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HSAR 252 - Lecture 23 - Rome of Constantine and a New Rome

Professor Kleiner presents the architecture of Constantine the Great, the last pagan and first Christian emperor of Rome, who founded Constantinople as the “New Rome” in A.D. 324. She notes that Constantine began with commissions that were tied to the pagan past (the Baths of Constantine in Rome) but built others (the Aula Palatina at Trier) that looked to the Christian future. Professor Kleiner makes an impassioned case that some of the finest and most innovative Roman buildings date to the Constantinian period.

HSAR 252 - Lecture 22 - Rome Redux: The Tetrarchic Renaissance

Professor Kleiner characterizes third-century Rome as an “architectural wasteland” due to the rapid change of emperors, continuous civil war, and a crumbling economy. There was no time to build and the only major architectural commission was a new defensive wall. The crisis came to an end with the rise of Diocletian, who created a new form of government called the Tetrarchy, or four-man rule, with two leaders in the East and two in the West.

HSAR 252 - Lecture 21 - Making Mini Romes on the Western Frontier

Professor Kleiner explores the architecture of the western provinces of the Roman Empire, focusing on sites in what are now North Italy, France, Spain, and Croatia. Her major objective is to characterize “Romanization,” the way in which the Romans provide amenities to their new colonies while, at the same time, transforming them into miniature versions of the city of Rome. Professor Kleiner discusses the urban design of two Augustan towns before proceeding to an investigation of a variety of such established Roman building types as theaters, temples, and aqueducts.

HSAR 252 - Lecture 20 - Roman Wine in Greek Bottles: The Rebirth of Athens

Professor Kleiner discusses the rebirth of Athens under the Romans especially during the reigns of the two philhellenic emperors, Augustus and Hadrian. While some have dismissed the architecture of Roman Athens as derivative of its Classical and Hellenistic Greek past, Professor Kleiner demonstrates that the high quality of Greek marble and Greek stone carvers made these buildings consequential. In addition some structures provide evidence for the frequent and creative exchange of architectural ideas and motifs between Greece and Rome in Roman times.

HSAR 252 - Lecture 19 - Baroque Extravaganzas: Rock Tombs, Fountains, and Sanctuaries in Jordan, Lebanon, and Libya

Professor Kleiner features the baroque phenomenon in Roman architecture, in which the traditional vocabulary of architecture, consisting of columns and other conventional architectural elements, is manipulated to enliven building façades and inject them with dynamic motion. This baroque trend is often conspicuously ornamental and began to be deployed on the walls of forums and tombs in Italy already in the late first century A.D.

HSAR 252 - Lecture 18 - Hometown Boy: Honoring an Emperor's Roots in Roman North Africa

Professor Kleiner discusses two Roman cities in North Africa: Timgad and Leptis Magna. Timgad was created as an entirely new colony for Roman army veterans by Trajan in A.D. 100, and designed all at once as an ideal castrum plan. Leptis Magna, conversely, grew more gradually from its Carthaginian roots, experiencing significant Roman development under Augustus and Hadrian. Septimius Severus, the first Roman emperor from North Africa, was born at Leptis and his hometown was renovated in connection with his historic visit to the city.

HSAR 252 - Lecture 17 - Bigger Is Better: The Baths of Caracalla and Other Second- and Third-Century Buildings in Rome

Professor Kleiner discusses the increasing size of Roman architecture in the second and third centuries A.D. as an example of a “bigger is better” philosophy. She begins with an overview of tomb architecture, a genre that, in Rome as in Ostia, embraced the aesthetic of exposed brick as a facing for the exteriors of buildings. Interiors of second-century tombs, Professor Kleiner reveals, encompass two primary groups – those that are decorated with painted stucco and those embellished primarily with architectural elements.

HSAR 252 - Lecture 16 - The Roman Way of Life and Death at Ostia, the Port of Rome

Professor Kleiner focuses on Ostia, the port of Rome, characterized by its multi-storied residential buildings and its widespread use of brick-faced concrete. She begins with the city’s public face–the Forum, Capitolium, Theater, and Piazzale delle Corporazioni. The Piazzale, set behind the Theater, was the location of various shipping companies with black-and-white mosaics advertising their business. Professor Kleiner examines the Baths of Neptune and the Insula of Diana, a brick apartment building with four floors that housed a number of Ostia’s working families.

HSAR 252 - Lecture 15 - Rome and a Villa: Hadrian's Pantheon and Tivoli Retreat

Professor Kleiner features the architecture built in and around Rome during the reign of Hadrian. The lecture begins with the Temple of Venus and Roma, a Greek-style temple constructed near the Colosseum in Rome, which may have been designed by Hadrian himself. Professor Kleiner then turns to the Pantheon, a temple dedicated to all the gods that combines the marble porch and pediment of a traditional Greco-Roman temple with a vast concrete cylindrical drum, hemispherical dome, and central oculus.

HSAR 252 - Lecture 14 - The Mother of All Forums: Civic Architecture in Rome under Trajan

Professor Kleiner analyzes the major public architectural commissions of the emperor Trajan in Rome. Distinguished by their remarkably ambitious scale, these buildings mimic Trajan’s expansion of the Roman Empire to its furthest reaches. Professor Kleiner begins with Trajan’s restoration of the Forum of Julius Caesar and proceeds to the Baths of Trajan. Situated on the Oppian and Esquiline Hills, these Trajanic baths follow the basic model of the earlier imperial Baths of Titus but increase the size of the complex several times.

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