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Why Narrative Matters; the multiplicity of stories in, of, and around the Ara Pacis Augustae

As stories go, there seems to have always been a surplus. Of heroes, of traitors, in fables and bedtime tales; stories guide our lives and make us think about our own stories in turn. In his On Stories, Richard Kearney addresses the importance of stories, in our fairytales as well as in our history books.[8] The chapter “Narrative Matters” sets the stage for discussing why, exactly, narrative does matter to us today; how the pages of stories move us and teach us, influencing our understanding of the past, and consequently our present and future. Stories, specifically in the form of historical narrative, largely sway us in thought and so have the potential to equally sway us into action. In reference to the terms of language, Kearney’s first point of narrative, plot or mythos announces that our lives “seek some kind of significance in terms of referrals back to our past (memory) and forward to our future (projection). So that we might say that our lives are constantly interpreting themselves.”[9]

There are surely many forms of media for portraying narrative distinct from the written word. I propose architecture as an effective medium for telling a story, and also, that narrative and architecture are necessary to each other to successfully employ the cycle of interpretation that is every one of our own stories, individually and as a whole.

To support my claim I will attempt to demonstrate the constant interpretation fostered by historical narrative through the architectural examples of the Ara Pacis Augustae, and perhaps the two most controversial twentieth century buildings to be built within the historical center of Rome: the Ara Pacis Museum by Richard Meier, and the Fascist era pavilion that it replaced. Through the lens of one of Kearney’s points of narrative, Mimesis, I will examine how the Ara Pacis was “read” in its own day, how it was read by Mussolini and the Fascist party in the 1930s, and how the two museums encasing it have worked to create a new reading of the monument today.

Mimesis and the reading of the Ara Pacis in Imperial Rome

The second of Kearney’s five points of narrative is mimesis (re-creation). It is the power of narrative to reinvent the story as we see it into its greater potential  “by magnifying its essential traits.”[10] This seems to be a much easier task in fiction rather than in historical narrative. To sustain mimesis in historical narrative it is important to maintain a certain level of truth. The truth-claim critical to historical narrative is that which makes the story credible; what allows it to be a history. Without credibility it is liable to be dismissed as fiction. The architecture of the Ara Pacis dabbles with the truth-claim in its narrative to inspire awe as well as hope in its everyday readers. cultivate instigate

Commissioned by the Senate in 13 BCE to commemorate the emperor’s military triumphs in Spain and Gaul, Augustus’s monument tells the story of victory over other countries, over the socio-economic state, and over the failing predecessor: the Roman Republic. However, every history has an indisputable standing in the figurative, the imaginative, as well as the truth-claim. This standing is instigated by the narrator. If a story is being told, the manipulation of the teller is a major factor: his point of view, his sense of sequencing and emplotment, his tendency to stretch the truth, any and all of these may alter what the reader perceives as truth. The reader only has his own previous knowledge and the truths put forth in the story, as he interprets them. That the Roman Republic has ended and it is now an age of peace brought on by Augustus; that military victory and a harmonious balance in Imperial Rome is now and forever; these are some of the truths put forth by the emperor and his Senate in momentous white marble. They aren’t necessarily factual (one cannot know how long an age of peace will last), but they aren’t complete fiction (there was an era of victory and peace following the collapse of the Republic). Story meets and morphs into history in the eyes of the reader as he reads through the sculptural reliefs of the Ara Pacis. In accordance with the use of mimesis these stories are based in a reality that the people can accept: credibility allows the historical narrative to bloom. “It does try to be truthful,” says Kearney of the historical narrative, and so does the Ara Pacis in this case, but in a hopeful nature. Mimesis takes the element of truth in the Ara Pacis past strict actuality; the monument lets a story grow beyond a history and become a future. Here it is the ability “to re-create actual worlds as possible worlds” in order to invoke contentment in the reader and optimism for the future.[11]

Paul Ricoeur, in Architecture and Narrative, further breaks down mimesis into three phases: the prefiguring of the life-story to be told, the configuring of the story as it’s told, and the refiguring of our own lives as we absorb the lessons from that story and form them into action, thus beginning or continuing another story to be told.[12] In its placement, presentation, and  performance the Altar of Augustan Peace actualizes each of these phases for the people of Imperial Rome.

