Palestrina, Sanctuary of Fortune, reconstruction.
(H. Kähler, Gnomon 30 [1958], p. 372)
Fig. 5.3 Palestrina, Sanctuary of Fortune, inclined column capitals.
(G. Gullini, Guida, Figs. 13 and 15)
The terrace marking the transition between the lower area and the Upper Sanctuary used to be covered by houses and shops, all damaged or destroyed by the 1944 bombing. When the debris was cleared away, it was found that the modern buildings had rested on a two-level terrace (I and II in the reconstruction), and had backed against and protected from centuries of weathering 325 magnificent feet of polygonal wall. The wall gives an architectonic front to the cliff and is at the same time functional. Its top was the architect’s base line; on it he built his complex, a splendid series of superimposed terraces, which, now that the rubble from the bombing has been cleared away, is revealed in all its magnificence, of ramps (III), Hemicycle Terrace (IV), Terrace of Arches with Half-columns (V), and Cortina Terrace (VI), all leading up to the final stepped hemicycle (VII) with the circular tholos for the cult statue at the very top. A draped torso in blue Rhodian marble (now in the museum), of a size to fit the tholos—whose dimensions are preserved in the fabric of the Barberini Palace—may be the cult statue of the goddess Fortune: Lady Luck herself.
The next level is approached by a pair of imposing ramps running east and west, converging on an axis. Fasolo and Gullini found that the ramps were supported by a series of concrete vaults, concealed, all but one, by a facing of opus incertum (see p. [120]). The exception is the central vault, which was left open, lined with waterproof concrete, and made into a fountain-house. The terrace in front of the ramps is beautifully paved with polygonal blocks. A room—perhaps priests’ quarters—at the bottom of the left ramp is decorated in the Pompeian First Style—embossed polychrome squares, red, buff, and green, with dado. Houses at Pompeii thus decorated are dated between 150 and 80 B.C., so that this decoration accords with a Sullan date. The decorated room is paved with waterproof cement with bits of white limestone imbedded in it. The technique, called lithostroton, was in vogue in Sulla’s time.
On the ramps were found three curious column capitals, which at first puzzled the excavators, and then gave the clue to the whole complex on top of the ramps. What is odd about the capitals is that they incline ([Fig. 5.3]) twenty-two degrees with respect to the axis of the columns. Since this slant corresponds to the grade of the ramp, the columns must have been intended to bear an inclined architrave or beam of stone. This poses a difficult problem in statics; that Sulla’s architect solved it is the wonder of his modern successors. The roadway up the ramp shows, on the outboard (south) side of a drain running up its middle, a stylobate (course of masonry on which columns rested) with cuttings for column bases. Reading these stones, Fasolo and Gullini concluded that the outboard half of the roadway up the ramp was roofed, while the inboard half was open to the sky. On the extreme outboard edge of the roadway are preserved the remains, about a yard high, of a wall in opus incertum, with the bottoms of half-columns, their fluting laid on in stucco, mortised into it at intervals corresponding to the cuttings in the stylobate. The half-round profile at the bottom of the wall suggests projecting the same profile all the way up. This involves restoring a blank windowless wall (windows would make it too weak to bear the weight of the roof) closing the entire south side of the porticoed roadway, blocking the breath-taking view across Latium to the sea, and forcing the eye upward to the top of the ramp. Architectural members designed to be clamped together in pairs, of a size to fit the tops of the inclined capitals, gave the answer to the question how the portico was roofed. One of the pairs supported a barrel vault, the other a vertical masonry wall designed to mask the spring of the vault. Other architectural members, with an oblique chamfer, found at the top and the bottom of the ramp, suggest that the ends of the vaults were masked with a pediment or gable end, and therefore that the whole vault was covered with a pitch roof. The two ramps debouch at the top in an open space paved in herringbone brick, a sort of balcony with—at last—a splendid view southward. To the north a stair led to the next level, the level of the Hemicycle Terrace.
The Hemicycle Terrace (IV) is planned, Fasolo and Gullini discovered, symmetrically to the axis of the whole composition, at this level marked by a central stair which has suffered a good deal from having had a modern house built on top of it. One can make out, however, that the stair was narrowed at one point (where there may have been a gate) by fountain niches on either side. The play of water is important at every level of the Sanctuary. Under the stair passes a vaulted corridor connecting the two axially symmetrical halves of the terrace. Closest to the stair on each side are four arches; beyond these, the monumental hemicycles which are the architectonic center of each wing. They have vaulted, coffered ceilings, and a concentric colonnade with Ionic-Italic (four-voluted) columns. Before they were restored, these were badly corroded, and covered with verdigris from the acid of the coppersmith’s shop which occupied the spot before the bombing. The epistyle carries an inscription, almost illegible, but apparently referring to building and restoring done on the initiative of the local Senate, presumably after the Sullan sack. The outer surface or extrados of the vaults is concealed—as it was on the porticoed ramp—by a story called an attic, in opus incertum, divided into rectangular panels by engaged columns with semicircular drums in tufa. At the back of each hemicycle runs a platform approached by two steps, with consoles on which planks could be placed to make more room; this suggests that it was intended for spectators to stand on. The pavement, as in the room at the foot of the ramp, is lithostroton; the likeness in the paving justifies the inference that the two terraces (III and IV) were built about the same time. On the far side of each hemicycle are four more arches. In front of the right-hand (eastern) hemicycle is a wishing well, with footings round it from which Fasolo and Gullini have been able to restore to the last detail, with the help of some architectural fragments, a small round well-house, with a high grille above its balustrade, now to be seen in the museum. Coins found in the well, whose heaviest concentration is in the mid-second century A.D., suggest that the well-house is much later in date than the terrace on which it stands. But the well-house stands on the central terrace of seven; it may have been the spot where, in the early days of the Sanctuary, the lots were cast. From either end of the Hemicycle Terrace ramps ([Fig. 5.4]) ascended to the Cortina Terrace (VI), the next but one above.
