"The Revelation of Ostia". Architecture and the City of Rome’s Ancient Harbour in the 20th Century

Supervisor: Beatrice Lampariello, Super-positions, LAB, UCLouvain

Abstract: Ostia, the ancient harbour of Rome, lay buried for centuries under layers of earth. The first excavation dates to the second half of the 19th century. However, it wasn’t until the 1920s, under the direction of Guido Calza and Italo Gismondi, that Ostia’s restoration was elevated to a model for modern architecture and urbanism under the impulse of the fascist regime. The excavation and restoration work marked the beginning of a new history of the ancient city, one that was not only physically reconstructed but also reimagined, revived and reshaped through the pages of national and international newspapers and magazines. The published images of restorations and reconstructions gradually gave them “new life” by documenting the “revelation of Ostia”. Rather than restoring the city on the model of the ancient ones, Calza outlined an image of Ostia with features like those of the city in the 1920s. He cited books and debates on architecture and the contemporary city showing how it was precisely those books and debates that have guided some of the reconstruction solutions for the port of Rome. Ostia’s urban organization and the typological structure of the insulae were presented as an example of that “healthy rationality” that recalled the theories of Sitte and Le Corbusier, providing cues for the design of the new and reinforcing the idea of continuity between the ancient and the modern. The architects and urbanists of the time embraced the lesson of Ostia, reinterpreting them in projects and using them to propose a new theory of architecture. The research aims to analyse the impact of Ostia’s rediscovery on architecture and urbanism. The goal is to demonstrate how archaeologists used contemporary theories in architecture and urbanism to re-present and re-construct the ancient image of Ostia, and likewise, how contemporary architects and urban planners have been inspired by ancient findings. The collage attached evokes this dual and complementary perspective.