Workshop

Italian version

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The aim of this contribution is to archaeologically and ideologically revisit locations and architectonical spaces of the imperial age residential villa, particularly the one belonging to the Antoninian imperial family, of whom we tried to catch the spirit and thought.

A topic of great relevance that, through the analysis of archaeological data and of literary sources, provides an interpretation key for History; solemn testimony of economical and historical-cultural changes of the roman society, from the crisis ofthe republican institutions to the advent of the princedom and for all the imperial age, in addition to document the change over time of the concept of residential space.
With augustean age, with the great developments in neronian, flavian and adrianean age, in these exceptional magnificent villas what strikes is, for example, the treatment of external surfaces characterized by varied perimeters that underline the internal articulation of the building and in which the asymmetry is not a rebound given by the absence of space but an invention that reveals the curve profiles of apses.

The importance of these residential architectures, strongly connected to the surrounding landscape, consists also in documenting the artistic and technical-expressive value of the artifact, for the purposes of a more broad comprehension of the architectonical residential culture wanted by the emperors, that becomes a good terrain for architectural experiments later adopted by public architecture.