A new Rome show on Roman
emperor Trajan aims to show his 'pop' side, spanning the senses
of being hugely popular with the Roman people and Senate and the
original vision of a ruler who left the capital monuments
admired through the Renaissance like his famed column and
markets, curators said Tuesday.
The show, Trajan, Building an Empire, Creating Europe, runs
from Wednesday until September 16 2018 in the run-up to the
1900th anniversary of the death of Rome's first non-Italian
ruler, a Spaniard Pliny the Younger called the "best of
emperors".
Trajan himself called himself "an ordinary man who lived an
exceptional life" and said "I was just the right man in the
right place".
The show at his markets, one of the most keenly awaited ones
of the year, is the brainchild of Capitoline superintendent
Claudio paris Presicce and has been curated by Lucrezia Ungaro,
Marina Milella and Simone Pastor.
It charts Trajan's conquests, notably in Dacia, and the high
reputation he enjoyed despite, or perhaps because of, a certain
sexual laxity and fondness for wine, among other things.
"Trajan," says Parisi Presicce, "was the first emperor
appointed on merit and not for any family ties with his
predecessor.
"He was a ruler who cared about the needs of his people and a
great material and symbolic builder.
"He brought the empire to its maximum extension, but the
sense of his conquests is not linked to the concept of
submission, but rather that of inclusion".
Trajan himself greets the visitor in a tour that runs
backwards 19 years from his tomb.
The show's seven sections including works, casts, models and
multimedia exhibits chart the dominant themes of his reign, from
the prime role of women including his wife Plautina; the major
infrastructure consolidating the five million square kilometres
of the empire; his battles; Trajan's Forum; and his posthumous
fortune.
"It's not a show for specialists but for everyone," said
curator Ungaro, with important loans including golden plaster of
the villa of Arcinazzo Romano or , for the first time together
in 400 years, the two parts of the frieze with cupids and
griffins from the Vatican Museum and Berlin - as well as some
previously unseen pieces like a colossal hand that has emerged
from the bowels of the Trajan Markets museum.
As well, there are sculptures, jewels, models and, from the
Museum of Roman Civilisation, the historic casts of Trajan's
Column (1861) up close and personal with other monuments of the
age like the Arch of Ancona, the bridge over the Danube and a
scale reproduction of Trajan's triumph over the Dacians.
On the Via Biberatica, the contemporary installation Columna
Mutatio - The Spiral, is by Luminita Taranu.
While for the first time there will be c chance to enter in
video into inaccessible underground parts of the emperor's villa
on the Aventine and into Trajan's Aqueduct that brought water
from Lake Bracciano to Trastevere.
"We have today forgotten Trajan's lesson and that of those
who built Europe," said Deputy mayor Luca Bergamo.
"Just as we think the condition of social peace in which we
live is to be taken for granted.
"That isn't so. reading history is a fundamental way of
understanding the times we live in".
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