The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Apollodorus of Damascus (attributed) · the market halls as they stand: a hemicycle of shops on three levels following the curve of the eastern exedra of Trajan’s Forum, with a half-domed hall at each end; terraced blocks of rooms climbing the hill above it; an ancient street running through the upper complex, known by the medieval name Via Biberatica; and at the top the Great Hall, a two-storey hall of shops under a row of six cross vaults · brick-faced concrete throughout, with travertine for door frames, brackets and corbels; the brick finished as a visible face, with brick pilasters and small pediments framing the arched windows of the hemicycle’s upper storey · on the western slope of the Quirinal, Rome, above Trajan’s Forum and separated from it by the forum’s fire wall · built about AD 100 to 110, in the campaign that made the Forum of Trajan, dedicated in 112; attributed to Apollodorus of Damascus, whom the ancient record names as Trajan’s architect for the forum · as it stands, a ruin in part, its upper storeys and roofs in part lost, the Great Hall still roofed; fortified and built over in the Middle Ages and occupied by a convent from the sixteenth century; cleared, excavated and in parts reconstructed under Corrado Ricci in the late 1920s and 1930s; now the Museum of the Imperial Fora
Mode
Commercial and administrative complex of shops and offices in brick-faced concrete, terraced against a cut hillside; hemicycle, terraces, street and vaulted hall
Mythos
The hill made city: the mountain cut and rebuilt as a terraced settlement with its own street, a made acropolis of commerce; the forum and its market as stage and audience, an analogy the plan permits but does not build
Phase
Built about AD 100 to 110 with the Forum of Trajan, dedicated in 112; fortified, towered and built over in the Middle Ages; a convent from the sixteenth century; cleared and in parts reconstructed in the late 1920s and 1930s; excavated and restored again in the 2000s, and now a museum
Presentation
A hemicycle of shops on three levels with half-domed halls at its ends, terraced blocks above, an inner street and the Great Hall under six cross vaults on travertine corbels; brick-faced concrete, the brick finished as a face; the original use lost
Register
Grand in the hemicycle’s curved cliff of brick seen from the forum, high and light in the Great Hall, picturesque on the climb between; sober throughout, a working building
Scale
One quarter of the imperial city in section: the state, trade and the hill held in one stepped structure
Governing Proposition
To give Trajan’s Forum its level ground, the saddle of hill beside the Quirinal was cut away, and against the cut face the builders set a curved front of shops on three levels answering the forum’s exedra, terraces of rooms climbing behind it, a street running through them at height and a vaulted hall at the top. The wager of the market is that the working city can be built in the same concrete as the palace and the bath, its brick shown rather than hidden, and that a hill held up by rooms can stand back to back with an emperor’s marble and be its other face. The use is lost and the upper blocks are an accretion; the curve, the hall and the street remain.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Trajan’s Forum needed level ground, and the ground was not level. The saddle between the Quirinal and the Capitoline was cut away to make it, and the inscription on Trajan’s Column states that the column’s height marks how much hill was removed. The forum was dedicated in 112. The building now called Trajan’s Market was raised in the same campaign, about AD 100 to 110, against the cut face of the Quirinal’s western slope, above the forum’s eastern exedra. It is the building that holds up the hill the column measures.
The ancient record names Apollodorus of Damascus as Trajan’s architect for the forum, and for the bridge over the Danube. The market is given to him because it was built with the forum and answers its plan; no document names him as its architect, and the name is used here as an attribution only. Nothing on this page turns on it. A building of this size was the work of many hands, and whatever share others had in it is not charged to anyone.
What is judged is the market halls as they stand: the great hemicycle of shops on three levels that follows the curve of the exedra, the two half-domed halls at its ends, the terraced blocks climbing the hill above, the ancient street running through the upper complex, and the Great Hall at the top. The forum, the Basilica Ulpia and the column are the market’s reason and its neighbour, not part of it. The medieval towers and fortifications built on and into its fabric, the convent that occupied part of it and the museum installed in it are its later history, not its making.
Movement II
The hemicycle rings the forum’s exedra across a paved street, behind the forum’s fire wall. At ground level shops open onto the street, each a room, a door and a travertine frame, repeated round the curve. Above them runs a storey of rooms fronted by a corridor, lit through arched windows; a third level is set back above that. Seen from the forum floor, the hemicycle rises as a curved cliff of brick, three storeys of arches and pilasters closing the view, and at each end of the curve a half-domed hall turns the corner.
The concrete is faced in brick, and the brick is meant to be seen. On the upper storey, brick pilasters and small pediments frame the arched windows: a brick order, cut and laid as finish, where marble might have been expected. The architecture of vaulted concrete that Rome had developed for its palaces and baths is here turned to a working complex of shops and offices. That was the departure, and its materials were proven ones. The vault was mature by AD 100; the taberna, the arcade and the terraced substructure were standard. The market is a bold application of a proven art more than a turn away from it.
