The most striking thing to a modern visitor to San Vitale is not the architecture, or the art, or the history. What stands out the most is the setting. Located on one of the busiest streets of Rome, nestled between a gleaming white exhibition hall and a fire station, many feet below the level of the street, sits the Basilica of San Vitale, constructed in the year 400.
The church itself is unornamented plain brick. In order to enter the church you must descend more than thirty stairs from the street, where you are welcomed by a brick portico with five arches and a tiled roof. The interior of the church reflects a typical basilica, with a central aisle ending in an apse. The wooden beams of the ceiling match the coloring of the frescoes that decorate the interior.
But it is the setting and entrance to the church that is perhaps most interesting. In addressing the exterior. I would like to take a moment to address a feature that is not unique to this church, but a feature that visitors to Rome experience throughout the city. The level of the city has risen. Visitors constantly look down upon ruins. Consider the Roman Forum, or the Largo Argentina, where you look down into the ruins. The base of the Column of Trajan is many feet below the surrounding sidewalk. I encourage you, as you visit the Pantheon, to walk along the side and look down. You will see the original level of the city - or at least the level of the city at the time the Pantheon was built. And if you now look back at the entrance to the entrance of the Pantheon as it is today, you will see that we enter at the current street level. But at the time it was built you would have had to climb steps to enter the Pantheon. In other words, the level of the city has risen.
It is reasonable to question why the city has risen. The simplest reason is that when new structures were built, the builders simply reused the existing structures as they were. In other words, if you were charged to construct a building, there is no benefit to remove the existing, solid support and build your own foundation: the existing Roman structure is solid and, frankly, you don't have the machinery to tear up the foundations and haul the refuse off.
There are many, many other examples demonstrating the level of the city rising. The artist Piranesi created a series of etchings in the 1700s. Notable for our purposes is the etching of the forum from from the north-west corner looking toward the Colosseum. The arch of Septimius Severus claims the foreground, but only the top half is visible. The rest is completely covered.
Or consider the door in the Temple of Faustina. At the current level of excavation the door appears to float. At one time, however, the door was at ground level. It has since been excavated.
Via Nazionale is a very busy street in Rome. It is the main road from the train station to the historical center of Rome. This wide, busy street goes from the Piazza della Repubblica to Piazza Venezia, so if you have gotten a taxi outside the train station and traveled to the historic center of town, you have traveled down Via Nazionale. The next time you travel this road - and surely you will - don't pass over San Vitale.
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