L’invenzione dei Fori Imperali

The transformation of Rome's urban landscape between the mid 20s and the beginning of the Second World War is the subject of an exhibition, promoted by the City of Rome's Department for Cultural Policy and the Superintendency of Fine Arts that is so much more than a straightforward documentary.
140 items, including photographs, paintings, frescos and archaeological relics set out along a route displaying works on loan from the Museum of Rome, the City's Photographic Archives, the City's Gallery of Modern Art and the Capitoline Museums. An inordinately rich selection that documents the demolition and excavations in the vast area that encompasses Trajan's Forum and Markets and the fora of Augustus, Caesar and Nerva. The recovery and restoration of these areas was carried out to strengthen the continuation of an historic ideal that linked fascist Rome to the ancient Imperial era. Mario Mafai's 1930 painting of Trajan's Forum is just one of the many paintings on show that is a magnificent example of how artists from the Roman School reflected the changing face of the city's centuries' old urban landscape.
Some 37 drawings and paintings are included in the exhibition, works of the likes of Michele Cascella, Maria Barosso, Lucia Hoffmann, Giulio Farnese and Pio Bottoni who typify the period they lived in, depicting greatly appreciated scenes of a city in metamorphosis, combining nostalgia for places that were disappearing and the celebration of a new Rome. A series commissioned contemporaneously, it became a part of the Museum of Rome's collection in 1930.
There are also 64 photographs chosen from amongst the more than 7.000 commissioned during the demolition of the Offices of the Governorship of Rome, taken by professional Roman photographers who specialized in documenting works of art.
They conjure up the intense and breakneck pace at which buildings were pulled down in the cultural climate of the time that vacillated between the desire to push ahead with the work and that to record and bear witness to the destruction.
30 relics dating from Roman times and 5 pictorial and sculptural fragments from the 16th and 17th centuries complete the items on display, all especially selected to represent the countless number of items found.
There is an anecdote about a workman who made a quite extraordinary discovery during the demolition of one of these ancient palaces. Someone, centuries earlier, had hidden a small fortune in old Roman coins in a wall - and these are now part of the Medal and Coin collection on display in the Capitoline Museums.
All in all, it is an exhibition that stirs the emotions, and uses a series of historical items and curiosities to produce what could be described as a “rediscovery of the discovery”.
In addition to the exhibition catalogue, published by Palombi, there is also a complete corpus of the photographs taken at that time entitled: Fori Imperiali Demolizioni e scavi. Fotografie 1924-1940, (Photographs of the Demolition and Excavations of the Imperial Fora) published by Electa in Milan in 2007.