Prefiguration

The era and original location of the altar is crucial to understanding its world and context: its prefiguration. The Ara Pacis was very much a symbol of the end of a warring period, and the beginning of a long and prosperous age of social, cultural, and political calm. Its seat in the northern half of the city center held the monument in an esteemed position: in the Campus Martius, next to the Tiber River on Via Flaminia at the city’s entrance; a venerable position to say the least. [13] Also key to the altar’s location was the nearby erection of the Horologium-Solarium, a giant sundial using an Egyptian obelisk as the gnomon: a war trophy that Augustus claimed in 10 BCE (See A-1).[14] An elaborate array of marble tile and gilded metal lay as the sundial’s massive map of days and months, with the Ara Pacis situated so that every year on the emperor’s birthday the obelisk’s shadow would pass neatly over the altar, celebrating birth long after death with a symbol of Augustus’s once-lived victory. The theme of an endless cycle of rebirth will arise again in the story. This prosperity is the setting, where the story is constructed and takes place.

A-1 Drawing of original placement of Ara Pacis Augustae in proximity to the Horologium-Solarium and Augustan Mausoleum: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/romanurbs/horologium.html

Configuration

The framing of narrative takes place literally on the Ara Pacis: in its friezes and reliefs. These are the configuration,— the telling of the story. The processional friezes on the north and south facades of the monument are what typically receive attention for their narrative capacity. In both friezes, members of the Augustan party are heading toward the west facade for the main entrance to the altar, preparing for the Anniversarium Sacrificium, the annual sacrifice of an animal to the gods,– the intended use for the actual altar within the Ara Pacis (See A-2).

Uncharacteristic of Classical representation of kings and emperors, the figures here are not idealized. In the procession are Augustus and his cast of followers: the four major priestly colleges, and family members even down to the children are all depicted as they are in life: human, not god-like. The children are not miniature adults, as is seen in numerous examples of art preceding and following this example: they are children as they are in life.[15] The everyday Imperial Roman may read this as a connection to his own life. He might ponder, ‘They are average and they have succeeded, therefore there is hope for me in this age of peace.’ The narrative reaches past history; it becomes freed from its immediate context and opens up to the many perceptions and discernments a reader can come to about his own life, depending on his own prefiguration. The bottom half of these north and south friezes behave similarly.

Much like the recurrence of a particular shadow on Augustus’s birthday, the small animals and organic matter carved into the bottom registers of the north and south facades echo the themes of rebirth and regeneration inherent in the Ara Pacis.  “Acanthus becomes laurel, becomes grapevine, and turns back into acanthus in an ever-shifting pattern before our eyes,” describes Barbara Kellum (See A-2).[16] The cycle, like that of narrative, has a never-ending amount of possible interpretations, as there is a never-ending amount of those who will read this frieze. People of the day might have made connections to the “garden setting of the Campus Martius,” or to the metamorphic nature of animals portrayed.[17] The power of configuration is to allow the reader to see what is already there in a new light, and thus do the friezes of the Ara Pacis.

A-2 Segment of North facade processional frieze and organic matter. Photo by Author

Refiguration

The refiguration of the Ara Pacis in its own time can really only be pondered upon. Exactly how Romans of the era applied the history of the Ara Pacis to their routine days, or even their momentous occasions, is something that can be inferred from subsequent histories. There was indeed more than a century of political and economic stability following the construction of the Ara Pacis, so one conclusion could be made that Romans took their emperor’s goals to heart and made the effort to ensure national success. But this is still postulation. However, just as the Romans read reliefs, we can read the configuration of this historical narrative through the Ara Pacis because it also can lead us to inferences,– by figure rather than word.

As the monument was set upon a low platform, the close scrutiny of an average-height man or woman would have brought the same view on any of the four facades: almost 2 meters of flora, fauna, and the smaller end of the animal kingdom,– from mid-shin to the top of the tallest laurel wreath. Readers are confronted with this story first, and they ask what these things are about. Much of the subject matter was common to many major political works in Imperial Rome, and so reading and interpretation greatly depended on the reader’s own previous knowledge and world, his prefiguration.[18] The same can be said for reliefs all over the Ara Pacis, including the more widely disputed scenes carved into the east and west facades: four historically loaded portrayals associating Augustus’s monument with the birth of Rome (depending again largely on what the reader has already learned, already been told in previous stories). Thus the cycle of mimesis, and of story-telling, begins again as the reader’s prefiguration affects his perception, and is then altered for his next reading.

The ‘reading’ of the Ara Pacis through the glass case

The long sleep of the Ara Pacis Augustae was officially ended in the 20th century when archaeologists began piecing together the precious fragments that form the monument, as we now know it. During the Fascist regime of the 1930s, the Italian government under Benito Mussolini declared that the found and reconstructed Augustan monument would come to represent the New Rome their leader was then crafting; a pristine and rationalist tribute to nationalism. Only months before the 2000th anniversary of Augustus’s birthday, it was decided to erect the entirety of the Ara Pacis in the Piazza Augusto Imperatore, naturally next to the emperor’s own mausoleum.[19] The intention was to complete the fourth corner of the piazza, creating order and balance. This is part of the 1930s prefiguration to the altar’s evolving historical narrative; part of the monument’s original objectives are seen projected into a twentieth century Roman agenda.