The curve is not a choice of taste. It is forced by the exedra it faces, and it is what binds the market to the forum: flatten it and the two would be neighbours rather than one composition. Across the one street the two faces of the Trajanic city stand back to back, the forum’s marble ceremony and the market’s brick business. Public magnificence rested on an organised, repetitive, administered everyday, and the plan says so. The saying is sober, a truth of urban order, and part of its force comes from the forum the market faces, which lies outside the unit judged.
Movement III
At the top of the complex stands the Great Hall, the Aula Grande: a long hall roofed by a row of six concrete cross vaults springing from travertine corbels, with shops on two levels down its flanks. The thrust of the vaults is carried outward by arches thrown over the side rooms. The corbels and the arches stand where the vaults need them and nowhere else, and the vaults have stood for nineteen centuries. The hall is roofed still.
It is lit along the clerestory, and the vaults seem to float on their corbels: a light, high interior, unusual for a working building. It is the building’s second height, after the hemicycle seen from below. Commerce here was given a hall with the dignity of a basilica. A cross-vaulted hall carried over a multi-storey commercial section is a structural system for a hall of trade, and it is the market’s most refined piece of making.
The Great Hall belongs to the line of great vaulted halls that leads to the later baths and basilicas. Whether it is a source of that line or one instance in it cannot be shown, and its descent is a matter of inference. The Pantheon (9.3), in the same city, holds a structural feat of another order, one room under one dome, and the market does not attempt one. Its making is the making of a whole quarter: concrete laid against a cut hillside, retaining the slope and lightened by its rooms, the brick exposed by design.
Movement IV
Through the upper complex runs an ancient street, now called the Via Biberatica, a medieval name. Shops still line it. One walks a Roman street in the open air several levels up a building on a hillside, and the market becomes a quarter rather than a structure. Above the hemicycle the blocks rise in terraces, and each terrace is a retaining wall that is also a row of rooms. The building is the hill’s section, made habitable.
Here the building loosens. The upper blocks are agglomerated, set at angles to follow plot and contour, and the Great Hall sits at its own angle on the hill. Several of the blocks could be removed or rearranged without loss to what the building says, and their forms come from the site rather than from a meaning. The lower half obeys the forum’s geometry; the upper half obeys the slope and the city’s plots. One material, one structural system and one module run from bottom to top; one composition does not. The law that governs the whole is the hill’s: every part steps with the ground.
The building holds several orders in that stepped structure: the state, in the emperor’s gift; trade and labour, in the shops and the street; the city as a made thing; the hill itself, cut and held. The hemicycle has the shape of a theatre turned toward the forum, and it can be read as the audience of trade before the stage of empire, but the plan permits that reading without building it. What is built is the hill made city, a terraced settlement with its own street. There is no rite here, no sacred centre, and nothing of cult; the market is a building for use.
Movement V
What the building was for is not settled. Market is a modern label. The complex likely served the imperial administration as well as trade, with offices tied to the forum, and whether it had a part in the distribution of grain is an open question. The original use is lost either way. Through the Middle Ages the fabric was fortified and towered, the Torre delle Milizie rising on it, and from the sixteenth century the convent of Santa Caterina da Siena occupied part of it. The form survived because later hands lived in it.
It was uncovered by hands that also rebuilt it. Under Corrado Ricci in the late 1920s and 1930s, with the making of the Via dell’Impero, the medieval accretions were stripped and the market cleared, excavated and in parts reconstructed. Since then it has been studied as a central work of Roman concrete architecture, and excavation and restoration in the 2000s reopened parts of it. The Museum of the Imperial Fora is now installed in it. Its questions, its function and its building phases, are still argued, though what each return teaches is more about Rome than about the building.
Nineteen centuries on, the form is more legible than in most ruins. The hemicycle stands to its upper storey with its windows and pediments readable; the Great Hall stands roofed; the street runs between its shops; the terraces hold the hill. The use is gone, the upper storeys and roofs are in part lost, and the reconstruction of the 1930s is part of what is seen. Among the desk’s Roman buildings the Pont du Gard (8.4) and Hadrian’s Villa (8.4) stand above it and the Colosseum (8.8) higher still. The market keeps what it was built to keep: the curve that answers the forum, the hall at the top, and the hill held up by rooms.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on purpose, structure and site. Much is compelled. The hemicycle’s curve is forced by the forum exedra it faces; the terracing is forced by the cut slope, each level a retaining wall that is also a row of rooms; the fire wall between forum and market is required by the city. The Great Hall’s corbels and buttressing arches stand where its vaults need them and nowhere else. Use compels the shop module: a room, a door, a travertine frame, repeated. What yields to the subtractive test is the upper complex: its blocks are agglomerated, set at angles to follow plot and contour, and several could be removed or rearranged without loss to what the building says. The lower half is necessary; the upper half is sufficient.
