The Roman Temple Nobody Knows: Temple of Minerva Medica

 

Paolo Anesi, 18th century

The Temple of Minerva Medica, as it's called, is one of the most easily accessible ancient structures in all of Rome. It's right there on via Giolitti, the busy street that runs along the south side of Stazione Termini and the tracks beyond. Not far from Piazza Maggiore, and just a stone's throw from Santa Bibiana, the also-neglected baroque church whose facade was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. 

A Yale University website describes the temple as "forlorn," and that description isn't inaccurate, in that the building is uncomfortably sandwiched between a streetcar line (and via Giolitti) on one side and a swarm of railroad tracks on the other. 

But it's also quite imposing, and reasonably well preserved for a 4th-century CE edifice. And it may be architecturally significant, in that (we read) its decagonal design, which included an oculus, occupies the architectural space between the octagonal dining room of the Domus Aurea--and the Pantheon. The Temple's dome collapsed in 1828, lasting only about 1400 years. The photo below makes it look like the oculus is still there--but it's only one of the arches. 

One might call it the Other Pantheon. 

So you'll want to see it, even if only through the fence by which it is surrounded. (Right, Dianne, wishing she could just walk in.)

The problem is that you won't be looking at the Temple of Minerva Medica. It's called that, yes, but only because, in the 18th century, a statue known as Athena Giustiniani (below) was presumably found there. That statue of the goddess had, and has, a snake at her feet. And because snakes were identified at the time with healing, the "Medica" name was affixed to the Temple. (Minerva is the Etruscan counterpart of the Greek Athena.) About the time the Temple was erroneously named, the artist Paolo Anesi painted the picture of it at the top of this post.

The misunderstanding all started with this statue. 

On Wikipedia and the like, the Temple of Minerva Medica is often described as a nymphaeum, or a "ruined nymphaeum" (as if there were lots of pristine ones around). Because the Temple is not mentioned (at all, apparently), in the ancient literature, no one knows for sure that the building was, in fact, a nymphaeum. That's only one theory among three. It may have housed a dining room, say some, although that seems a curiously minimal use for so large a structure. Others note that a heating system has been discovered beneath the floor, and that a sacred spring once ran under it, allowing the building to serve as a bathing facility for the elites of the day--though that use, too, is far from certain. 

In the right light and from the right angle, the Temple can look quite dramatic. 

Centrale Montemartini, the Ostiense museum that is #22 on RST's Top 40, houses two statues of Roman magistrates that were excavated from the Temple. 

Above: a recent partial restoration used a lot of new brick. 

Below: a newish storyboard, left, in English as well as Italian, provides some history of the Temple. Get there--if you can!--before the taggers render it illegible.

Bill 

In Search of the 1950s: The Aqua-Blue Building on via Bari

 

We lived this year just a few blocks from one of my favorite modernist Rome buildings. Romans might call it "particolare"--one of a kind, sui generis, unique, maybe odd. You'll find it at via Bari 5, corner of via Rovigo, just a few blocks uphill along via Catania from Piazzale delle Provincie, one of two large circular piazze in the Piazza Bologna area. 

Same building, via Bari 5, from the less than 90 degree corner with via Rovigo -
 a very different look, no camera tricks employed.

he palazzina, in the mid-century-modern style, was constructed between 1958, when Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls of Fire" was #1on the US charts, and 1961, when teens were doing the "Twist" to Chubby Checker's hit song. In architecture, post-modernism had yet to assert itself as the next wave, but architects everywhere were experimenting with forms that went beyond the severe rectilinear modernism of the 1930s and 1940s (a good example of that sort of modernism is Rome's university--La Sapienza, nearby). The late 1950s and 1960s were also decades in which architects and planners experimented with buildings and other structures that were elevated--in the US, "skyways"--elevated highways--were the rage, and in Rome, planners decided to place the "sopraelevata" [1966-1975] down the center of Scalo San Lorenzo (a 15-minute walk from via Bari 5). 

Above, the sopraelevata from the street.