The modern presentation of the Ara Pacis, however, did not last as long as its new placement in the city. Italian architect Vittorio Morpurgo planned for a much more extravagant structure than the party had the time or budget for, little more than a year after the project had been proposed. Because of his Jewish heritage, Morpurgo’s design was hardly respected and serious cutbacks were made to his plans[20]. Consequently, quick construction resulted in cheap craftsmanship and there was little motivation to maintain the building after World War II (See A-3).[21] Here the configuration of the story makes a great leap, now that of a pavilion rather than an open field, affecting its subsequent refiguration.

A-3 The Morpurga Pavilion on the day of its unveiling: Augustus's birthday, September 23, 1989. http://en.arapacis.it/museo/il_padiglione_novecentesco

The reception of the new home to the Ara Pacis, and the change it implied for the reading of the monument through it, instigated the rise of many new questions and interpretations. How do you apply a new agenda to an antique monument? How do you house that new agenda for the people to see? What is the performance of an exhibition space? As the pavilion’s role in the embodiment of Fascism was cut so short (by the cutting short of Fascism itself), it makes more sense to continue the story in another cycle of mimesis: the Morpurgo Pavilion becomes part of the prefiguration for the configuration of the contemporary Ara Pacis Museum designed by Richard Meier.

The fact that an American (and coincidentally, also Jewish) architect would design the new enclosure for the Italian symbol of victory, nationalism, and eternity hasn’t been a pleasing reality for much of contemporary Rome. Many believe it an unpatriotic move to have chosen someone other than an Italian for the design of something so cherished; after all, despite Morpurgo’s religious background, he was still considered “a favourite of the Fascist regime.”[22] Following a period of such spirited nationalism, how could the mayor of Rome go against the will of so many of his constituents? This tumultuous and generally disapproving atmosphere is the prefiguration brought on by the Morpurgo Pavilion and the new meaning assigned to the monument by the Fascist party. The installation of Richard Meier’s very untraditional addition to the historical center of Rome begs the question: can an American continue an Italian story?

Meier undoubtedly falls into the category of architects that have a recognizable “style”. This usually can either overpower the subject of focus, the Ara Pacis Augustae in this case, or simply be dismissed as another project, potentially dismissing the subject of focus along with it. In my personal observation, Meier’s prevailing white becomes more of a blank slate for the Ara Pacis to sit up against, rather than simply the trademark whitewash that is seen repeatedly in his work. In discussing configuration, Ricoeur describes literary narrative as the level in which “telling a story frees itself from the context of the action,” and I believe Meier’s blank slate to be the architectural equivalent.[23] Its blankness cultivates the flexibility and multiplicity of possible backdrops. Now, rather than being burdened by previous assignments of meaning and purpose, readers of the Ara Pacis can see it framed more loosely; a frame that is ever-changing thanks to Meier’s full height glass walls on the east and west facades of the museum (See A-4). Meier nearly liberates us from the monument’s prefiguration, in order to let our own run freely. Here the Italian story takes a new twist in its untraditional keeping: a contemporary museum allows for a contemporary reading of the traditional monument.

A-4 View straight into the center of the Ara Pacis Museum. Full window walls on east and west facades. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ara_Pacis-Ben_Demey.jpg

This leads us to consider the story of the museum. Some are quite introverted, for various reasons, focusing the reader solely on the subject displayed. But museums that house those subjects that threaten to close themselves off to multiple readings in lack of a context must configure an exhibit that balances a connection between interior and exterior, thus creating a dynamic context, open and pliable. The Ara Pacis is one in need of a setting to allow the interpretation and reinterpretation of identity and significance. Meier’s museum produces a wide variability of settings and for that reason has successfully hosted several design events seemingly unrelated to the millennia-old Augustan monument.