Score: 7.8 / 10
What the building discloses through space can be stated and holds. The imperial city was a made landscape: the hill cut back and rebuilt as a stacked city of rooms. And the emperor’s gift of a forum carried, behind its marble, a working machine of trade and office in plain brick. The two faces of the Trajanic city, the forum’s ceremony and the market’s business, stand back to back across one street: public magnificence underwritten by an organised, repetitive, administered everyday. The Great Hall adds that commerce was given a hall with the dignity of a basilica. What holds the axis: the disclosure is partly by contrast with the forum, which lies outside the unit, and within it the truth is of urban order more than of the human condition.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Elevation comes at two places. The hemicycle seen from the forum floor rises as a curved cliff of brick, three storeys of arches and pilasters closing the view, the hill made architecture, and its grandeur is repeated along the whole curve. The Great Hall’s six cross vaults, lit along the clerestory and floating on their corbels, give a light, high interior unusual for a working building. Between these the climb through terraces and along the street gives the pleasure of a city section laid open, picturesque more than sublime. The atmosphere of the ruin, open terraces, a medieval tower above and the forum below, belongs to its survival rather than its making and is not credited here. A building that rises twice, well, with flat ground between.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Little archetype is built into the plan. The hemicycle has the shape of a theatre’s cavea turned to face the forum, and the forum can be read as the stage of empire and the market as its audience of trade; but that is an analogy the plan permits, not one it constructs, and nothing in the use or the structure makes it load-bearing. The deeper pattern is the hill made city, the mountain cut and rebuilt as a terraced settlement with its own street, and that pattern is present in the section, not laid on as ornament, which keeps the axis from falling lower. What holds it at the foot of the twelve: no threshold rite, no axis to a sacred centre, no cosmos built. It is a building for use, and its myth is Rome as maker of ground, evoked more than built.
Score: 7.0 / 10
The inheritance: the vaulted concrete architecture Rome had developed for palaces and baths, mature by AD 100, and the standard elements of the taberna, the arcade and the terraced substructure. The departure: that vaulted architecture turned to a utilitarian complex of shops and offices, and the brick-faced concrete shown as a finished surface with its own brick order of pilasters and pediments, not hidden under marble. The Great Hall puts cross vaults on corbels over a multi-storey commercial street and carries their thrust outward over the side rooms, a structural system for a hall of trade. The stake was real: six or more levels against a freshly cut hill, the slope held by the building itself, in a city that burned. What tempers it: a bold application of a proven art more than a turn from it.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Would a different form change what the building knows? Largely, yes. The hemicycle’s curve binds the market to the forum: flatten it and the two become neighbours rather than one composition, and the market’s answer to the exedra is lost. The terracing makes the building a section of the hill; a block on level ground would know nothing of the cut it holds. The street inside makes it a quarter rather than a structure: one walks a Roman street through shops, in the open air, several levels up a building. The Great Hall’s vaults give commerce its hall. Where it yields: the upper blocks take their forms from the site rather than from a meaning, and the shop rooms are a container any arrangement could hold.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Evidence of return, and the record is short. The building has been studied intensively since its clearance in the 1920s and 1930s and is central to the twentieth century’s account of Roman concrete architecture and its interior space. Its questions stay open: its function, whether market, offices or a part of the imperial administration, is still argued; so are its building phases; excavation and restoration in the 2000s reopened parts of it. But the yield is mostly historical and technical, and what a second visit teaches is more about Rome than about the building. For a millennium it was buried, fortified and built over, and the long record of attention the axis prefers is under a century old.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The field is Roman imperial building of its century. The intrinsic force is high: a multi-storey urban complex in brick-faced concrete, a hillside rebuilt as rooms, a cross-vaulted hall on corbels with its thrust carried outward, a real enlargement of what concrete could serve, from palace and bath to the working city. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the cross-vaulted hall belongs to the line that leads to the great vaulted halls of the later baths and basilicas, but the market is one instance in that line rather than its demonstrated source, and descent from it is inference. Through the medieval and Renaissance centuries it was a fortress and a convent, hidden in later fabric, not a model answered. Its reach is chiefly the delayed reach of twentieth-century study, credited at a discount.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Weighed on form, then use, then fabric, over nineteen centuries. The form survives better than in most ruins: the hemicycle stands to its upper storey with its windows and brick pediments legible; the Great Hall stands roofed under its six vaults; the street runs between its shops; the terracing holds the hill. The governing idea, the curve answering the forum and the hill made a stacked quarter, is whole. The use is lost: the building lived as fortress and convent and is now a museum, entered daily as an object, not as a market. The fabric is largely Trajanic brick and concrete, but upper storeys and roofs are lost, medieval accretions were stripped in the 1920s and 1930s, and parts were reconstructed then. Form earns the higher figure; use and rebuilding hold it.