The Ara Pacis is an altar to Peace, commissioned to honour the triumphal return from Gaul of the Emperor Augustus
The Ara Pacis Augustae shortened to Ara Pacis) is an altar to Peace, envisioned as a Roman goddess. It was commissioned by the Roman Senate on 4 July 13 BC to honour the triumphal return from Hispania and Gaul of the Roman emperor Augustus,and was consecrated on 30 January 9 BC by the Senate. The Ara Pacis stood within an enclosure sculpted entirely in gleaming white marble, depicting scenes of traditional Roman piety, in which the Emperor and his family were portrayed in the act of offering. Some have their togas drawn over their heads, like a hood; this signifies that they are acting in their official capacity as priests. Others wear laurel crowns, traditional symbols of victory. The Altar is a masterpiece, the most famous surviving example of Augustan sculpture; the life-sized figures in the procession are not idealized types but rather portraits. The Altar was originally on the northern outskirts of the city, on the Via Flaminia, in the Campus Martius, an open area that Augustus developed as a complex of monuments; the Ara Pacis stood in the flood plain of the river Tiber, where it became buried under four metres of silt. The first fragmentary sculptures were rediscovered in 1568. In 1859 further sculptural fragments were found, and the sculptures were recognized as having belonged to the same monument. Friedrich von Duhn recognized that the reliefs belonged to the Ara Pacis, known from Augustus' memoir. In 1938 Benito Mussolini built a protective building for the Altar, as it had been reconstructed by Giuseppe Moretti, near the Mausoleum of Augustus as part of his attempt to create an ancient Roman "theme park" to glorify Fascist Italy. There is now a new cover building on the same site as Mussolini's, designed by American architect Richard Meier. The new building was opened in 2006 and is controversial.
Size: 5050px × 3354px
Location: The Ara Pacis on the Banks of the River Tiber in Rome Italy
Photo credit: © Brenda Kean / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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