Since its opening in 2006 the Ara Pacis Museum has presented Valentino in Rome: 45 Years of Style, a display of the “marvelous achievements of modern Italian fashion,” with “the most famous monument to imperial majesty of all time” as a clever stage; a playful juxtaposition of the histories of two very different types of design (See A-5).[24] And currently at the museum there is the TrentAnniDisegno: an exhibit of the past 30 years of design work by the graphic design firm InArea (See A-6). Company words-to-live-by displayed through the lower level exhibition space echo the goals of the museum itself:

Our way of thinking in terms of the future has remained quite contemporary and presents the wealth of knowledge and experience acquired, enhancing it. The true meaning of tomorrow is in the understanding of what was left behind, and the heritage to pass it on to those who come after us. What we build, every day, becomes the future if it can restore memory and generate belonging.[25]

A-5 Valentino in Rome: 45 Years of Style. (B. Pediconi; courtesty of Valentinio Achives Strazzulla, Maria Jose. "War and Peace: Housing the Ara Pacis in the Eternal City." American Journal of Archaeology 113.2 (2009): 8

A-6 Logo for InArea's Trentannidisegno. http://www.inarea.com/

In respect to the general reception of the Ara Pacis Museum, as with the reception of any building ever built, there will always be mixed reviews. But the issue of refiguration we are concerned with is not merely aesthetic. What Meier’s design allows is for the one-time, the habitual, and the regular visitor to experience something, to read a story that is different and unique on every occasion. Unlike the pavilion before it, the architecture doesn’t focus only on views from the outside in to the Ara Pacis, but from the inside out to the world in which it now resides. The refiguration of the altar and its narrative, of the museum and its monument are a constant reminder of the monument’s and museum’s newest prefiguration: modern Rome in all its glory. The skylights give priority to the atmosphere above: if the sun is shining, the light will bounce in and around the altar; if it is storming, the warm glow of feature lights will be interrupted by the sudden illumination of white lightning. Similarly the east and west walls change with the presence of a car (or fifty) on the street or a particularly yellow sunset. But here is the reason:

“The key to mimesis resides in a certain ‘gap’ demarcating the narrated world from the lived one, opened up by the fact that every narrative is told from a certain point of view and in a certain style and genre.”[26]

The separation between the surrounding context, the immediate context, the reader, and the subject at hand is where the birth of stories takes place. This is where you are presented with the story, receive it, and decide how it will affect you. The reader can adjust the narrative’s point of view as much or as little as his own previous knowledge permits, making every reader, every story, and every reception of it vastly different. Architecture grants the reader the experience of the physicality of the story: it actually constructs that “gap.” The Ara Pacis Museum, in its flexible and productive design of the “gap,” not only tells the historical narrative of an Imperial Roman monument, but in doing so, creates many little stories: beginnings and middles and ends leading back to beginnings.

Works Cited

Bussagli, Marco, ed. Rome Art & Architecture. Konemann, 1999. 76-80. Print.

Censi, Maria Rita, Dante Frontero, and Angelo Germani. RM 06: Roma-architettura Contemporanea = Rome-contemporary Architecture. [Rome]: Kappa, 2006. 26:1-26:6. Print.

Crow, Charlotte. “The Ara Pacis: Romans Have Reacted Passionately to the New Presentation of One of the Eternal City’s Key Historic Monuments, Charlotte Crow Explains.” History Today, 56.6 (2006): 5.

Kearney, Richard. “Narrative Matters.” On Stories. London, Routledge, 2002. 125-56. Print.

Kellum, Barbara. “What We See and What We Don’t See. Narrative Structure and the Ara Pacis Augustae.” Art History, 17.1 (1994): 26-45.

Laurence, Ray. “Metaphors, Monuments and Texts: The Life Course in Roman Culture.” World Archaeology, 31.3 (2000): 442-455.

Rehak, Paul. “Aeneas or Numa? Rethinking the Meaning of the Ara Pacis Augustae.” Art Bulletin, 83.2 (2001): 190-208.

Ricoeur, Paul.”Architecture and Narrative.” Identity and Difference: Integration and Plurality in Today’s Forms: Cultures between the Ephemeral and the Lasting, catalogue of the Triennale di Milano, XIX Esposizione Internazionale. Milan, Electa, 1996. 64-72. Print.

Slessor, Catherine. “Roman Remains.” Architectural Review, 219.1307 (2006): 18-19.

Strazzulla, Maria Jose. “War and Peace: Housing the Ara Pacis in the Eternal City.” American Journal of Archaeology 113.2 (2009): 1-10. Online Review.

“Vandals Attack Museum in Center of Rome.” The New York Times, 158.54694 (2009): 2.


[1] Kearney, Richard. “Narrative Matters.” On Stories. London, Routledge, 2002. 125-56.

[2]Kearney, Richard. “Narrative Matters.” On Stories. London, Routledge, 2002. 129.

[3] Kearney, Richard. “Narrative Matters.” On Stories. London, Routledge, 2002. 131.

[4] Kearney, Richard. “Narrative Matters.” On Stories. London, Routledge, 2002. 136.

