Building Roman Greece
Innovation in Vaulted Construction in the Peloponnese
by Paolo Vitti
This book discusses a selection of 29 vaulted Roman buildings in the Peloponnese dating from the 1st century BC to 3rd century AD. The research was carried out over ten years, until summer 2013. The research has been award the “Grand Prix” for the EU Prize for Cultural Heritage/ Europa Nostra Award on May 2014. The study fills a gap in the studies of Roman construction, which have generally failed to seek innovation in the building techniques outside Central Italy. The research revealed the importance of Roman architecture in the Peloponnese and its contribution to the development of construction techniques. The significance of these structures had been hitherto only partially recognised and understood, because the few publications to have dealt in any depth with Roman architecture in the Peloponnese were conditioned by an excessive focus on the city of Rome, attributing only relative importance to the specific nature of local building traditions. For the first time a study evaluates systematically and analytically Roman construction in Greece. Most of the buildings included in the study had never been analysed before and were not even known to specialists. In earlier discussions of Roman architecture in Greece, the construction aspects had been treated cursorily. Scholars were basically focused on comparisons with Rome, thus failing to understand the peculiarities of the construction process. This study offers a detailed layout of the ways in which solid-brick vaulting and concrete vaulting were employed, showing that local workmen were experienced and expert enough to use inventiveness in dealing with technical and structural problems, thus creating a construction tradition distinct from the one in use in Rome. The author analyses on one hand the Italic construction tradition and on the other, the development of a local construction techniques, which were also influenced by eastern vaulting tradition imported from Parthia The new methodological approach of the research is based on on-site study, with sketches, drawings and descriptions, through which it was possible to recognise and understand the construction solutions adopted in each building. The first-hand observation and the technical drawings and/or descriptions of the construction characteristics have eventually made it possible to identify and understand a building style based on the widespread use of brick for walls and vaults that was to become particularly influential in the late antique period, when Eastern building techniques became more markedly different from the ones adopted in the Western part of the Empire. This methodology becomes a reference point for future research on similar regional contexts and historical periods that share the same construction principles, rooted in the use of mortar as bonding material.
Paolo Vitti is a architect and historian. He has been studying and working on Cultural Heritage Restoration since 1984, and particularly on archaeological monuments in Italy, Greece, Turkey and on medieval monuments in Italy and Cyprus. He is interested in both the theoretical and professional aspects of the architectural and archaeological restoration. As a practising architect he has designed many restoration projects on archaeological and medieval sites located in Italy, Greece and Cyprus. He has been awarded the 2013 “L’Erma” di Bretschneider prize for archaeology.
- By (author) Paolo Vitti
Other Titles in this Series
Spina e il delta padano
Riflessioni sul catalogo e sulla mostra ferrarese. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi: Spina: due civilta a confronto. Ferrara 1994. 21 gennaio. Aula Magna Universita
Volume 90
Genova Romana
Mercato e citta dalla tarda eta repubblicana a Diocleziano dagli scavi del colle di Castello (Genova - S.Silvestro 2)
Volume 62
Hunters of the Mountain
The Archaeology of Jebel Gharbi, NW Libya, from Final Pleistocene to Early Holocene
Volume 264
Virtual Restoration 2
The frescoes of the rock-cut church of Lama D'Antico at Fasano (Italy)
Volume 241
I Sepolcri padovani di Santa Giustina
Il sarcofago 75-1879 del Victoria and Albert Museum di Londra e altri sarcofagi dalla basilica di Santa Giustina in Padova
Volume 141
Il Guerriero di Agrigento
Una probabile scultura frontonale del Museo di Agrigento e alcune questioni di archeologia siceliota
Volume 77
Le Terrecotte del Museo Nazionale Romano II
Materiali dai depositi votivi di Palestrina. Collezioni Kircheriana e Palestrina
Volume 112
Magical Gems in Their Contexts
Proceedings of the International Workshop held in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, 16-18 February 2012
Volume 229
Archeologia al femminile
Il cammino delle donne nella disciplina archeologica attraverso le figure di otto archeologhe classiche vissute dalla meta dell'Ottocento ad oggi
Volume 129
Mouseia
Tipologie, contesti, significati culturali di unistituzione sacra (VII-I sec. A.C.)
Volume 209
Il Tymbos la Stele la Barca di Caronte
L'immaginario della morte sulle lekythoi funerarie a fondo bianco
Volume 202
Similar Books
Behind the Scenes of Medieval Roofs
An Overview of the Roofing Systems of Italian Churches
Volume 90
Caesar’s Visions and Impact on the Roman Empire
Revisiting the Archaeological and Historical Record of the 40s BC
Volume 2
Circulation, Use, Impact
The Consumption of Architectural Books in the Early Modern Eastern Adriatic
Volume 1
Construction Processes in Historical Western Societies (5th c. BC – 10th c. AD)
Case Studies on Techniques, Models, and Costs
Contesting Labeled Identities
The Sociology of Gentilics in Biblical and Northwest Semitic Literature
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Epigraphic “Shades” from Hellenistic Thrace
Contextualizing Inscriptions in Greek from Thracian Tombs
Epiphanies of the Divine in the Septuagint and the New Testament
Fifth International Symposium of the Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti (CJHNT), 14-17 May 2015, Nottingham
Etruscan and Roman Hellenistic Anatomical ex votos
Reassessing Popular Religious Expressions in Central Italy
Volume 8
Gold, Silver and Glass: Power Networks, Cultural Identities, Technology Transfers and Agency across the Old World (7th Century BC – 1st Century AD)
Proceedings of a Conference Held at the British Museum, 16–18 June 2023
Invisible Labour in Antiquity
Visualizing Obscure Work in the Ancient Mediterannean and West Asia
Volume 1
Language and Power in the Roman Empire and Early India
Hierarchy, Ambiguity, and the Art of Reading the Signs in Cosmopolitan Cultures
Late Antique villae in the Balkans (3rd–7th c. AD): Current Research Questions and Perspectives
HAEMUS Companion to the Late Antique Balkans 1
Volume 4
