ROME — The “Gagosian Gallery,” from February 3 will present the exhibition “Sanctuary,” a group of forty-one black and white photographs made by George Crewdson in the legendary Cinecittà studios in Rome. The abandoned outdoor film sets have become the subject of, rather than the mere setting for, his pictures. Moving through the empty streets of “Ancient Rome” at the beginning and end of the day, he has captured the palpable atmospheres. Crewdson was born in 1962 in Brooklyn, New York and hid photographs are included in numerous museums and public collections around the world including Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and so on.

In the “Sanctuary” exhibition, Crewdson’s focus is on scenographic architecture as the principal subject underscores the illusory techniques that he has previously used to construct his scenes and actions. The series contains certain characteristics of a documentary film by which is exposed the hidden life of movies and their artifacts that remain once production has ceased. The intimate scale of the black-and-white photographs serves to further intensify the poignancy of each deserted scene.

The exhibition is at the Gagosian Gallery in Rome on Francesco Crispi Street from February 3 to March 5.

ROME — The exhibition “Rituals of Life” is accessible to visitors to the Vatican Museums will be on display for all of 2011.

“Rituals of Life” is a journey through the spirituality and culture of the Aboriginal people of Australia through the collection brought together in the Ethnological Museum of the Vatican Museums. “Rituals of Life” was collated by Fr. Nicola Mapelli, Curator of the Ethnological Collections of the Vatican Museums, with the support and collaboration of the National Museum of Australia through the work of Senior Indigenous curator Margo Neale and Katherine Aigner; and with the assistance of Nadia Fiussello.

The objects of the exhibition were prepared and organised thanks to the care and competent restoration undertaken on the works of art displayed by the Poly-Material laboratory of the Vatican Museums, coordinated by Stefania Pandozy. The exhibition “Rituals life” is permeated by spirituality and allusions to the ancestral world. The centrality of the indigenous art is strongly connected to their spirituality and you can find part of the spirituality in the exhibition “Rituals life”.

PISA, Italy — Student protests literally exploded all over the Italian peninsula this week in an effort to block the approval of the new infamous Gelmini reform, which aims at privatizing the public university and turning it into a profit-making machine.

Thousands of students have held demonstrations all over the peninsula and occupied university buildings. In Rome protests were held in front of the Senate, and students tried to break into the building. Another group of hundreds of people broke into the Colosseum and hung a banner saying “No profit on our future.” In the ancient Roman monument that was originally used for gladiatorial contests involving predatory animals, the students sang “Today we are the lions!”

In Pisa and in Bologna the students targeted the train station and the airports. Similarly, students occupied the port in Palermo, the Mole Antonelliana in Turin, the Ministry of Treasure in Milan, the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, and so on. The government’s response has been to issue charges and make some arrests, but his hasn’t broken the spirit of the protesters.

The key points of the Gelmini reform: Grants and scholarships won’t be given according to the student’s family income anymore, but only on a “merit” basis, which is revolutionary in the Italian education system.

This means that if you’re poor and you have bad grades, don’t even try to go to university.

Another major criteria will be the career students choose: students who pick practical subjects that create useful workforce (e.g. Engineering) will be much more likely to get a scholarship than students who would like to study Philosophy or History. In addition students will be in debt before even graduating for paying university.

Postgradute researchers, already symbol of precarious work in Italy, will be hit even harder: the reform states that any researcher who doesn’t have a permanent contract after 6 years of working can and should be sacked by the same university who has been exploiting them.

ROME — After 26 years of restoration work, the Temple of Venus in the Roman Forum is set to reopen tomorrow. A monumental temple will be returned to the city of Rome.

The space between the Basilica of Maxentius and the Valley of the Colosseum is taken up with the remains of the great temple of the two goddesses Venus and Roma. This was built according to the wishes of the Emperor Hadrian on the entrance hall of the Domus Aurea, Nero’s Golden House.

The whole project was conceived by the Emperor on the model of Greek temples and it emphasizes how greatly he was inspired by the Greeks in creating his own image as sovereign ruler. The temple was constructed with a separate “cella” for each goddess. The revival of the worship of Venus, the mother of Aeneas and of the Julian family, and the inauguration of the cult of the goddess Roma Eterna were fundamental aspects of Hadrian’s political and religious policies. Hadrian’s power was founded on the worship of Rome and of the Emperor himself.

In the past the abandonment of the building and the subsequent looting of the facilities beginning in the VII century, when Emperor Heraclius grants to Pope Honorius (625-638) tiles on the roof of the brass to use them to St. Peter. Today it’s possible visit the Temple of Venus again.

ROME — Exhibits from the two great empires, the Eagle and the Dragon, comprise more than 400 works on Roman and Chinese empires, spanning second century BC to fourth century AD, on display now in Rome at Palazzo Venezia. It marks Year of Chinese Culture in Italy

For the first time, an exhibition that compares the two seminal empires in world history: the Roman Empire and the Chinese Qin and Han dynasties from the second century BC to the second century AD.

The exhibition is a collaboration between Italy’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and China’s State Administration for Cultural Heritage. It has already been seen in Beijing, Luoyang and Milan.

Kicking off at Beijing in July 2009 at its World Art Museum, the more than 300 works of art will be on display from both cultures aim to draw parallels between the cultures and mechanisms of both empires, while also highlighting their differences. Terracotta warriors, sarcophagi from Mawangdui and Han frescoes will stand alongside Roman funerary altars, mosaics and marble statues. The extraordinary ceramic statues showing the costumes, fashion and military arts of ancient China, will be compared to gladiatorial weapons, mythological figures and other archaeological artifacts that attest to the social habits of ancient Romans.

POMPEI, Italy — Serious damage occurreed at the Italian artistic heritage in the archaeological site of Pompeii where the entire “Domus of Gladiators” fall down. It was the place where the athletes were trained in ancient Pompeii.

The building was a kind of a gym where gladiators were trained. According to reports by the Superintendent, there were also painted on the underside perimeter of the room. The building was on Abbondanza street, the main street of the city buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.

The domus was only was protected by a high wooden gate. In the last days a little landslide has happened causing important damage because of heavy rains a ground in the insula has collapsed and a perimeter wall has fallen down. Italian Government (and also Unesco) has to protect the cultural heritage allocate more money to protect it.

Pompeii has always been in such ignoble conditions since nothing serious has been proposed along the last 50 years to protect and preserve one of the most important world wide heritage.

