It was originally the main road axis of the former Alessandrino district, built in the second half of the 16th century by Cardinal Michele Bonelli, a nephew of Pope Pius V born in Alessandria (Piedmont), hence the name of both the district and the street. Traced around 1570, the street was 400 metres (1,300ft) long and connected the urbanized area of the Trajan's Forum with the Basilica of Maxentius.
The Alessandrino district was completely demolished in the 1930s to make way for Via dell'Impero, now Via dei Fori Imperiali: Via Alessandrina is its only surviving witness and, although decontextualized, has become a pedestrian walkway allowing a suggestive point of view on the archaeological remains.
The Middle Ages
The area of the Fora was never completely abandoned, even in the centuries of decadence: the structures of the ancient edifices were partly rebuilt and reused, partly demolished in order to convert what was once the center of imperial Rome into agricultural land.
Excavations carried out in the area of the Fora since 1998 have in fact brought to light building layers due to collapse or abandonment, dating between 6th and 7th century, as well as the remains of aristocratic houses dating between 9th and 10th century in the Forum of Nerva, which are among the very few traces of Carolingian buildings in Rome. However the area – a plain at the foot of the Quirinal, Viminal and Oppian hills – came back to be swampy due to the decommissioning of the Roman sewage system, so much so that it was popularly called li Pantani (Romanesco for "the Quagmires").
The birth of the district
The first modern urban planning in the area between the Forum of Nerva and the Trajan's Column took place around 1570 thanks to Cardinal Michele Bonelli. He arranged to reclaim the area and make it buildable and traced the street, called Alessandrina from his nickname. The street cut through the ancient Argiletum reaching the Temple of Peace (beyond today's Via Cavour).[1]
The Forum of Nerva with the remains of the Temple of Minerva (the Colonnacce) in an engraving by Luigi Rossini (19th century).
The small, narrow streets of the district (Via Cremona, marking its border towards the Capitolium; Via Bonella, Via del Priorato, Via dei Carbonari, Piazza delle Chiavi d'Oro) formed the mesh of the building fabric that had grown continuously between the slopes of the Capitolium, the wall of Suburra and the Roman Forum. It consisted of modest houses, but also of prestigious buildings, such as the small palace of Sixtus IV (maybe the Ghislieri Palace), the Conservatory of Santa Eufemia, born as a convent of the Sperse di Sant'Eufemia next to a church dedicated to St. Urban and the palace of Flaminio Ponzio. The ground floors housed small businesses and artisan shops and in 1855 four taverns overlooked Via Alessandrina: one of them, called alle Colonnacce, stood among the remains of the Temple of Minerva.
The 20th-century demolition
The Roman Forum and the Alessandrino district before the demolitions (between 1924 and 1932): the Ghettarello above the Forum of Caesar has already been demolished, while the other buildings are still intact.
The district had therefore a significant life, history and memories; nevertheless, it occupied an area which boasted extraordinary archaeological sites and for this reason had been at the center of what the environmentalist Antonio Cederna called «the eternal tendency to dismantle that took hold soon after the unification of Italy» and that the new positivist Italy shared with other European capitals and large cities.
The first master plan of Rome after its annexation to Italy, dated 1873, already provided for the enlargement of Via Cremona (the parallel of Via Alessandrina under the Capitolium, which crossed the Forum of Caesar) towards Via Cavour, as well as the construction of an overhead viaduct which should have extended the same Via Cavour and passed over the Roman Forum, towards Piazza Bocca della Verità and Trastevere. However, the building of the gigantic mass of the Vittoriano – which took place between 1900 and 1911 outside of any planning, as happened for decades in Rome – shifted the focus of urban planners from the Forums to Piazza Venezia.
Then it began to be considered essential to create a straight road that would connect the new modern monumental center with the ancient one, identified with the Colosseum. The first demolitions – aimed precisely at making room for the Vittoriano – took place in the first decade of the 20th century between Piazza Venezia and the north slope of the Capitolium: they almost completely destroyed, among other things, the medieval complex of the convent of Aracoeli and the Tower of Paul III on the Capitolium.
