www.museumpeace.com/15/1456.htm

Inside the Density of G. B. Piranesi's Ichnographia Campi Martii

Stephen Lauf

love and war 7.1

Although the Equiria festival comprises two separate days of horse racing celebrated once a year, Piranesi transforms the race course into a grand civic allee. There are three enormous public porticos, a gigantic stadium for mock navel battles, a huge military factory, and two expansive parade grounds, plus a factory for making ballistas, a factory for making scorpions, and numerous smaller temples dedicated to various gods, especially those gods that patronize soldiers and sailors. Piranesi not only redesigns the original Equiria into ancient Rome's military headquarters, but he also creates an urban scale tribute to Mars, the war god himself, and thus the new Equiria, straight as an arrow from the very beginning, becomes the axis of war.

left: the Naumachia Domitiani and the Porticus Vipsania
right: the Officinae machinarum militarium and the Porticus Alexandri Severi
The orange line in both images indicates the course of the Equiria.

love and war 7.2 »»

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