The ruins are one of the most popular tourist attractions of Italy, with approximately 2.5 million visitors every year.

Pompeii is something unique, as many other monuments of Italy. To change the current situation is obviously not effortless, in particular referring to the current modern Italian society, where everything counts, except what should really counts. Many citizen thought several time how we could preserve and protect our monuments, and in particular these kind of places. I believe that one possibility to save Pompeii, Herculaneum and the other archaeological areas existing in Italy is to make them profitable for the local inhabitants.

If the local economy was based on the archaeological excavations, Pompeii would be preserved forever by the local people, without any help from the national government. It’s just an idea. But it comes the time to think about a solution.

ROME — Castellammare di Stabia is a little town near Naples, where you can no longer wear a teeny tiny miniskirt on the streets.

It seems the town has not been served by the sit-in protests from the defense of the miniskirt organization of women, because police are enforcing new rules banning “skimpy” and “slutty” clothing after a measure was approved 17-9 recently.

It will be also forbidden to play football in parks and purchase alcohol after 10 p.m.

Yesterday, at Castellammare di Stabia, about 50 women protested in defense of women’s rights in front of City Hall, where the city council was called to vote on the controversial regulation. The event, sponsored by the centerleft democratic party of that area, was attended by young and older women wearing miniskirts.

But the Mayor of Castellammare di Stabia, Luigi Bobbio, said it’s not the miniskirt, itself, that’s banned in the regulation, “just the really slutty ones.”

Miniskirts will be fine unless it is so small that it is virtually non-existent as a skirt and leaves the underwear (or something else) visible. Bobbio insists, “the skirt is absolutely allowed and permitted. The regulation, how easily you can guess if you do not fall into the easy manipulation, is not aimed at banning this or that piece of clothing, but to give the city and precise coordinates of the citizens of civilized behavior to respect the freedom of each and therefore the freedom of all. ”

We want to remember that the origin of the miniskirt was in 1963 and it’s generally credited for the work of the British designer Mary Quant, who was inspired by the car Mini, and since the late 50′s had started offering more and more short dresses. And also the revolution in clothing and in general of the women’s look was designed by Coco Chanel who located the length of hair and skirt one of the main parameters of change of culture. In Italy, the skirt began to get popular in 1966.

In these days, in Castellamare di Stabia, it seems to be back at 40 years ago.

ROME — Starting Tuesday, the exhibition “Laboratory Schifano” will open at the MACRO museum, realized in collaboration with the International Film Festival in Rome. In “Laboratory Schifano” will be presented for the first time over two thousand pictures taken by Mario Schifano, displayed in a setting aimed at involving the public in the artist’s creative flow. The exhibition is made possible thanks to the collaboration between the Archives of Mario Schifano and the Museum MACRO (Museum of Contemporary Art, Via Reggio Emilia 54, Rome. http://www.macro.roma.museum/ ).

Mario Schifano was born in Homs, in Libya, on September 20, 1934. Immediately after World War II, his family moved to Rome where, after soon dropping out of school, the young Schifano first worked as a shop assistant and then worked with his father, an archaeologist restorer at the Etruscan Museum in Valle Giulia. Meanwhile, he also started painting. He made his debut within the informal area with canvases thick with matter and furrowed by insightful gestures, and also marked by some drips. With works like this he opened his first solo exhibition in 1959 at the Galleria Appia Antica in Rome. It was however during the exhibition he held the following year with Angeli, Festa, Lo Savio and Uncini at the Galleria La Salita that the critics started taking an interest in his work. Having abandoned an informal approach, his painting evolved radically within the space of a few years. The painting became a “screen”: a point of departure, the space of an event refused in which, a few years later, numbers, letters and fragments of symbols of consumer civilisation, such as the Esso or Coca Cola logos would emerge. In 1994 he took part in “The Italian Metamorphosis 1943-1968”, put on by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, which moved the following year to the Triennale di Milano and to the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.

The exhibition that will open on Tuesday is by Massimo Barbero, Francesca Pola and the Archives Mario Schifano and is an amazing dive in the heart of the creativity of Mario Schifano, one of the most innovative international art scene of the second half of the twentieth century.

ROME — Italy’s STEN & LEX present their work in the United States, in New York, at the Brooklynite Gallery together with another street artist called Gaia.

They prefer black and white using half shades and therefore dots and lines, because, observing the art from a distance, there are chiaroscuros that make the images realistic. But in their more recent work, however, they have used the four-color process which involves using superimposed transparent colors. Sten&Lex fall exhibition in New York City is a big step for their work.

They are widely considered to be the pioneers of “stencil graffiti” in Italy. Best known for introducing their “halftone stencil” technique, these two self-proclamined “Hole School” artists spend ample time hand-cutting pixel dots and lines to compose their imagery which is best viewed from a distance. For the first time, starting this weekend, they’ll be showing with Gaia ‘Portraits’ at Brooklynite Gallery.

The subjects of portraits comes from the historic Italian archives they’ve rescued from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Just go to the exhibition and try to discover what does it mean the art of stencil for them.

The exhibit runs at the Brooklinite Gallery, 334 Malcolm X Blvd. Brooklyn from Saturday through November 13, from 7-10 p.m.

ROME — Fourteen years after the “Yoko Ono film festival” in 1996 in Palazzo delle Espozioni in Rome, the Japanese- American artist, musicians and peace activist Yoko Ono has a new exhibition entitled “I’ll be back” at the Studio Stefania Miscetti in via delle Mantellate 14. The show which runs until October 30, features pictures, sounds, sculptures and pieces of dialogue inspired by the Italian Futurist movement, whose work Ono first witnessed at London’s Tate Modern Gallery.

Yoko Ono is a multimedia artist who constantly challenges the traditional boundaries of art, known for her groundbreaking conceptual art, instructional arts, performance arts experimental films and music. Her most recent album, “Between My Head and the Sky,” 2009, has received international critical acclaim. Yoko Ono is well known for her peace initiatives, first with her husband John Lennon, “Bed-In” for Peace and “War Is Over! (If You Want It)”, and more recently with her Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland and participatory Wish Trees throughout the world.

Opening hours : from Monday to Friday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday only on appointment.

ROME — The Istituto per le Opere Religiose, commonly known as the Vatican Bank, is under investigation by Italian authorities for money laundering.

In particular, bank Chairman Ettore Gotti Tedeschi and Director-General Paolo Cipriani are under investigation for alleged failure to observe Italy’s money laundering laws.