According to this logic – which mixed functional ambitions (to speed up traffic, it was hypothesized the construction of a tram subway under the Capitoline Hill) and rhetorical exaltation of the memories of imperial Rome – a new variant to the master plan was approved in 1926, providing for the complete demolition of what had been built over the centuries above the Forums between Piazza Venezia and Via Cavour, as stated by Mussolini in 1925: «Millennial monuments must tower in the necessary solitude».
The demolition was thus approved in 1931 and carried out in just one year, involving the entire space between Piazza Venezia and the Colosseum: to build the 900 metres (3,000ft) of what was later called Via dell'Impero, 300,000 square metres (3,200,000sqft) of soil and concrete were removed and spilled a few kilometers away to fill «the once malarial lowlands of Via Ostiensis», without any survey being made of what was being destroyed. Upon completion of the work, about 5,000 living spaces had been demolished and about 4,000 people transferred from their houses under the Capitolium to the new borgate, then deep in the countryside.
The last building block was demolished in 1933; the works were delayed due to the legal affairs resulting from the discovery of a large quantity of coins and jewels, the so-called treasure of via Alessandrina (now in the Capitoline Museums), found on 22 February of that year in a wall of an apartment at number 101 of the street and belonged to Francesco Martinetti, a well-known antiquarian who died about forty years earlier.[2]
Recent history
Via Alessandrina after its reopening to the public on 28 October 2013.
After the urban interventions of the Fascist period, the street survived as it currently appears, cutting across Via dei Fori Imperiali and isolated from its original context. It was closed for transit in 1999, in forecast of archaeological excavations which never took place, and reopened 14 years later on 28 October 2013.[3]
The street was actually affected by excavations between March 2018 and December 2020:[4] the initial stretch, about 50 metres (160ft) long, was dismantled to reconnect the two areas of the Trajan's Forum that the archaeological investigations of 1998–2000 had isolated. During the excavations, remains of ancient sculptures were uncovered: the face of a divinity identified with Dionysus,[5] then a bust which probably belonged to the about 70 statues of Dacian warriors that decorated the attic of the Trajan's Forum,[6] finally a colossal portrait of Augustus,[7] all of which are now on display in the nearby Museum of Imperial Fora in the Trajan's Market. The works ended on 11 December 2020.[8]
Notes
↑ Antonio Nibby, Rome in the year MDCCCXXXVIII, p. 237, reads: Around the year 1570 the roads on this side were arranged and the raising of the ground began under the care of St. Pius V, Prospero Boccapaduli being the magistrate of the roads, and therefore the two main roads crossing from north to south and from east to west received the name of Via Alessandrina, and Via Bonella, the first one remembering the homeland, the other the family of that pope. It was then that the monastery of St. Basil was assigned to the Novices. The works continued under Gregory XIII, who, according to Martinelli, ordered to remove the gardens that occupied this part of Rome, so that, after the opening of the other streets, in two years the district was covered with houses in the year 1585. In the year 1606 Paul V raised the level of the church of St. Quiricus as it is seen now, and the plaque on the door bears witness to this; but at the same time, for work of Giovanni Fontana, he demolished the remains of the temple of Minerva, of which ten columns and part of the inscription and the pediment remained, and the materials were used for the construction of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major and the Pauline Fountain on the Janiculum. And so this monument was lost and replaced by plebeian houses.
↑ Fabio Giovannini (2010). I tesori nascosti di Roma. Mursia. pp.115–121.
Bruno Toscano, La città Assente: La via Alessandrina ai fori imperiali, Agorà 2007
Antonio Cederna, Lo sfondamento di via dell'Impero, from Mussolini urbanista, Bari, Laterza, 1979 (cited in Italo Insolera, Roma fascista nelle fotografie dell'Istituto Luce, Editori Riuniti 2002)
Roberto Meneghini, L'origine di un quartiere altomedievale romano attraverso i recenti scavi del Foro di Traiano[dead link]
The Imperial Fora are a series of monumental fora, constructed in Rome over a period of one and a half centuries, between 46 BC and 113 AD. The fora were the center of the Roman Republic and of the Roman Empire.
