Rome churches and Cosmatesque decoration

Cosmatesque decoration of Rome's churches

Walking around Rome and visiting churches, your gaze may fall occasionally to the ground beneath you. Characteristic sampietrini, or cobblestones, line many of the streets adding to the picturesque quality of the scene. Inside many of the ancient churches, you will see the distinctive floors created by a group of Roman artists from the later Middle Ages called the Cosmati. These multi-colored geometric designs ornamented not only floors, but choirs, columns and exterior elements.

A section of the floor showing multiple designs

The term Cosmati refers to several families of artists, of which one, the Cosma, has given its name to the group. They worked mainly in the central part of Italy, especially in Rome and nearby regions, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. At that time, the popes were promoting a rebuilding of Rome’s churches to restore the grandeur of ancient times.

A patchwork of stars

Being surrounded by classical ruins and Byzantine influences, the Cosmati were able to create geometric designs with an amazing variety and precision. They placed small triangles and rectangles of colored stones and glass in defined areas, usually bordered by white marble. The most used colors were green and red, although the natural colors of yellow and other earth toned stones increase the diversity in the designs. The small sizes of some of the pieces is due to the fact that they were reusing fragments of ancient materials. 

A section with a porphyry disk

 

Some of the reddish elements are porphyry, a rare hard, purple-red stone, imported from Egypt, that was highly prized in antiquity for its distinct color. The medieval artists were able to repurpose it by cutting it into small pieces. The round disks were sliced from huge ancient columns.

San Clemente has some of the most varied floor designs

On vertical surfaces, mosaic bands may curl around columns or border an arch. Inside the church strips of geometric designs, usually stars, form borders around choirs or pulpits. Frequently the floor of the central nave is decorated with large red porphyry circles surrounded by curved bands of geometric patterns. The surrounding spaces are filled in with sections of varying designs, again separated by strips of white marble.

A column decorated by the Cosmati

Visiting the churches on the walks described in the book Walk Rome, you will see many of these examples. The condition of the floors in the churches varies, as some have seen significant restoration

A circular pattern, probably restored to its initial beauty

Examples of “cosmatesque” floors from Walk Two are those in San Crisogono, San Saba, Santa Maria in Trastevere and Santa Maria in Cosmedin. Additional examples are, San Clemente in Walk Three, Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Walk Seven. The floor of the Sistine chapel in the Vatican also has cosmatesque decoration.

A Robot in Pompeii

The set: Pompeii, daytime. On the stone-paved avenue, among ancient mosaics and the remains of patrician villas, a quadruped robot peeps out. Yellow and black, it moves with a sure step even on uneven pavement, a camera instead of eyes and a powerful spotlight to illuminate the darkest crevices. We are not on the set of a science fiction film, but in the heart of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, where a new supervisor has been on duty for a few days: it is Spot, the robot dog of Boston Dynamics.

Pompeii's robot Spot

Developed by US-based Boston Dynamics, Spot is equipped with an autonomous, laser-based scanner and a color camera with a 360-degree field of vision. It forms part of wider technological experiments to help protect the archeological park. The robot has been employed under the Smart@POMPEI project which “aspires to an intelligent, sustainable and inclusive management of the Park [and] makes use of an integrated technological solution,” according to park authorities.

The ancient Roman city of Pompeii, which was destroyed in 79 C.E. after Mount Vesuvius erupted, is visited by millions of people annually. For years, tomb raiders targeted what remains of the city, digging tunnels underground to steal and traffic artifacts from its lavish homes, some of which date back more than 2,600 years. The tunnels have also helped excavators find new artifacts. But the authorities of Pompeii say many can’t safely be explored today because they could collapse — so they’ve brought in the robot dog to help. 

Spot on its rounds

The goal is for Spot to walk around Pompeii autonomously, across bricks and dirt, at night and during the day, to monitor existing buildings for structural weaknesses and to assess the progress of restoration work and search digs, especially in areas that could be dangerous to humans. It can be accompanied by a flying laser scanner to capture 3D scans of the structures.

The flying laser scanner and Spot work together

 

In 2008, the Italian government declared a state of emergency over Pompeii, which it said was falling apart under the pressures of tourism, poor weather, mismanagement and neglect. In 2010, several of the ancient city’s key sites collapsed, prompting UNESCO to strike a deal with Italian authorities to jointly preserve Pompeii, which is one of about 1,100 sites on the World Heritage List.