Law enforcement officials have also seized $30 million (23 million Euros) in bank assets as part of their investigation into claims that the two senior officials had violated anti-money laundering laws by failing to disclose information about the bank’s financial transactions.

“The Holy See is perplexed and astonished by the initiatives of the Rome prosecutors, considering the data necessary is already available at the Bank of Italy,” the Vatican said in a statement.

The Vatican also backed he two officials under investigation.

“The Holy See wants to express the maximum confidence in the president and in the chief executive of the IOR,” it said.

Gotti Tedeschi has been in charge of the bank for about a year.

It is the first time such action has been taken against the IOR, which is considered a non-European Union bank and does not fall under the jurisdiction of EU banking laws.

The Vatican is an entirely sovereign state, so it is unclear exactly how much the Italians can do.

The probe was started by Rome to determine whether a 2007 Italian law on transparency in regard to the identity of account holders was violated.

The Vatican Bank is one of the most secret banks in the world, and judicial sources said the probe was centered on clarifying the “opaque screen” which hid the identity of the organizations that had actual control over the IOR accounts.

The investigation is focused on two wire transfers the Vatican Bank had asked a small Italian bank called Credito Artigianato to carry out, including the transfer of 20 million euros to JP Morgan in Frankfurt and 3 million euros to another Italian bank, Banca del Fucino. Authorities say the IOR did not disclose enough information about these transactions.

"I wish to express my personal solidarity to the President of the IOR, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, which I know the seriousness and professional integrity,” said Roman Mayor Gianni Alemanno. “I hope that this story will be clarified as soon as possible.”

The Vatican Bank last faced legal scrutiny in 1982 when its governor, the American Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, was implicated in a scandal that led to the murders of two of its top executives, one of whom was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London. Upon the election of Pope John Paul II, Marcinkus was promoted within the Vatican bank and remained in office for several years before the scandal widened, when the body of Calvi, whose Banco Ambrosiano had dealt with Marcinkus, was found hanging over the bridge in June 1982.

It was a scene that was loosely mirrored in “The Godfather Part III.”

ROME — Barberini’s is one of the city’s most beautiful and imposing palaces dating back to the baroque.

Palazzo Barberini, on Quattro Fontane street, last weekend celebrated the inauguration of the recently restored gallery. The public’s focus is centered on one of the highlights of the collection, Raphael’s enigmatic painting "La Fornarina." Known in English as “Portrait of a Young Woman.”

Palazzo Barberini was built in the first half of the 17th century for the Barberini family, and three architects were involved in the building’s design. The first was Carlo Maderno, who began work in 1627 and was assisted by his nephew Francesco Borromini, while it was Gian Lorenzo Bernini who oversaw the building’s completion in 1633. Until recently, in addition to the palazzo being home to the state-run National Gallery of Ancient Art, a section of the building was used by the officer’s club of the Italian armed forces. Palazzo Barberini is a very interesting museum to visit. Also who likes Raphael should go just for admire "La Fornarina" portrait. The woman is pictured with an oriental style hat and bare breasts. She is making the gesture to cover her left breast, or to turn it with her hand, and is illuminated by a strong artificial light coming from the external.

The collection of the National Gallery of Ancient Art of Barberini Palace is mainly of Italian painting with works by Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Lorenzo Lotto, Andrea del Sarto, Perugino, Caravaggio, Canaletto, Guercino, Pietro da Cortona and so on. Newly renovated, this museum offers paintings from Italian artists, as well as Dutch and Flemish works. If you have the chance, just visit this beautiful museum.

ROME — The Colosseum or the Coliseum, originally the Flavian Amphitheatre (Latin: Amphitheatrum Flavium, Italian Anfiteatro Flavio or Colosseo), is an elliptical amphitheatre in the center of the city of Rome, Italy, the largest ever built in the Roman Empire. It is considered one of the greatest works of Roman architecture and Roman engineering. In September the Coliseum will burn down! "Coliseum on Fire" is the title for this seductive and spectacular artistic gesture that involves the world’s most famous ancient monument. For the artists behind this video-installation, Thyra Hilden from Denmark and Pio Diaz from Argentina, the basic idea is an overwhelming fire that will entirely consume the Roman arena. The video-installation will take place consecutively on the nights of the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th of September.

The Amphitheatre occupying a site just east of the Roman Forum, its construction started between 70 and 72 AD under the emperor Vespasian and was completed in 80 AD under Titus, with further modifications being made during Domitian’s reign (81–96).

Coliseum on Fire is part of a wider project, City on Fire, which the artists Thyra Hilden and Pio Diaz have devoted themselves to for some years, creating virtual fires in important institutions, monuments, museums, and churches throughout Europe. The events in Berlin, Frankfurt, Kiev, Aarhus, and Copenhagen were especially memorable. The Coliseum is the symbol of a cultural heritage that has lasted through time. The symbolic inferno that the artists enact has the aim of making us think about what the loss of our cultural patrimony would mean. Fire, the archaic and primordial symbol of light, will illuminate the vestiges of ancient Rome and will at the same time evoke the purifying force leading to a resurrection.

ROME — From Mesopotamia to our table today, from the rite of communion to lewd drunkenness, from a distasteful habit to the gates of spirituality, wine and the vine are the protagonists of this exhibition "Vinum Nostrum" in Palazzo Pitti, in Florence. Original artefacts, sculptures, frescoes and mosaics, accompanied by multimedia and video installations, recount the history of the grapevine and of wine across thousands of years, as well as the important influence they exerted over ancient culture.

Following a chronological arrangement, the exhibition illustrates the origin of wine-growing in the Near East, its success and its related symbolic, religious and cultural significance in the Hellenic world, up to the production and wide-scale diffusion achieved by the Romans.

ROME — Chinese art has landed in Rome and risks never leaving the historical Roman palace of Palazzo Venezia.

The Beijing government will, at least for the next five years, manage an area in a Roman museum with an ancient history. After offering Italy 1,000 square meters in the new Museum overlooking Tienanmen Square, the People’s Republic wishes to have an equally large space in the building from which Benito Mussolini used to speak. It is precisely from the entrance of this palazzo that one is going to perhaps access "China’s Museum in Rome”.

Thus China will bring to Rome ancient and contemporary works of art. An interesting event that will build a bridge between Italian and Chinese art.

ROME — Italian archaeologists are returning to dig in Iraq, in Nassiriya, with a mission from Rome’s La Sapienza University, led by Assyriologist Franco D’Agostino and by the region’s Superintendent archaeologist Dhi Qar Abdulamir Al Hamdani.