The Suburra, or Subura was a vast and populous neighborhood of Ancient Rome, located below the Murus Terreus on the Carinae and stretching on the slopes of the Quirinal and Viminal hills up to the offshoots of the Esquiline.
Trajan's Forum was the last of the Imperial fora to be constructed in ancient Rome. The architect Apollodorus of Damascus oversaw its construction.
Monti is the 1st rione of Rome, Italy, identified by the initials R. I, located in Municipio I. The name literally means 'mountains' in Italian and comes from the fact that the Esquiline, the Viminal Hills, and parts of the Quirinal and the Caelian Hills belonged to this rione: currently, however, the Esquiline Hill belongs to the rione Esquilino.
Campitelli is the 10th rione of Rome, Italy, identified by the initials R. X, and is located in the Municipio I.
Trajan's Market is a large complex of ruins in the city of Rome, Italy, located on the Via dei Fori Imperiali, at the opposite end to the Colosseum. The surviving buildings and structures, built as an integral part of Trajan's Forum and nestled against the excavated flank of the Quirinal Hill, present a living model of life in the Roman capital and a glimpse at the restoration in the city, which reveals new treasures and insights about ancient Roman architecture.
Piazza Venezia is a central hub of Rome, Italy, in which several thoroughfares intersect, including the Via dei Fori Imperiali and the Via del Corso. It takes its name from the Palazzo Venezia, built by the Venetian Cardinal, Pietro Barbo alongside the church of Saint Mark, the patron saint of Venice. The Palazzo Venezia served as the embassy of the Republic of Venice in Rome.
The Forum of Caesar, also known by the Latin Forum Iulium or Forum Julium, Forum Caesaris, was a forum built by Julius Caesar near the Forum Romanum in Rome in 46 BC.
The Basilica Ulpia was an ancient Roman civic building located in the Forum of Trajan. The Basilica Ulpia separates the temple from the main courtyard in the Forum of Trajan with the Trajan's Column to the northwest. It was named after Roman emperor Trajan whose full name was Marcus Ulpius Traianus.
The Via dei Fori Imperiali is a road in the centre of the city of Rome, Italy, that runs in a straight line from the Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum. Its course takes it over parts of the Forum of Trajan, Forum of Augustus and Forum of Nerva, parts of which can be seen on both sides of the road. Since the 1990s, there has been a great deal of archeological excavation on both sides of the road, as significant Imperial Roman relics remain to be found underneath it.
Giacomo Boni was an Italian archaeologist specializing in Roman architecture. He is most famous for his work in the Roman Forum.
The Torre dei Conti is a medieval fortified tower in Rome, Italy, located near the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. The tower was one of the most impressive towers that dominated medieval Rome.
Palazzo Valentini is a palazzo in central Rome, Italy, not far from Piazza Venezia. Since 1873 it has been the base of the provincial and prefectural administration of Rome.
The Temple of Trajan was a Roman temple dedicated to the emperor Trajan and his wife Plotina after his deification by the Roman Senate. It was built in the Forum of Trajan (Rome), by Trajan's adoptive son and successor Hadrian, between 125 A.D. and 138 A.D. The architect was Apollodorus of Damascus.
Cavour is a station on Line B of the Rome Metro, opened on 10 February 1955. It is located on via Cavour, in the Monti rione of Rome, midway between Santa Maria Maggiore and via dei Fori Imperiali.
Colosseo is a station on Line B of the Rome Metro. It was opened on 10 February 1955 and is located, as its name suggests, in the Monti rione on via del Colosseo near the Colosseum. The station is currently being expanded to be the new northern terminus of Metro's Line C.
Forum of Nerva is an ancient structure in Rome, Italy, chronologically the next to the last of the Imperial fora built.
The Casa dei Cavalieri di Rodi is a building in Rome. Sited in the ruins of the Forum of Augustus, it was built by the Knights Hospitaller at the end of the 13th century and since 1946 has been used by their successors, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Rome:
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
