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Auditorium di Mecenate

Typology: Monuments

Address

Address: Largo Leopardi
Zone: Rione Esquilino (Termini-Via Nazionale) (Roma centro)

Contacts

Telephone booking: 060608 tutti i giorni ore 9.00-19.00

Opening times

Admission to the monument is allowed to groups and associations, with their own guide, who must make a reservation at 060608 (daily, 9.00 - 19.00).
Maximum 30 people per visit.

For individual visitors, who must also make a reservation at 060608, individual visits are also possible according to a schedule specified o Monumenti del territorio

Information

Regular Tickets:  
Adults: € 7,50;
Concessions: € 5,00;
Roman Citizens only (by showing a vaild ID):
- Adults: € 5,00;
- Concessions: € 4,00;
Tickets are paid for in cash on the spot.
MIC card holders are entitled to free admission

On the first Sunday of the month, admission to monuments in the area is free for all.

Please note: The entrance fee does not include the guided tour, which must be organised independently.

Booking

» Obligatory
» Telephonic

Description

The monument that is part of a more spacious complex identified as theCountry House of Maecenas, was brought to light in 1874 during the excavationsrequired by the town-planning scheme for the Esquiline quarter rising at the time of king Humbert the First. It consists of a hall with an apsis built at the end of the Republican Age on a tract of the Servian Walls and inserted within the rampart behind them. It presents four parts: a vestibule facing southeast, consisting of a sort of rectangular hall, the real hall and the exedra-shaped (semicircular) stands with a radius of about 17 feet. The name was assigned to the building when it was discovered. In fact it looked like an auditorium, an Odeon (small covered theater) within the Horti (gardens) of Maecenas. Instead it probably is a summer triclinium, in other words a partially filled in and therefor fresherhall, used for feasts made more pleasant by water effects. The water flowed over the steps that  lead to the apsis into a lower central channel. This feature seems to be confirmed also by the decorations painted on the hall, that date back to the beginning of the first century AD. The sides of the walls are decorated with motifs of branchedcandlesticks and peafowls on a red background; the niches on the hall and onthe apsis are decorated with scenes of gardens with plants, flowers and birds that give the illusion of windows open on green spaces. A black frieze with paintings of Dionysian subjects runs above the niches in the rectangular room. The building must have had a vaulted roof. The thresholds of the niches and the stands of the exedra were covered with marble slabs. On the external wall of the semicircle the painting of anepigram by Callimacus alluded to the effects produced by wine during thesymposium.

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Last checked: 2024-01-23 13:00