[5] Ricoeur, Paul.”Architecture and Narrative.” Identity and Difference: Integration and Plurality in Today’s Forms: Cultures between the Ephemeral and the Lasting, catalogue of the Triennale di Milano, XIX Esposizione Internazionale. Milan, Electa, 1996. 64-72.

[6] Campus Martius translates to “Field of Mars,” Mars being the Roman god of war. This name held some weight as military victory was now frequent thanks to Augustus. The Via Flaminia was the ancient entrance to Rome; it is now the Corso.

[7] Rehak, Paul. “Aeneas or Numa? Rethinking the Meaning of the Ara Pacis Augustae.” Art Bulletin, 83.2 (2001): 190. In the 18th century the obelisk was reconstructed and erected in the Piazza di Monte Citorio where now, it once again functions as the gnomon of a giant sundial.

[8] Kearney, Richard. “Narrative Matters.” On Stories. London, Routledge, 2002. 125-56.

[9]Kearney, Richard. “Narrative Matters.” On Stories. London, Routledge, 2002. 129.

[10] Kearney, Richard. “Narrative Matters.” On Stories. London, Routledge, 2002. 131.

[11] Kearney, Richard. “Narrative Matters.” On Stories. London, Routledge, 2002. 136.

[12] Ricoeur, Paul.”Architecture and Narrative.” Identity and Difference: Integration and Plurality in Today’s Forms: Cultures between the Ephemeral and the Lasting, catalogue of the Triennale di Milano, XIX Esposizione Internazionale. Milan, Electa, 1996. 64-72.

[13] Campus Martius translates to “Field of Mars,” Mars being the Roman god of war. This name held some weight as military victory was now frequent thanks to Augustus. The Via Flaminia was the ancient entrance to Rome; it is now the Corso.

[14] Rehak, Paul. “Aeneas or Numa? Rethinking the Meaning of the Ara Pacis Augustae.” Art Bulletin, 83.2 (2001): 190. In the 18th century the obelisk was reconstructed and erected in the Piazza di Monte Citorio where now, it once again functions as the gnomon of a giant sundial.

[15] This is why many of the figures are recognizable as the dignitaries they are.

[16] Kellum, Barbara. “What We See and What We Don’t See. Narrative Structure and the Ara Pacis Augustae.” Art History, 17.1 (1994): 32.

[17] Kellum, Barbara. “What We See and What We Don’t See. Narrative Structure and the Ara Pacis Augustae.” Art History, 17.1 (1994): 35. Animals that were portrayed included frogs, lizards, grasshoppers, birds, etc. Each of these has its own transformative nature: born from an egg, growing from tadpole to frog, shedding a skin at one point or another, etc. Kellum discusses the possible interpretations of the organic reliefs.

[18] Works such as the Porticus of Livia and the Curia Iulia give great meaning to some of the same plants and animals depicted on the Ara Pacis. It can be deduced that this was characteristic of the time and that the everyday Roman would know such references. For further reading see “What We See and What We Don’t See. Narrative Structure and the Ara Pacis Augustae.” Art History. Barbara Kellum.

[19] See Rome Art & Architecture. Marco Bussagli, ed. Pgs. 76-80 & RM 06: Roma-architettura Contemporanea = Rome-contemporary Architecture. Maria Rita Censi et al. Pgs.26:1-26:6 for more detail.

[20] Strazzulla, Maria Jose. “War and Peace: Housing the Ara Pacis in the Eternal City.” American Journal of Archaeology 113.2 (2009): 2-3.

[21] Strazzulla, Maria Jose. “War and Peace: Housing the Ara Pacis in the Eternal City.” American Journal of Archaeology 113.2 (2009): 2-3; and read at the Ara Pacis Museum: constructed mostly of concrete painted to look like travertine, and large windows.

[22]Slessor, Catherine. “Roman Remains.” Architectural Review, 219.1307 (2006): 18-19.

[23] Ricoeur, Paul.”Architecture and Narrative.” Identity and Difference: Integration and Plurality in Today’s Forms: Cultures between the Ephemeral and the Lasting, catalogue of the Triennale di Milano, XIX Esposizione Internazionale. Milan, Electa, 1996. 66.

[24] Strazzulla, Maria Jose. “War and Peace: Housing the Ara Pacis in the Eternal City.” American Journal of Archaeology 113.2 (2009): 8.

[25] InArea’s TrentAnniDisegn. Exhibit on display at the Ara Pacis Museum until 12/12/2010.

[26] Kearney, Richard. “Narrative Matters.” On Stories. London, Routledge, 2002. 133-134.