Architect Renato Valle framed the via Bari building in aqua-blue glass (now an iconic 1950s color), and used the less-than-90-degree corner at via Rovigo to give his structure an angular shape that defined the rectilinear tradition. And it's elevated. Today, under the building, there's a gas station. Significantly, the building is owned by, and houses offices of, Enerpetroli, a company that operates 150 gas stations in central Italy. 

Unfortunately, I have been unable to find other information about architect Valle. If you can contribute, please do!

Bill 

The 125 Creches at the Vatican - an updated post on these Christmastime Jewels

 

RST is re-publishing our Rome friend Larry Litman's lovely 2020 post about the presepi (creches) in St. Peter's Square at Christmastime. We'll update it quickly to note this year's 125 creches are from all over Europe as well as from many foreign countries, including the US. The 2024 theme is "Hope does not disappoint," the title of the bull announcing the Jubilee year that begins within a week. Access to the creches is every day 10 a.m. - 7:30 p.m., except to 5:30 p.m. Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve (last entry 15 minutes before closing) through January 6 - no reservations nor fee. See more on this year's presepi, along with a Jubilee Year countdown clock on a Vatican Jubilee site here. 

From 2020: RST is delighted to offer another guest post by our Rome friend Larry Litman, who wrote eloquently in March about being in Rome under one of the first lockdowns. Since we can't be in Rome, we asked Larry for a holiday offering. Here he visits Piazza San Pietro before Christmas and discovers an unusual presepe or crèche (as we called them in our family) as well as a gorgeous display of another 100 presepi.

Larry lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, before moving to Rome in 2007.  In the early 1970s he studied at Loyola University of Chicago's Rome Center, now the John Felice Rome Center on Monte Mario. "That was when I fell in love with the city of Rome," Larry writes, "and then had the dream of making Rome my home."

Larry is a retired teacher librarian at AmBrit International School and is active at St. Paul's Within the Walls (the Episcopal Church on via Nazionale).  He also volunteers at the Non-Catholic Cemetery. He has two adult children and two grandchildren living in New York City.

Visiting Piazza San Pietro before Christmas

A Christmas tradition for many Romans (and tourists) is to visit St. Peter’s Square and view the tree and presepe (crèche). Each year a tree is donated to the Pope from a different country and the crèche each year is by different artists.

When I visited the square on December 15th, there weren’t even two dozen people there. It felt strange to be in a space that is normally teeming with tourists and pilgrims. I also went into St. Peter’s Basilica. There was no line to go through the security screening, and once inside it was also practically empty.

The presepe figures this year have brought a lot of criticism. The life size ceramic figures are from Castelli in the Abruzzo region and were created by students and teachers of the “F.A. Grue” Art Institute. The Nativity scene featured several life-sized ceramic statues in a contemporary art style that “has its roots in the traditional working of Castelli’s ceramics,” said a statement from the Vatican. “The cylindrical ceramic statues surrounding Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus included a bagpiper, a shepherdess holding a jug and even an astronaut, meant to reference the history of ancient art and scientific achievements in the world.” (Source: Catholic News Service-CNS)

A special feature for 2020 is a display of 100 presepi in the Bernini Colonnade. The scenes come from around the world and reflect many different style of recreating the Christmas Story with figurines.

Larry Litman

Below are 7 of the 100 presepi  - traditional, and not so traditional; you can pick your favorite. Photos by Larry Litman.

Piazza Socrate gets a Makeover. Too bad.

Piazza Socrate has been remodeled. Unfortunately

One of Rome's lesser known piazzas, Socrate juts out on the south flank of Monte Mario, at the confluence of via Fedro and via Cornelio Nipote. It has a commanding view of Vatican City. 

Dianne, enjoying the view, 2018

It's always been a scruffy, inelegant place.

Piazza Socrate, as it appeared 6 years ago

But its elevation, and its location in proximity to St. Peter's, made it a place to stop and look. It was also, so we heard and (likely) observed--a hangout for gay men. The large tree at the edge of the piazza, at the edge of a steep embankment, was a meeting place (below). 

St. Peter's, far right. 2018

That tree is now essentially inaccessible, as is the promontory, now situated behind a substantial fence. All that remains of the piazza--a small piece of isolated green space surrounded by something resembling a traffic circle--is both unappealing and highly public. 

The new fence

No one would ever meet in that space. One can imagine a car now and then pulling over to check out the view. But that's about it.