Starting in September, the expedition will open digs in the area to the south-west of the Iraqi city, in the region in which the Sumerian culture developed in the course of the 3rd millennium B.C., and will also train in the field young Iraqi archaeologists, epigraphists and topographers. Italy is the only foreign country authorized, ever since the days of the first Persian Gulf War, to take part in joint missions in the south of the new Iraqi Republic.

Permission for new digs has been given for the Abu Tubairah area, a location of great interest, that, judging by the ceramics risen to the surface, should date back from the Jemdet Nasr period (2900 B.C.) to the Paleo-Babylonian era (about 1750 B.C.).

ROME — Behind the yellowed wallpaper in one of Rome’s no longer used municipal offices, a discovery was made. What has come to light is probably a Triumphant Christ with his faithful followers Peter and Paul portrayed in a medieval triptych recently discovered in a tower of the Senatorial Palace on the Capitol.

The characters in the fresco have survived centuries of neglect. The only part that remains perfect is a portion of the Saviour’s face not scratched by the mallet of the mid-20th Century anonymous workman who created the chase for the electric wires, removing the eyes entirely and leaving only the portrait of the full mouth and the perfect triangle of the neck with the task of portraying the afterworld beauty of the God who became a Man.

The amazement when faced with the crumbling wall that revealed the hidden treasure was an extraordinary event, a scene from a novel. It was the removal of the floor in the capitol office that allowed the art historians of the Municipal Monuments and Fine Arts Office to find themselves standing in front of the paintings that decorated the tower of Boniface IX (1389-1404).

The frescoes date back to before the reign of Boniface IX and are evidence of the immense hidden legacy that is to be found all over Italy.

ROME — From August the dungeon under one of the more famous monument of the world will be open to the public. A guided tour of the famous "ipogei" which will take visitors into a fascinating journey into the past. For the first time ever people will have the unique opportunity to see the place where the lions were kept and walk down the corridors leading into the heart of the arena where the gladiators used to fight to death. An unforgettable experience which will bring the Colosseum alive to the visitor and help him see it through the eyes of an ancient gladiator. The network of tunnels under the main arena floor consisted of several corridors with varying functions.

One tunnel is thought to have led straight to the Ludus Magnus, the gladiatorial training school next to the Colosseum. Other passageways would have stored animals, some of which would have been imported from northern Africa, while others were designated as exit routes for disposing of dead bodies after the shows.

For the first time, you will see the advanced engineering of the Ancient Romans: the reconstructed underground machinery and the cruel ways of turning death into a show. For the visitors this will be a good experience from the heart of the amphitheater.

ROME — On the occasion of the fourth centenary of Caravaggio’s death, many of his works of art will tour Italy and the world. In Rome, for example, there are only a few days left to admire his art at the Scuderie del Quirinale (until June 13).

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (29 September 1571 — 18 July 1610) was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His intensely emotional realism and dramatic use of lighting had a formative influence on the Baroque school of painting.

Neither the cursed artist not the atheist, this is a new Caravaggio, differing greatly from the stereotypes, a man of profound spirituality and one of art’s greatest innovators, who emerges from the documentary investigations of the National Committee for the celebrations of the fourth centenary of his death, which will be made public in exhibitions, conferences and publications throughout 2010.The anniversary of the fourth centenary provides an opportunity for redefining through highly scientific initiatives the Maestro’s real human and artistic profile and for providing moments of in-depth analysis and reflection on his extraordinary pictorial production. Thanks to the flourishing of studies, Merisi’s biography had largely been reconstructed, although the stereotypes formulated overtime often run the risk of reducing his complex personality to the easy and inappropriate image of a "cursed artist" (a description borrowed from the end of 19th century "cursed poets").

The objective of the many events, is not to make known Caravaggio, perhaps the most appreciated artist in history, but rather to better investigate his work. Recent studies have in fact provided a significant increase in the number of sources, and diagnostic testing on his paintings are revealing unknown and fundamental details of the techniques he used. This includes the manner in which he used drawing in a number of paintings, of which, for example, there are a number of traces in the "Boy with a Fruit Basket."

ROME — This is not a time-machine but it comes close. It is called "ROMA SPARITA" [Vanished Rome] and it is a group formed on Facebook dedicated to the Eternal City. The group has over 70 thousand members but the number rises by the hour. They are all fans of Rome, or rather of the city it used to be. The group was created with the intention of rediscovering Rome as it once was through photographs.

"This is an act of love for the memories of this city" states the description of this group, which has become an instant phenomenon on-line. Its objective is to "make available to everyone, free of charge, at least a preview of original photographs portraying Rome as it used to be."

This journey into the past has been organized by ordinary internet surfers with a passion for history or photography, as well as a number of professional photographers, archaeologists and art historians.

And so we have the Eternal City’s historical and urban evolution portrayed in over seven thousand photographs. The photos are organized according to the city’s neighborhoods, but there are also collections of "Scenes from daily life," "Rome and the cinema," "Books on Rome," "Means of transport," "Paintings and Drawings." All users may upload their images on condition they are not dated after 1990. The captions are now being translated into English, confirming the group’s international success.

Turning the pages of the various collections, one sees once again the customs and traditions of a past of which there remain very few witnesses.

One discovers, for example that snails used to be sold on festive days in Piazza San Giovanni. There are images of when the market was still held in Piazza Navona and not in Campo dei Fiori, or the shops that used to exist under the arcades of Teatro di Marcello.

Many are the photographs and postings that give life to a real interactive manual of the Eternal City, all created by Facebook users. A new way, perhaps, of discovering and studying the history of Rome.

ROME — The countdown has begun, and a month before it opens to the public, on May 30 for the MAXXI designed by Zaha Hadid with its exhibitions and its guidelines.

The MAXXI, the National Museum of 20th Century Art, is a foundation set-up by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities. Inside the MAXXI there are two different museums. One dedicated to art and the other to architecture. The museum is in synergy with all Rome’s international realities, starting with a cooperation agreement for establishing a partnership currently being negotiated with Fendi, the legendary maison that has always been sensitive to art and the signs of contemporary life.

The museum is a starkly 21st century building that stands out in B.C. Rome.

