Round Hall
Pio Clementino Museum
Vatican City
Rome Italy
2016


Round Hall
The construction of this large hall with a hemispherical vault imitating that of the Pantheon was completed in 1779 according to a project of Michelangelo Simonetti. The walls carry a series of niches for displaying colossal statues, between which are half-columns which support outsize busts. The floor is an amazing 18th century assemblage of mosaics from the first decades of the 3rd century A.D. which were found at Otricoli and at Sacrofano. At the centre of the room is a huge red porphyry basin which has a circumference of 13 metres. The basin must once have embellished one of the large public spaces of imperial Rome.

https://vaticantips.com/round-room-at-the-vatican/

The Round Room, the Room of the Rotonda or according to the Vatican Museums website, the Round Hall is one of the most stunning rooms inside the Vatican Museums.

The room itself was designed by the architect Michelangelo Simonetti in the year 1779. It is the next room after the Room of the Muses and just before the Greek Cross room on the way to the Sistine Chapel.

The ceiling in the Round Room is designed after the Pantheon, Rome’s most important temple dedicated to all the ancient Roman gods, although it is much smaller in scale.

The mosaic floor was literally taken up piece by piece from the ancient bathhouses from Ostia Antica which was the old port of Rome. The Floor dates from the third century B.C. and placed back down piece by piece in the 18th century. The mosaic floor tells the story from the battle of the Centaurs.



Pio Clementino Museum
The nucleus of the pontifical collections of classical sculpture dates back to the original collection of pope Julius II (1503-1513) which was housed in the Cortile delle Statue (today the Octagonal Court). During the second half of the 18th century the pontifical collections were enormously expanded both as a result of excavations being carried out in Rome and Lazio, and by donations from collectors and antiquaries. The influence of Enlightenment thinking resulted in the inauguration of a museum in the modern sense, open to the public and explicitly charged with the task of safeguarding antique works of art, and promoting the study and understanding of them. The Museum is called Pio Clementino after the two popes who oversaw its foundation, Clement XIV Ganganelli (1769-1774) and Pius VI Braschi (1775-1799). The museum fills several large exhibition halls which were obtained by adapting pre-existing rooms with new constructions both within and adjacent to the small Belvedere Palace of Innocent VIII (1484-92). Antique sculpture was brought here and ancient roman pieces have often had their missing parts completely restored. The neo-classical architecture was realised under the direction of Alessandro Dori, Michelangelo Simonetti, and Giuseppe Camporese and embellished by the work of a large number of painters and decorators.
With the Treaty of Tolentino (1797) the Papal States were forced to give up the principal masterpieces in the Museum to Napoleon and they were transported to Paris. Much later, following the defeat of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna (1815), and thanks to the diplomatic efforts of Antonio Canova, the greater part of the works were recovered.