William L. MacDonald

The Small Baths at Hadrian's Villa

The building is something of a minor celebrity because of its unorthodox plan and the unusual, undulating form of one of its vaults, but it has not been published in any detail. Its fabric, quite well preserved, has now been studied thoroughly with a view to obtaining a reliable base for analysis and for restoration studies. Here the building is described, its plan and interior dispositions analyzed, and its decor and technology reported. Details of chronology, and of the physical state of the building, are given in appendices, drawings, and tables. The artistic nature and historical position of the design are discussed against the background of the architectural principles of the Villa as a whole and within the framework of Roman imperial architecture. Although the Baths are usually regarded in the literature as something of a dead end-interesting, perhaps, but of little significance in the history of architecture-they can be said to be an outstanding example of that experimental strain in Roman architecture which in a sense reached maturity only when certain of its principles were absorbed into the work of postRenaissance, anti-regole masters.

Some Implications of Later Roman Construction

THE ROMANS ERECTED buildings side by side in two distinct manners. Their trabeated architecture, which was evolved chiefly from indigenous and Hellenistic Greek sources, is fundamentally different from their vaulted style, which was developed and perfected by Roman hands although some of its origins are to be sought in the preRoman Mediterranean world. The vaulted style is characterized by non-prismatic spaces, by the appearance of curves in both horizontal and vertical sections, and by walls and vaults constructed of smallish pieces of materials set in strong mortar. Columns were often used as working parts of these buildings, but they appear dissociated from their traditional orders, having been given new statical and visual functions. New types and combinations of vaults were developed, and the problem of the indirect transmission of thrusts was resolved. From those and other sources a new and spatially potent style evolved, an event of great significance and with many implications for the future of architecture.