Ara Pacis Museum, Rome – Richard Meier

The Museo dell’Ara Pacis is an archaeological museum in Rome that houses the monumental altar dedicated to the Peace goddess it is named after, dating back to the 1st century BC. The current museum was completed in 2006 after a design by American architect Richard Meier.

Above: an interior view of the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome; photo Simone Ramella (CC BY 2.0)

History and architecture – from the Roman altar to the 1938 pavilion

The construction of the Ara Pacis was commissioned by Augustus and the Roman Senate to celebrate Rome’s successful military campaign against the Gauls.
Dedicated to Peace, the giant marble altar was built in the Field of Mars (Italian: Campo Marzio), about half a mile from its current site, and completed on January 9 BC. Together with the altar, a sundial, composed of an Egyptian obelisk and known as Solarium Augusti, was erected in the same period.

The Ara Pacis is a small open-roof building, 34.84 x 38.16 feet (10.62 x 11.63 meters) in plan and 12.07 feet high (3.68 meters), with a sacrificial altar at its center and a frieze running along its external perimeter.
Fragments of the monument were rediscovered in the 16th century, but the Ara Pacis site was not fully excavated until 1937.

In 1938, Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini decided that the recomposed altar remains should be moved from their original location and prominently displayed in a dedicated building to emphasize the glorious past of the then recently established Italian Empire. Therefore, he commissioned the Italian architect Vittorio Balio Morpurgo to design a new home for the Ara Pacis near the Mausoleum of Augustus, thus forming an exceptional ensemble of monumental Roman antiquities on the Tiber waterfront.
The pavilion was inaugurated by Mussolini himself on September 23, 1938.

Cutout drawing of the Ara Pacis by Guglielmo Gatti, image courtesy of the University of Oregon

Plan of the Ara Pacis altar

Richard Meier’s Ara Pacis Museum

The protective pavilion was restored after World War II, but in the early 1990s, it became evident  that the enclosure was no longer adequate to protect the monument from weather and pollution. A brand new building was therefore created after a design by American architectural firm Richard Meier & Partners.

Inaugurated in 2006, the new museum is a daylight-filled building which, on a floor area of about 16,000 square feet (1,500 square meters), contains permanent and temporary exhibition galleries, a 140-seat auditorium, administration offices, and various visitor facilities.
In his design, Meier included a sequence of historical references, aimed to “reconnect” the modern pavilion with the history of the Ara Pacis and its site, such as the fountain close to the museum main entrance which alludes to the ancient Roman port of Ripetta once situated where the museum now stands, an artificial obelisk which mimics that once located in Campo Marzio, the original site of the altar, and the 1938 replica of Res gestae Divi Augusti (English: The Deeds of the Divine Augustus, a funerary inscription celebrating the life and accomplishments of Emperor Augustus) made as a decoration of the eastern facade of Morpurgo’s pavilion.

Proportions and materials of the new building – such as the travertine stone used to clad walls and pavement and the white marble plaster covering the columns in the atrium – are somewhat inspired by those of historical Roman architecture.
Along with being a museum, Meier’s pavilion was also designed as a state-of-the-art protective device for the altar remains inside it, which are facing serious conservation issues caused by the progressive degradation of their marble stone and metal parts. Therefore, the building comprises an array of active and passive technical solutions aimed at controlling the internal micro-climate, such as an advanced air conditioning system, daylight and artificial lighting control devices, radiant floor heating and cooling, and highly insulating glass panes.

The museum also has some flaws; for example, sometimes during the day, the sun-screening louver system projects unpleasant shadows of the altar, yet its architectural design is undoubtedly remarkable overall.

A travertine-clad wall in the museum; photo: Lawrence OP (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The south facade at night; photo: Massimiliano Giani (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

What to see at the Ara Pacis Museum

The museum is divided into three main areas.
The gallery on the south side of the building accommodates the reception space and an introductory exhibition and can be accessed by a stair and a ramp rising from the Tiber river banks.

After the introductory gallery, the visitors enter the central pavilion, a large hall, flooded by the diffuse light coming from a translucent glass ceiling, where the remains of the Ara Pacis are on view.
This is by far the most spectacular space of the museum, a truly engaging gallery that somewhat resembles the Parthenon Gallery of the Acropolis Museum in Athens, though at a much smaller scale.

In 2017, the museum introduced an augmented reality installation which provides 360° interactive views of the original appearance of the altar with all its vividly colored decorations (as many antique sculptural works, the frieze of the Ara Pacis was indeed not a pure, almost metaphysical, white relief as we are accustomed to seeing it today; it was instead intensely painted with red, green, blue, and yellow pigments).

The third section of the museum contains the auditorium, two special exhibition spaces, and a publicly accessible terrace overlooking the Mausoleum of Augustus nearby.

The Ara Pacis museum also hosts temporary exhibitions, live performances, and special events. The building, fully accessible to physically impaired people, also accommodates a bookshop and a cafeteria.

Close-up view of the Ara Pacis Museum’s collection of ancient marble heads; photo by David Bramhall (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The Ara Pacis altar; photo by Giuseppe Salvo (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Detail of the Ara Pacis decoration with a representation of a goddess who had been variously identified either as Venus or Pax; photo: Marialba Italia (CC BY 2.0)

Simulation of the augmented reality installation introduced in 2017; image courtesy of Museo dell’Ara Pacis, Rome