The traffic circle

With its sharp drop-off near the tree, the pizza's old configuration was not the safest, and likely that's why the city spent thousands to reconfigure it. And maybe the neighbors complained about gay men. As we said at the top. Too bad.

Bill 

San Lorenzo: Where Maria Montessori Got Her Start

One of the surprises of the San Lorenzo neighborhood we inhabited this year is its discrete harboring of the birthplace of Maria Montessori's Casa dei bambini ("Children's house"), where she developed and put in practice her early childhood educational theories.

At right, the brightly polished brass door marker for Maria Montessori's first casa dei bambini.

San Lorenzo is an appropriate locale for Montessori's then-experimentation because it was one of the poorest and most degraded areas of Rome, home--at the turn of the last century--to the crowded and woefully underserved Italian working class. As we have noted in other posts, San Lorenzo, sometimes called the "most Roman of neighborhoods" outside the Roman walls, is almost an urban island, hemmed in by an enormous cemetery (Verano), multiple-track trainyards, and those ancient Roman walls. The end of the 19th century saw a building boom in Rome, but it was a boom insufficient to house the thousands of workers pouring into the city from the countryside. There was "deep social distress," explains one of the placards on the walls of the still-standing building that housed Montessori's first casa, resulting from illegal crowding and poverty. 

Left, the unassuming building at via dei Marsi 58, in San Lorenzo, where in 1907 the first casa moderna was built (there would be more than 400 within a couple years), part of an attempt to clear slums and provide "socialization." Today, not even this historical building is free from tags and other graffiti that mark the San Lorenzo area.

A senator and engineer, Edoardo Talamo, was put in charge of the new Istituto Romano dei Beni Stabili (The Roman Institute for Public Buildings might be a decent translation), established in 1904 to produce new buildings, case moderne ("modern houses"). And this unassuming building, at via dei Marsi 58, in San Lorenzo, was one of the first, with plans for it made as early as 1905. Talamo and his colleagues at the Institute wanted more than providing "a roof over the head of the neediest," as one description of the "modern houses" read. Jane Addams-like, they wanted "a social transformation of the inhabitants" through "common spaces with various advantages and facilities in each building." The children's space was a kind of early day-care for working parents (such as I attended in Seattle during the World War II years), with mothers helping to implement the plan. 

Right, an interior wall, with the first casa labeled, now with Maria Montessori's name.

In the early 1900s (after receiving multiple degrees that were highly unusual for women, including a medical doctorate), Montessori was a professor of pedagogy at Rome's La Sapienza university, working on her theories. Talamo engaged her to develop the "children's houses" within the "modern houses." She credits him with "the brilliant idea" (maybe the brilliant idea was hiring her) "of welcoming tenants--young children between 3 and 7--to gather in one room under the direction of a teacher who would live in the same building. Each building would have its own school." The Institute by 1907 owned more than 400 buildings in Rome, and so the project had great potential for development, an ideal incubator for the innovative Montessori.

The courtyard, left, where the children tended their own vegetable garden, one of the Montessori educational tasks. One of our friends recalls attending a Montessori school in the 1950s, but he didn't recall the place, only that "I barfed in the courtyard."

That first casa dei bambini is still there, almost 120 years later, in the building on via dei Marsi. It was turned over to the city of Rome in 1938, operated through World War II (the Fascists no doubt salivated over this ready-made educational plant), then was completely abandoned. It was reopened in 1966 by Associazione opera Montessori (Association of Montessori work). Under various organizations, the basic educational structure, with several schools, continues to this day. The casa dei bambini in San Lorenzo remains as a kind of in-place Montessori museum, that, along with the educational institution, "preserves the initial spirit and methodological tradition theorized" by her.

Dianne

Educational panels in Italian and English inside the building complex explain the casa, Montessori's role, and the specific layout.

Right, the memorial plaque from 2007, commemorating the centennial of the casa. It says (as I would translate it) it's the centenary of her birth, but it isn't. It's the centenary of the birth of her educational system. The plaque loftily states: "here, the first casa dei bambini was created January 6, 1907, initiating the rich and productive work of the great educator in service to infancy for the freedom of man."