# Ara Pacis Augustae Museum in Rome



## Melchisedeck (Jul 29, 2005)

In 13 BCE, the Roman Senate decreed that the Ara Pacis be built to celebrate Augustus' triumphant return from the wars in Spain and Gaul, although the dedication or official inauguration took place about three and a half years later, in January 9 BCE. This altar to Peace was located in the Campus Martius (the Field of War), a place ironically where the military did exercises. In the succeeding centuries, however, the altar was eventually covered up as the level of the area was raised until finally it was buried and forgotten, only to be uncovered in part in the Renaissance, with slabs of the altar dispersed to various locations. Eventually the area was excavated and slabs were recovered from a number of owners; the altar was restored and installed in its own pavilion in 1938. Today, the Ara Pacis is installed in a new museum, which opened in 2006.

The Ara Pacis Museum is the first work of modern architecture in the Historic Center of Rome since the 1930’s. For this reason, among others, it has been controversial. 

The Ara Pacis Augustae, a sacrificial altar, was originally housed in a building designed by Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo in 1938, primarily in concrete and fake porphyry instead of the travertine and marble that Mussolini's architect had requested. The building was in disrepair and the altar itself was in precarious condition so in the 1996, the Comune di Roma appointed American architect Richard Meier as head of the project for a new museum. Because of its historical relevance one part of the original building has survived: a low travertine wall that Mussolini had engraved with the "Res Gestae" (the Acts of the Divine Augustus). Meier's design is a kind of architectural revival--in terms of materials (Roman travertine and glass) and in terms of plan.


----------



## Ginza (May 13, 2006)

looks great gona have to check it out when I go to rome this summer


----------



## Arpels (Aug 9, 2004)

the building is cool, ful of ligth!!


----------

