A short history of the Ara Pacis in Rome
This Rome information blog about the Ara Pacis is written for Chaplin B&B Rome.
The original Ara Pacis
Augustus, in his Res Gestae, tells of the Senate’s decision to construct an Altar to Peace, following his conquests of Spain and Gallia between 16 and 13 b.C.
The dedication of the Ara Pacis took place on January 30th of the year 9 b.C. (Augustus’ wife’s birthday). It had been placed on the Campus Martius, the Field of Mars, near the Via Flaminia, which at the time was the main road for pilgrims entering Rome from the north. That way all those travelers would know straightaway what a great man Augustus was.
At the same time as the Ara Pacis, a sundial – the sundial of Augustus - was built.
Unfortunately the inundations of the Tiber made the land rise and the Area Pacis got buried and virtually forgotten, until 1536, when by chance a piece of the altar was found.
The modern Ara Pacis
In 1903 Friedrich von Duhn recognized the Altar, of which, mostly through fortuitious findings, more fragments had been unearthed throughout the years, for what it was. Excavations were started and stopped when the Palace of the Via Lucina underneath which the Altar was found threatened to collapse.
In 1937, 2000 years after Augustus’ birth, the excavations were started again. The use of more modern technology enabled the rescue of the monument and on September 23rd, 1938 Mussolini inaugurated the Ara Pacis.
Since it was impossible to rebuild the Ara Pacis in its original position, Mussolini chose to build the monument near Augustus’ Mausoleum. The Altar was to be protected from the Roman climate by glass, but because of the war and lack of time and money, it never got made the way the designer, Dita Vaselli, had envisaged it.
The glass got removed, and the monument got protected by, first, sandbags and later an anti-shrapnel wall: kind of ironic really, for an Altar for Peace.
Several attempts, in the early 50s, in 1970, and in the 80s, were made to clean up and restore the Ara Pacis, but soon problems began to manifest themselves again, largely due to Rome’s difficult climate with big temperature changes, humidity and, of course, the city’s pollution.
In 1995 the Municipality of Rome started thinking about replacing the Pavilion. The new museum complex for the Ara Pacis was designed by Richard Meier, an American architect, who came up with a design that was very controversial, in that it placed an extremely modern building in the midst of an area full of Rome’s ancient archeological treasures.