The opening of the MAXXI will mark a great moment for contemporary art as well as for Roman and Italian culture, involving all the more important state and private institutions. Together with the Music for Rome Foundation, a musical pathway has been created that will accompany visitors during the inauguration on May 28th and 29th. There will be more musical surprises for viewers with a project by the American Academy in Rome on May 30th. Furthermore, the National Gallery of Modern Art, together with other institutions belonging to the AMACI circuit, is participating in the museum inaugural exhibition loaning works of art. The MAXXI’s art and architectural collections, inspired to Zaha Hadid’s fluid shapes, interpret the museum’s interdisciplinary characteristics.

ROME — The International Festival of Journalism was founded in 2006 by Arianna Ciccone and Christopher Potter with the objective of discussing journalism, information, freedom of the press and democracy following the 2.0 model. This is an event started at a lower level, open to "incursions" by users; a unique event at which leading journalists from all over the world meet with ordinary citizens, readers, students and professionals, in a continuous flow of ideas, exchanges and debates. The media plays a fundamental role in our daily lives, but often thrives on being inward-looking. In some way this festival breaks down that wall thanks to its format, rendering lively and viable a meeting between those who provide information and those who make use of it.

On Saturday April 24th, Al Gore, Vice President of the United States between 1993 and 2001 under Bill Clinton, will participate in the Festival of Journalism. Ever since he became an American congressman thirty years ago, Al Gore has emphasized the importance of confronting the threat of global warming.

He is currently the founder and director of the "Alliance for Climate Protection" and the co-founder and director of "Current", an independent cable and satellite television network for the young, using material created by viewers themselves and citizen journalism.

The detailed edition of the Festival’s 2010 (IJF) edition can be found on the official website.

ROME — "Without having seen the Sistine Chapel one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving" said J. W. Goethe in 1787 in Rome.

The Vatican has a very detailed, three-dimensional, Flash tour of the Sistine Chapel. There’s nothing new about the technology itself, but the implementation new for the historic chapel.

The wall paintings were executed by the most respected painters of the 15th century: Pietro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, Luca Signorelli and their respective workshops, which included Pinturicchio, Piero di Cosimo and Bartolomeo della Gatta.

Sistine Chapel is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace.It is famous for its architecture, evocative of Solomon’s Temple of the Old Testament, and its decoration which has been frescoed throughout by the greatest Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Raphael, Bernini, and Sandro Botticelli. Under the patronage of Pope Julius II, Michelangelo painted 12,000 square feet (1,100 m2) of the chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512. He resented the commission, and believed his work only served the Pope’s need for grandeur. However, today the ceiling, and especially The Last Judgement, are widely believed to be Michelangelo’s crowning achievements in painting.

The chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who restored the old Cappella Magna between 1477 and 1480.

Now it’s possible admire the Sistine Chapel online. Of course it’s a different view but it’s a nifty experience, a 360-degree, zoomable simulacra of the legendary chamber, with its assorted frescos, some of the most famous religious artworks in history.

ROME — The opportunity to walk virtually through the wonders of Pompeii is a powerful way to boost Italian tourism.

If you can’t be one of the 2.5 million tourists who wander through the streets of Pompeii every year, you now have another option: Google’s Street View.

The 360-degree panoramic street-level service debuted last week in the Statues, temples, amphitheaters, as well as close-up views of houses, bakeries and baths are now visible on the search engine’s free mapping service.

With just a few clicks, you can easily take a tour of ancient Rome, enter Egypt’s Great Pyramid or climb the Acropolis in Greece.

The problem is that too often these computer reconstructions look the same. As you move your mouse around, you are taken into unrealistic, clean, lifeless, plastic-coated landscapes.

Google’s Street View application offers a much more realistic and lively experience, making you feel as if you were walking down a street among many other tourists.

Launched in 2007, Google’s Street View provides panoramic street-level views of more than 100 cities around the world. And now you can find the ancient Pompeii as well.

ROME — In a bar, sipping a cup of tea with Sten and Lex, two of the most famous street artists in Europe, we were provided with an opportunity to better understand the philosophy and language of their art.

The spoke with one voice in our interview.

BLAST: Introduce yourselves. Where do the nicknames Sten and Lex come from?

STEN AND LEX: Sten stands for "stencil" and Lex means "law" hence the pair is "the law of stencil".

BLAST: Could you digress and tell me what characterizes your style and what techniques you use?

STEN AND LEX: Unlike many street artists, we do not have a artistic background. Ten years ago we started using a stencil when the idea of street art did not have much legitimacy in Italy. The technique we use is called "hole school" and consists of stencils with many holes of different sizes that all together provide a highly photographic image. This technique was also often used for printing newspapers in the Sixties and Seventies. In addition to the "hole" technique, we also use the superimposed lines technique. Finally, what characterizes our work on the streets are the very light-weight paper posters, that adhere closely to the walls and that we glue on to the walls of the city.

BLAST What degree of experimentation do you use with the stencil technique and use of color?

STEN AND LEX: We prefer black and white using half shades and therefore dots and lines, because, observing the art from a distance, there are chiaroscuros that make the images realistic. In our more recent work, however, we have used the four-color process which involves using superimposed transparent colors.

BLAST: To what extent is street art political, and is yours?

STEN AND LEX: A famous street artist (Shepard Fairey) used Barack Obama’s face and certainly contributed to spreading his image on a large scale. In this sense he launched a political message almost equal to that of an election poster. In our stencils, instead, the contents tend to not include politics, with only a few exceptions, although the interpretation of our work is subjective.

BLAST: Is there an ancient, modern or contemporary artist who changed your perspectives of things?

STEN AND LEX: In the work we are showing at the exhibition that will open Friday, March 12th at the Gallery CO2 (Borgo Vittorio, 9 -Rome) we used a technique that consists of incorporating the stencil itself, which, since it is made of paper, remains only partly impressed on the paper. The destruction of the stencil becomes part of the work of art. Some have seen in this, references to Mimmo Rotella’s d©collage and collage work.

BLAST: Is it not a little contradictory to work anonymously and then also hold an exhibition in an art gallery and show oneself. Does it make sense?

STEN AND LEX: There is a contradiction. However, exhibiting our work in an art gallery allows us to establish contacts. Without that we do not get commissions seeing that in Italy there is still a very high barrier between street art and institutional art. Street art. in fact, provides one with the opportunity of having an immense audience, often far larger than the traditional one of an art gallery. In Italy however, this mentality still does not exists and hence we must often show our work in art galleries.

BLAST: Do your projects for the future include spending time in the US, the homeland of street art, and managing to leave a trace there too?

