Society of Italian Medieval Archaeologists, SAMI.

To her credit, she has multiple scientific publications.

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