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Judged as command of building, structure included. Brick-faced concrete at its Trajanic best. The Great Hall’s cross vaults spring from travertine corbels and are buttressed by arches thrown over the side galleries, a refined solution to carrying vaulted thrust over a multi-storey section, and the vaults have stood for nineteen centuries. The hemicycle is concrete laid against a cut hillside, retaining the slope while lightening itself by its rooms; the half-domed halls at its ends are vaulted with the same assurance. The brickwork is fine and exposed by design, pilasters, pediments and arches cut and laid as finish. The making is load-bearing: the building is its structure. What holds it below the summit of the art: no single structural feat of the Pantheon’s order, and an upper complex built with a competence ordinary for Rome.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the hemicycle’s formal curve, symmetrical and faced to the forum, and the irregular upper blocks with the Great Hall set at its own angle on the hill. Do they obey one law? In material and structure, yes: brick-faced concrete, the arch, the vault, the taberna module and the street, from bottom to top. In composition, no: the lower half obeys the forum’s geometry and the upper half obeys the slope and the city’s plots. The law that does govern the whole is the hill’s: every part steps with the ground, and that unifies more than it first seems. A wide range, from monumental curve to working street, held by a common system rather than by one composition.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Orders held in one structure: the state, in the emperor’s gift and, likely, his offices; labour and trade, in the shops, the street and the stores; the city as a made thing, a quarter built in section with its own street at height; the natural order, in the hill cut and held, the building serving as its retaining wall; and history, through the forum and the column whose height measures the cut. These are integrated by the section rather than listed: the hill, the street, the shop and the state’s forum are one stepped structure. What it does not hold: the sacred, for nothing here is cult; the household and its dwelling; and consciousness. A working building of wide civic scope, short of the encompassing reach of the great sacred buildings.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.8 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.8, then The Made at 8.5 and The Swerve at 8.1. A form more legible than most ruins after nineteen centuries, the hemicycle standing to its upper storey and the Great Hall still roofed; brick-faced concrete at its Trajanic best, cross vaults on travertine corbels with their thrust carried over the side rooms and the brick exposed as finish; and the vaulted architecture of palace and bath turned to the working city.
Limiting Dimension
The Archetypal Deep at 7.0: the hill made city is built into the section, but the theatre the plan resembles is an analogy it permits rather than constructs, and a building for use builds no rite and no sacred centre. Next above it, The Encompassed at 7.2: the state, trade, the made city and the hill held in one stepped structure, without the sacred, the household or consciousness. Then The Unconcealment and The Bottomless Well at 7.6: a disclosure of urban order made partly by contrast with the forum outside the unit, and a record of return under a century old whose yield is mostly about Rome.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.8 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.0, The Made at 8.5, The Inner Law at 7.9, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 8.8 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Swerve at 8.1, Pressure on Tradition at 7.9, The Unconcealment at 7.6 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.0 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Archetypal Deep, 7.0, below 7.5; The Unconcealment and The Bottomless Well at 7.6 are the next lowest, and The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.2. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.8, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Trajan’s Market, Rome, of its documented plan, section, fabric and history. No plan, image or written source was consulted for this page. The unit scored is the market halls as they stand: the hemicycle of shops on three levels with the half-domed halls at its ends, the terraced blocks above it, the ancient street through the upper complex (the Via Biberatica, a medieval name) and the Great Hall. Trajan’s Forum, the Basilica Ulpia and Trajan’s Column are context, not the unit; so are the Torre delle Milizie and the other medieval towers and fortifications built on and into the fabric, the convent of Santa Caterina da Siena, and the fittings of the Museum of the Imperial Fora installed in the building in the 2000s, which are not scored. What now stands where the original was lost: upper storeys and roofs are in part lost and nothing stands in their place; the medieval accretions were stripped in the late 1920s and 1930s under Corrado Ricci, and parts of the building were reconstructed then, so that some of what is seen is of that date; the Great Hall stands roofed. Clearance and reconstruction are weighed under The Imperishable alone. The market is attributed to Apollodorus of Damascus because it was built with the forum, for which the ancient record names him; the attribution is undocumented and no axis turns on it. Its function is stated as open, and “market” is used as a name only. Nothing is quoted: the inscription on Trajan’s Column is given in paraphrase. Facts that could not be verified are not given or are stated as open, among them the dimensions of the building, the number of its rooms, a start under Domitian, the alternation of the pediments’ forms, the date of the Torre delle Milizie, the later uses of the fabric beyond fortress and convent, the extent of the reconstruction of the 1930s and how far it is marked, the market’s part in the distribution of grain, its likening to buttressing of a later age, its descent to the vaulted halls of the later baths and basilicas, and the names of particular scholars and architects who returned to it.