STEN AND LEX: (In) October we will be able to present our work in the United States in New York at the Brooklynite Gallery, where we will be given us a wall to work on together with another street artist called Gaia.

ROME — Excavations by a team of French archaeologists in el-Shawaf, Saqqara, Egypt have brought to light the burial chamber of the queen of the Fourth Dynasty, Behenu, wife of Pepi I (Merytawy) or Pepi II (Netjerkhau). The tomb was discovered when removing sand from the Behenu pyramid.

Saqqara is a vast necropolis in Egypt, 18 miles south of the modern city of Cairo.

Saqqara, the terraced Djoser pyramid.

The Saqqara necropolis covers an area of about 3 miles by 1 mile.

While Memphis was the capital of the Ancient Kingdom, Saqqara was its royal necropolis at least until the Third Dynasty.

Although replaced by the royal necropolis of Giza, and later by the one in the Valley of the Kings near Thebes, it remained an important place of burial and worship for over 3,000 years, until the Ptolemaic period and the Roman occupation.

The recently discovered chamber, although greatly damaged with the queen’s mummy destroyed, still contained two internal walls with hieroglyphs known as "Pyramid Texts."

These texts were widely used in royal tombs, both engraved on the walls and on the sarcophagi during the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties (2465-2150 B.C. circa).

Basically, these were special prayers for protecting the dead, bringing their bodies back to life after death and helping them ascend to heaven.

The French expedition is working at the Pepi I necropolis in Saqqara, where, since 2007, they have already discovered 75 feet of the Behenu pyramid and the Pyramid Texts.

Since the beginning of the project in 1989, Collombert’s team had already found six pyramids that belonged to queens from the reigns of Pepi I and Pepi II. These tombs have been attributed to queens Inenek, Nubunet, Meretites II, Ankhespepy III, Miha and one still to be identified.

ROME — The Lysippus will return to Italy.

The statue portrays a victorious, naked and full-sized athlete and is attributed to the proto-Hellenistic sculptor Lysippus. Bought in 1977, the statue is currently on exhibit at the Getty Museum in Malibu, California.

The story of this ancient statue is complicated. From the Greek mainland the Athlete, for mysterious reasons, ended up in the sea and was pulled out of the water in 1964 off Fano by fishermen who found it entangled in their nets. Carried to shore, the ship owner buried the statue to hide it from customs officers. Sold for three million Lire to an antique dealer from Gubbio, the Athlete exchanged hands many times between Milan, Brazil and Munich and was eventually bought by the museum in California.

Francesco Rutelli, Minister of National Heritage for the last Prodi government, had entered an agreement in September 2007 with the Getty Museum, allowing dozens of masterpieces to return to Italy. At the end of that year, for example, the Venus of Morgantina was returned to Sicily.

In 2007, the Getty Museum returned many works of art, but not the Athlete. In recent days a judge decided that the Lysippus to must return to the country where it was found.

ROME — The Alto Adige Archaeological Museum or S¼dtiroler Arch¤ologiemuseum, centrally located in Via Museo is famous for hosting "–tzi", the Iceman, and contains all the finds in the Province of Bolzano.

To obtain an exhaustive idea of the museum’s underlying theme and acquire information on guided tours as well as visits for younger members of the public, it is well worth clicking on the website (in Italian, German and English)  http://www.iceman.it which has a lot of information presented in great detail.

This museum is almost always associated to the "–tzi", one of the most famous and important mummies in the world. In fact the collections at the Alto Adige Archaeological Museum is rich in finds of every kind and is chronologically organized from Palaeolithic and Mesolithic times (15,000 B.C.) to the Carolingian era.

One section presents in detail all aspects of the Iceman, with a medical and anthropological profile as well as the characteristics and meaning of the clothes and equipment he had with him when he died, all made understandable to the public thanks to many informative texts as well as video and multimedia stations.

It was a great stroke of luck to find the Similaum mummy in its entirety, preserved only because it was covered by the ice. The conservation of organic archaeological finds such as fibers, fur or skin requires specific environmental conditions.

Walking across the Alps, the Iceman carried a container made of birch bark in which he kept cinders to be used for starting fires. To ensure the container did not burn, and to keep the cinders lit, he had wrapped them in recently picked Norwegian maple leaves which served as isolating material. The extraordinary information they give us, is that these leaves tell us the time of year of –tzi’s death. The fact they still contained chlorophyll indicates that they were freshly picked and therefore it must have been between June and September. The Similaun mummy (known also –tzi and often referred to in English as the Iceman) is an archaeological find from the Otztal Alps (the Similaun glacier, at an altitude of 3,210 meters (10,531 feet), at the feet of the mountain by the same name) on the border between Italy and the Austrian Tyrol –tztal Valley (on the Italian side in the province of Bolzano) on September 19, 1991.

ROME — Last June, archaeological investigations planned by the Archaeological Heritage Department began in Dal Molin in the Veneto Region, with active cooperation from the United States Army Garrison Vicenza, which was responsible for the financial aspects of this operation.

These preliminary archaeological investigations were focused at providing new information to be added to the overall existing archaeological knowledge of an area neighboring on an ancient urban center.

Last February’s discovery happened by chance, observing the photographs in a book written in 2005 by a Major in the Corps of Engineers, which showed that there were Roman ruins inside the Dal Molin airport.

Specifically, the base of an ancient column and the remains of an ancient Roman aqueduct were found, the ruins of which are still visible in Lobia. A preliminary report on the discovery has been recently filed. The result was that, in addition to the ruins of the aqueduct, there are also traces of a canal, of houses and of 18th Century floors and above all the unexpected and surprising discovery of a Neolithic settlement.

Will this archaeological discovery stop work on the U.S. base at Dal Molin since, theoretically at least, there are enough laws protecting the site?

ROME — Recent news reveals that only 12.5 miles from Cairo, near the large Giza pyramids, mud and brick tombs have been discovered, said to be the burial places of those who died during construction and dating back to the Fourth Dynasty.

According to the leader of the team of Egyptian archaeologists, Zahi Hawass, the discovery of these new tombs proves that the pyramids were not built by slaves but by free workers.

In fact, had they been slaves, they would have been buried in common graves or loculi, and not real tombs like the ones discovered in Giza. According to Hawass, this is a “sensational discovery, that will throw new light on the construction of these extraordinary monuments of humankind.”

This may appear to be an umpteenth historical revision, but for some time many Egyptologists have supported this theory that rejects accounts by Herodotus in "The Histories."

