An urban landscape of symbols, rites, and ceremonies: the Via Sacra between ancient and medieval times

CYCLE: The Second Millennium of Rome.
SPEAKER: Domenico Palombi
DATE: Thursday, Sept. 25, 6 p.m

The transformations that, between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, altered the urban landscape of the ancient Sacred Way represent an exemplary chapter in the “conversion” of pagan Rome that manifested itself-between continuity and rupture, between conflict and coexistence-in the progressive material and symbolic transformation of the city space, first and foremost that of the political, religious and representative center of the imperial capital, between the Palatine, Forum and Capitoline Hill.

This new landscape constitutes the background of an articulated set of secular and religious ceremonies, important occasions for the care and reactualization of a monumental heritage evocative of Rome's greatness and guarantor of the perpetuity of its destiny: the encounter between past and present recovers and reinterprets the ancient and qualifies a new Via Sacra as a significant segment of the landscape and liturgical calendar of the Christian city.

Domenico Palombi is an associate professor of Classical Archaeology at Sapienza University of Rome and a member of Academies and Research Institutes. He studies the urban history of Rome, the architecture and urbanism of Latium vetus, the memory of the ancient in Rome and Latium, and the history of Roman archaeology between Rome Capital and the fascist regime. He directed research in the so-called “Villa dei Gordiani” at the 3rd mile of the Via Prenestina and the excavation of the horrea Piperataria in the Roman Forum. He has published more than one hundred and fifty monographs, editorships, articles and more than one hundred and sixty entries in the “Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae.”

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