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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baths_at_Ostia

The preservation and extensive excavations at Ostia Antica have brought to light 26 different bath complexes in the town. These range from large public baths, such as the Forum Baths, to smaller most likely private ones such as the small baths (I, XIX, 5). It is unclear from the evidence if there was a fee charged or if they were free. Baths in Ostia would have served both a hygienic and a social function like in many other parts of the Roman world. Bath construction increased after an aqueduct was built for Ostia in the early Julio-Claudian Period. Many of the baths follow simple row arrangements, with one room following the next, due to the density of buildings in Ostia. Only a few, like the Forum Baths or the Baths of the Swimmers, had the space to include palestra. Archaeologist name the bathhouses from features preserved for example the inscription of Buticoso in building I, XIV, 8 lead to the name Bath of Buticosus or the mosaic of Neptune in building II, IV, 2 lead to the Baths of Neptune. The baths in Ostia follow the standard numbering convention by archaeologists, who divided the town into five regions, numbered I to V, and then identified the individual blocks and buildings as follows: (region) I, (block) I, (building) 1.

Baths of Buticosus
This small bathhouse (I, XIV, 8) was constructed during the reign of Trajan circa 110 C.E. and remodeled in the middle of the second century C.E. This bath is typical of many of the balnea in Ostia, where the rooms are built into the established city grid leading to a chaotic interior layout often without a palaestra. In Room 4 is a black-and-white mosaic with marine animals and a man. Besides the man is an inscription EPICTETVS BVTICOSVS, giving the bath house its modern name. This man was a bathing attendant and holds a bucket and a stick. In the caldarium is another black-and-white mosaic with a marine scene of Triton and Nereid. The bath was supplied with water by a tank equipped with a noria in the adjacent Republican Sacred Area. These baths also preserved frescoes with garden images, creating an illusion of a real garden.

Baths of Neptune
East of the theater is another large square bath complex covering c. 4,400 square meters (67 meters x 67 meters) and is known as the Baths of Neptune (II, IV, 2). The structure, built late during the reign of the emperor Hadrian, was dedicated early (~139 C.E.) in the reign of Antonius Pius. At the end of the second century C.E it was restored by Gamala Iunior. The bath continued to be renovated until the 4th century C.E. The bath house is surrounded on four sides by streets and has entrances on each street. The overall design of the bathhouse was similar to those found in Pompeii, such as the Central Baths and therefore represents the next aspect of development.



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.