Spot has night vision

 

Pompeii Archaeological Park Director Gabriel Zuchtriegel said the Pompeii Archaeological Park will try using Spot to inspect the illicit underground tunnels with the approval of Italian law enforcement, which has worked to stop the tombaroli, or tomb raiders, and recover the lost artifacts of Pompeii. These tunnels have been illegally excavated for years to steal fragments and relics from the ruins to be sold on to art traffickers.

“Often the safety conditions within the tunnels dug by grave robbers are extremely precarious, and so the use of a robot could signify a breakthrough that would allow us to proceed with greater speed and in total safety,” he said.

A Curiosity of Rome - Monte dei Cocci

Monte dei Cocci

The area around Porta San Paolo in the southern part of Rome for centuries was a major commercial area. The port of Ostia, just 16 miles from the capital, traded with other Mediterranean countries, also from the Red Sea, Africa, Middle East and even India. The goods were transported by cart on Via Ostiense on a straight line from Ostia to Rome. In the area today called Testaccio, goods were sold wholesale or stored in warehouses to be sold around the city.

The extensive Roman trade network

 

On the banks of the Tiber there was also a river port where smaller ships could dock. Some ruins of the ancient warehouses can be seen from a bridge (Ponte Sublicio).  
Trade involved foodstuffs (e.g., olives, fish, meat, cereals, salt, prepared foods such as fish sauce, olive oil, wine and beer), animal products (e.g., leather and hides), objects made from wood, glass, or metals, textiles, pottery, and materials for manufacturing and construction such as glass, marble, wood, wool, bricks, gold, silver, copper, and tin.  Especially with east Africa and India, ivory, spices, silk, wild animals, and turtle shells. Finally, there was, of course, also the substantial trade in slaves.
 

Terra cotta amphorae

The containers used to transport wine and olive oil were made of terra cotta, called amphora, and could not be reused. (There was no plastic then…) So they were thrown in an area where they accumulated for centuries and became a hill, the Monte dei Cocci or the hill of shards. This artificial hill is still there in Testaccio and is 100 feet high and 1100 yards around. The name Testaccio comes from the word testae that is fragments of terra cotta amphorae used as containers for transport. It is estimated that 53 million amphorae were tossed here and that the hill reached a height of 300 feet, then slowly eroded.

An aerial view of the Monte dei Cocci

        
On this hill we have mainly amphorae from the state olive oil imports and, of course, for a city of a million people considerable additional quantities were imported privately. Only a small part of them was recycled as construction material: all the others were therefore smashed and their shards then neatly stacked in what, over the course of more than two centuries, became a huge pile raised not far from the docks. The order in which the materials are arranged, the presence of lime in the ground spread at regular intervals to mitigate the bad smell deriving from the decomposition of food residues and the existence of a well-designed inclined plane which allowed to reach the top on board of carts, suggest that the landfill was not improvised but carefully planned.

For centuries the Romans exploited the insulating properties of clay to carve out numerous caves on the slopes of this artificial hill, inside which the temperature is around 50 °F all year round. The rooms dug out in the shards were used as cellars, pantries or stables. Starting from the Middle Ages they housed taverns and, from the modern and contemporary age, restaurants and nightclubs.

The base of the hill

Excavations carried out on the site in 1881 reconstructed the approximate age of the mountain and the origin of the pottery itself; in fact, thanks to the inscriptions found on some of them, it was possible to ascertain that most of the amphorae came from the coasts of Bizacena (in today's Tunisia) and from Betica (today's Andalusia); the oldest find was dated to the year 144 AD, the most recent to 251. 

Each amphora, from the moment of its creation, bore a manufacturer's stamp and, once filled, the so-called tituli picti, i.e. information such as the content, the name of the exporter, the date of dispatch, the place of provenance and in some cases also the destination. The examination of the different types of amphorae in the various layers and the indications of origin and content, also constituted a precious source for reconstructing the history of trade in Rome.
     

Markings on the amphorae

To show how traditions can last, up until the 1950’s still some people in the area were throwing old terracotta pots on the hill. Now at the base of the hill, excavated in the ancient shards, we have many restaurants and night clubs and the entire neighborhood of Testaccio has changed from being a working-class area to a trendy one, where you can’t find a parking spot on Saturday night.