Tempio di Minerva Medica, Roma

Il  “Temple of Minerva Medica” is actually a monumental hall, built in two phases in the first decades of the 4th century AD in an area presumably belonging, in the previous century, to Emperor Gallienus (Horti Liciniani).

The central polylobed plan with a “daisy” profile, the careful study of proportions, and the progressive lightening of the walls upwards make it one of the most unique and daring monuments of the 4th century, with comparisons in the great imperial cities of Cologne and Constantinople.

Due to its imposing dimensions – a diameter of 25 m for a maximum dome height of 32 m, now reduced to about 24 – it is one of the most significant monuments in the views of Rome, until the modern upheavals of the Esquiline district layout, which forced the monument between the tracks of Termini Station and the popular housing of the Umbertino district.

Typical of the late antique period is a very large “sail” type segmented dome – the third in Rome after the Pantheon and the Baths of Caracalla – illuminated and lightened by large windows, which harmoniously takes a shape from polygonal to hemispherical; a dense and regular brickwork; semicircular niches present on all sides of the decagon, except for the entrance; massive piers functioning as buttresses.

The space appears expanded inside and out thanks to the deep niches on nine sides, arranged with absolute symmetry and surmounted by large arched windows; the traditional architectural element, represented by columns, instead returns in the entrance and in the four large niches arranged on the sides of the building.

To ensure the stability of the building, the open niches were filled in, giving continuity to the structure by creating powerful buttresses leaning against the corner piers in the outside residual areas between the niches, interventions that modified the external shape of the building.

Moreover, two large exedras, arranged outside on the transverse axis, flanked the central-plan pavilion, inserted into a complex of other rooms mostly of curved or apsidal shapes: among these, the elongated space with a double apse, resembling a narthex, added in front of the entrance.

The main hall and annexes were to be enriched with sumptuous decoration: on the dome remain traces of glass paste mosaics, later covered by a layer of plaster; the walls were adorned with marble slabs, bedded on the typical preparation of mortar and tile fragments; floors were covered with stone mosaics and opus sectile in vivid colors.

To emphasize the luxury of the complex, which a recent hypothesis attributes to an imperial commission (Maxentius or Constantine), a hypocaust system ran beneath some of the identified rooms, suggesting dining room functions for the decagonal hall.

The extensive bibliography, which seems to make it one of the most studied monuments of antiquity, has so far been matched by a worrying underestimation of structural problems, which led in 1828 to the collapse of the dome, subject to a complex restoration in the 1940s; while a consolidation and restoration intervention of the entire monument is underway.