Zahi Hawass has emphasized that these tombs were built next to the king’s pyramid, indicating that those buried there were not slaves. Had they been slaves their tombs would never have been built close to those of kings.

A series of clues and finds are said to prove irrefutably that expert and paid workers built the pyramids.

VENICE –Venice and its lagoon have just experienced an unusually different Christmas and New Year’s that can’t be ignored.

The city of doges and its islands, as well as nearby Chioggia, have for some time coexisted with a sea that periodically submerges the lower lying areas. Now however, even the most philosophical Venetians seem concerned.

Due to its planning peculiarity and its inestimable artistic heritage, Venice is universally considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world and listed among the UNESCO World Heritage sites. Climate change is now placing the city’s future at risk.

For tourists splashing around in the flooded alleys and squares, and filling their digital cameras with unusual images, is a childish and unrepeatable amusement. For those who live there, it is easy to put on rubber boots and waterproof clothing to walk in single file on the walkways. However, when the tides rise excessively one needs boots up to one’s knees, and if the water rises more, the boots must cover the thighs. Shopkeepers, warned by sirens, move their goods to higher shelves, but when the level rises more damage is unavoidable. Recently this has happened far too often even for the very patient Venetians.

Even during the days of the Copenhagen summit, Venice was underwater, but no one even mentioned it. During those days, and later, a series of exceptionally high tides, not seen for many years, flooded the city on the lagoon.

It is not only the repetition of these exceptional events that alarms a usually very prudent personality such as the Director of the Tide Centre for the Municipality of Venice, Paolo Canestrelli, probably one of the world’s greatest experts on this subject, it is the extreme frequency of these high tides that worries him in addition to the phenomenon of rising sea levels.

According to his data, in 2009 the number of tides measuring about 80 cm (about 31.5 inches) reached a record number. To make things clearer, Piazza San Marco has already been flooded 125 times (80 cm of water are sufficient to cover most of the square while 85 cm cover it completely). In 2002, another record year, the square was flooded 111 times, in 1966 it was underwater 66 times. Furthermore, the average level of the Adriatic Sea has risen by 3 CM in the course of the last decade, which in Venice, in the Northern Adriatic, means three times as much. 2009 was a record year for 90 CM tides (58 times), 100 CM (32 times), 110 CM (16 times), 120 CM (6 times), 130 cm (4 times), and 140 cm. (twice).

If until ten years ago the Venetian situation could still be considered as a particular and different case. Today it has become obvious that the Venice emergency is a sensationally tangible symptom of dramatic global climate change.

The city and the lagoon will in future years be protected by the system of mobile dams built in the lagoon’s three mouths, the so-called EEM (Experimental Electromechanical Module). Sixty percent of building is now complete. When it starts operating there is the risk that this increase in high tides will oblige the EMS to closed often and possibly even permanently. Should that occur, additional hydraulic work will be needed to allow the water in the lagoon to be changed, to avoid it becoming an unhealthy swamp.

ROME — The plaque is already there, the old sign for a “Museo di Roma” that was never really created on the ashes of the former Pantanella pasta factory in Via dei Cerchi.

The approval of this project, costing 100 million Euros and several years worth of work, was announced a few days ago by the Municipality of Rome’s Councilor for Culture, Umberto Croppi.

“The project has been approved, and the memorandum from the City Council has been passed,” Croppi said. “We now need to identify financial resources within a framework of creating partnerships with private sponsors and start operations with an international competition based on a meta-project presented by the Municipal Superintendence for Cultural Heritage. Designers will have to find architectural solutions that will work with the cultural and conceptual aspects outlined for this museum."

The future Museum of the City of Rome, with a planned 2013 inauguration, will not only be a container for art and will not only have on show the extraordinary Torlonia collection, but will also include didactic material and the reconstruction in 3D of a number of rooms from ancient Rome.

More than a museum, the project intends to create a center of orientation and communication to ensure an understanding of the Urbe, both ancient and modern, experiencing through interactive journeys the city’s stratifications and transformations.

ROME — In recent weeks it emerged that during road construction to widen the Via Collatina, ancient polygon-shaped basalt road blocks were uncovered that once united Collatia and Gabi.

During the imperial period, these two centers were incorporated into Rome. During the period of the Roman kings and the republican period these two towns were popular and splendid centers.

The Roman historian Titus Livius recorded that it was here that Sextius, son of the Roman King Tarquinus the Superb offended Lucretia, wife of Collatino a lord of that city.

Two great historians Diogenes of Halicarnassus and Strabo maintained that the greatness of Rome lay in three great public works; roads, aqueducts and the sewage system..

If the Greeks neglected these three the Romans, who as far as roads were concerned, considered three principles laid down by Vitruvius; strength, utility and beauty.

This last quality apparently has little weight these days given the never ending quest to cover the ancient roads in concrete (and not only), which are some of the works most resistant to the passage of time.

Italy, in fact, has been fighting against savage urbanization, illegal building and destruction of the country’s historical and environmental continuity.

History too often falls into oblivion and one forgets the immense complex of roads built by the Romans that represent a work of extraordinary engineering.

With an ancient road network that totaled 100,000 kilometers (62,137 miles), it is perhaps the longest monument handed down to us, and the greatest Roman contribution to the development of civilization.

A road that still lives, can be easily followed and allows us to study the various layers of culture they have constantly born witness to.

A road is a resource that should unite rather than divide people in the name of the power of cement.

ROME — By clicking on Baghdad’s Virtual Museum of Iraq website one can admire a selection of Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Islamic archaeological finds preserved on two floors of the building designed in 1937 by the German architect Werner March and looted in 2003.

Today’s Iraq, the Asian region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, was called Mesopotamia by the ancient Greeks.

After the 5th Millennium B.C., very rich and powerful civilizations developed in this fertile and luxuriant land, leaving splendid vestiges of their glorious history.

Along the banks of the rivers and their tributaries, Sumerians, Accadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians founded cities such as Uruk, Ur, Lagash, Nippur, Babylon, Khorsabad, and Nineveh, surrounded by walls and with temples and monumental palaces inside them. The region was later conquered by the Persians, then the Seleucids, the Parthians, the Romans, and finally in the 7th Century A.D. by the Arabs.

The winged bulls of the Assyrian palatine palaces continue to narrate a part of Mesopotamia’s history, as do monumental reliefs, funerary objects in royal burial places, and the colossal statue of the god Abu, all looted, damaged and destroyed in the museum during the plundering and pillaging of April 2003. These precious marble, alabaster, ivory and golden testimonies of Assyrian-Babylonian civilization were recovered, restored, and replaced inside this museum and portrays the history, from the prehistoric to Islamic times, of the land between the two rivers, the cradle of civilization, of writing, the wheel, the first code of laws and the first to learn how to measure astronomical time.

