Keeping the Ancient into the 21st Century

S. Nicola in Carcere, formerly a Roman temple. Now, the temple has been converted into a Catholic church. You can still see columns on the outside wall of the church.

Today we discussed how tourists from the 18th and 19th centuries came to Rome to visit and were disappointed by the state of the famous monuments they had read about. Many of these tourists, because they didn't have the technology we have to see other places, thought that the monuments would still look the same as they did way back during the height of the Roman Empire. This could still happen today, since we hear about monuments like the Roman Forum and how important it is, we may still be disappointed by how ruined some of these sites are. For instance, some parts of the Roman Forum have been reduced to essentially rubble scattered in the grass.

The Romans, past and present, have a different perspective on dealing with old things. In the United States, if a building is old, it gets torn down. Here in Rome, the building materials are expensive to get and ship, so the Romans don't tear down old buildings and monuments; instead they fix what they can. Even the building for the ACCENT office that our program is through is an example of this. The building itself is very old, but they gut out the inside and remake that instead of tearing down the whole building to make a completely modern one.

Ruins from the Roman Forum on the Palatine Hill. Once a busy place full of shops and people, the forum is still busy today, only now it is filled with tourists from Italy and elsewhere.

In many ways, the Romans have found ways to repurpose buildings throughout history. S. Nicola in Carcere is a Catholic church today, but it used to be a Roman temple. Parts of the temple are still easy to distinguish, such as ancient columns on the outside wall. Many former temples to ancient Roman gods are now regular churches. In a way, this repurposing shows the way that history in Rome has changed: the religion changes, the building is altered to some degree, but the site is still used for religious purposes.

The interesting thing that happens when old buildings don't get torn down in Rome is that you see old and historic sites right next to modern buildings. As a visitor, this is so neat to see how the Romans have continued to incorporate the ancient parts of the city into the modern day.

From the Roman Forum you can see the backside of the Capitoline Museum. Much more recent than the forum, the Capitoline Museum is just one of many, many examples of modern buildings right alongside ancient sites.