Google recently announced that very soon, at the beginning of 2010, 14,000 photographs of ancient finds from the National Museum in Baghdad, relics of the Babylonian, Assyrian, and Sumerian civilizations, will be available online.

Using the Internet to make available to everyone part of the Fertile Crescent’s immense legacy is a commendable initiative.

All this thanks to the Italian National Research Council project. (Known as CNR: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.) It’s a “Made in Italy” initiative.

ROME — The multimedia museum in the vaults of Palazzo Valentini, the headquarters for the Province of Rome, is a synthesis of history and technology.

Scientific examination of the finds and the town plans for Rome between the second and fourth centuries A.D. ensure that the city comes back to life using computer graphics, thanks to which it is possible to embark on a fascinating journey, walking on polychrome mosaics and large basalt paving stones, past the multi-coloured walls of the domus of senators so rich they built private thermal baths so close to the Roman Forums.

Thanks to the multimedia museum, created by Piero Angela, we will see exactly how the heating system for the two Roman domus worked, with their extraordinary thermal complexes, thought to be the luxury residences of magistrates with the rank of senators, which extended for 1,800 square meters in the area next to the Forum and Trajan’s Column.

ROME — As is known, Rome never stops surprising us, and the treasures that are still covered by layers and layers of earth, streets and pavements are hardly imaginable.

The most recent and rather important discovery is the white marble flight of steps found during excavations undertaken in the course of archaeological surveys for Line C of the underground railroad in Piazza Venezia.

After the discovery of the building that perhaps supported Nero’s rotating dining room on the Palatine, excavations for Line C of Rome’s subway brought to light a building that, according to the first hypotheses made by archaeologists, is thought to be Hadrian’s Academy, built in 133 A.D. to host poets, rectors, philosophers, men of letters, scientists and magistrates.

Hadrian, or Publius Aelius Hadrianus, ruled from 117-138 AD. He was an avid philosopher who was commonly referred to as one of the “five good emperors.” Hadrian’s Wall, in Northern England was built after a great war in what was then called Britannia.

It was an unexpected find as there is no trace of this building even in the Forma Urbis Romae, the map of ancient Rome engraved on marble slabs in the days of Septimius Severus (2nd Century A.D.). One of the sources used by archaeologists is the archaeological map created in the early 20th Century by the scholar Guglielmo Gatti. On this map Gatti in fact rediscovered a late-ancient domus and a little further south a number of monumental structures, which were really therefore the beginnings of the now hypothesised Athenaeum.

At the center, where the emperor and the poets wrote verses, is a granite floor with ochre coloured listels. These are the same kinds of floors used for the libraries Hadrian had built to the sides of Trajan’s Column fifty meters further along.

Now, the hypothesis that the Athenaeum may be in that never previously excavated corner of Piazza Venezia is extremely fascinating for history, archeology and architecture buffs.

ROME — It had always been thought that Nero’s famous dining room, which actually revolved day and night, simulating the earth’s movement, coincided with the octagonal room situated on the Colle Oppio. However, in the course of reinforcing work carried out on the Palatine, the real coenatio rotunda emerged.

Excavations in the Vigna Barberini area resulted in the discovery of a room imitating the earth’s movement. According to scholars this could well be the room mentioned by Svetonius in the "Life of the Caesars."

The author described that marvel of engineering as follows: "It turned on itself continuously, day and night, just like the world," situated in a villa that spread from the Palatine to the Esquiline Hill. He added that "it was lined in gold and adorned with precious stones and shells and pearls with the ceilings of the dining room made of mobile ivory blocks and with pipes that could transport flowers or perfume to launch over the guests."

Until recently many scholars had thought that this dining room was the Octagonal Hall on the Oppio Hill. In recent days a different archaeological truth has emerged on the Palatine Hill.

According to many ancient authors, Nero’s residence spread as far as the Colle Oppio, but a large part of it was on the Palatine. Preliminary digs carried out by the Archaeological Department, with Maria Antonietta Tomei as the Scientific Director, work directed by the architect Antonella Tomasello and carried out by a team lead by Francoise Villedieu, revealed a circular room with no similarity to others in Roman architecture.

The particular nature of this find is that it is a rotating room and that mechanisms filled with a yet to be analysed dark substance were also discovered. It is this last detail, as well as the building’s circular shape and the surprising power of the central column, unprecedented in Roman architecture, that allow one to envisage the presence of a floor, perhaps made of wood, resting on round mechanisms capable therefore of making it turn. This hypothesis is corroborated by the exceptional position of the building, which dates back to after the fire of 64 A.D. and confirms Nero’s taste for the spectacular. It is in fact overlooking the valley of the Coliseum, at the time covered by an artificial lake, and with a 360-degree view from the Capitol to the Aventino, from the Celio to Velia’s Hill.

The room’s rotation is linked to the figure of the sun, around which Nero’s ideology was based. One must now wait and see if conduits are also discovered which would explain how the higher level built in wood would have rotated, like a windmill or a merry-go-round.

There is a great deal of evidence indicating that this really is the coenatio. Svetonius says that the rotating room was the "main room", hence on the Palatine, precisely where the newly discovered room is situated. The column and the nearby two-level archways are unique in Roman architecture and have no apparent function. There is no sign of walls, hence the brickwork wheel must have been used as the base for the rotating level that hosted dinners, parties and performances. Finally, another piece of evidence confirming this hypothesis, is that the building is on the same axis as other rooms in the Domus Aurea and hence there is continuity.

These excavations on the Palatine Hill, which were started last June, were addressed at reinforcing the corner overlooking the valley of the Coliseum and were carried out with ordinary financing from Rome’s Special Department for Archaeological Heritage. Considered the exceptional nature of this find, new funds have been allocated to continue excavations and bring to light the entire building so as to verify the hypothesis that this is indeed the coenatio rotunda, and also ensuring that less pressure is applied to the corner of the terrace of the Vigna Barberini.

Sensational discoveries such as this dining room of Nero’s always reopen the debate about the fact that the State should invest its resources in the necessary restoration of what is known and the discovery of what remains unknown. Our cultural legacy is one of Italy’s most important economic driving forces and it would therefore be appropriate to exploit it far more.