The only remains of Vitruvian architecture discovered centuries later

The remains of a basilica designed by the influential architect Vitruvius in the first century BC have been discovered in Fano, Italy. The only building known to have been designed by Vitruvius himself was discovered under the Piazza della Andrea Costa during preventive archaeological excavations before its reconstruction. Unlike the ancient public building discovered in 2023, which was speculated to be the long-sought cathedral, the newly discovered structure matches the detailed description in Vitruvius’s “Vitruvius.” On Architecture.

Experts were surprised by how closely the remains found matched Vitruvius’s description. In fact, Vitruvius described a building with a rectangular plan and a special arrangement of columns: eight columns on the long sides and four on the short sides, with two columns omitted facing the square. Investigations carried out on site showed a very precise correspondence with these data and confirmed the monumental proportions of the work, which include columns about five feet in diameter and a total height of nearly fifteen feet.

A key moment in this research was marked by what archaeologists call a litmus test. Based on the plan projection derived in the thesis, a targeted survey of Avituti Square was carried out and the fifth corner column was located exactly where it was planned. This element is flanked by columns supporting the upper floors, providing a clear confirmation of the building’s layout. In addition to the plinths, the excavations also revealed a Roman-era enclosure wall, still coated with stucco and a preparatory layer of flooring, although the original flooring was lost due to the urban transformations that took place in the following centuries, such as the construction of medieval and modern buildings.

The Roman city of Fanum Fortunae was originally a settlement of the Piceni people in the Marches region of central Italy. It was named after a temple dedicated to the goddess Fortuna, which is believed to have been built after Rome’s victory over the Carthaginian forces of Hasdrubal (brother of Hannibal) at the Battle of the Metarus in 207 BC. The town grew around the temple and prospered with the construction of the Via Flaminia, opened in 220 BC, connecting Rome directly to the Adriatic Sea.

Its name first appears in historical records in the writings of Julius Caesar de bello commoner In 49 BC, when Caesar infamously let the dice fly across the Rubicon, he was leading his legions at Farnum. Augustus rebuilt it and renamed it the Colonia Julia Fanestris, built new defensive walls, a massive gate (most of which still stands), and greatly expanded it according to the grid plan of Roman urban design. This grid is still evident in the layout of cities today.

Before he wrote this seminal paper On ArchitectureThe most influential text in the history of Western architecture, Vitruvius served as a military engineer in Julius Caesar’s army, specializing in war machines. It is unclear where he served, but from the allusions he made to his travels and the major siege of Opida (a fortified town) in Gaul, On Architecturehe took part in the Gallic Wars but did not cross the Rubicon with Caesar.

When his military career ended, he turned to civil architecture and built the Cathedral of Colonia Julia Fanestris next to the forum around 19 BC. We know he designed it because he was in On Architecture. The treatise covers architectural principles, Greco-Roman building codes and ideals, and uses architectural examples familiar to him and his readers, but the Cathedral of Fano is the only building he writes about that was designed and built by himself.

After describing the design of the Roman Forum in the first paragraph of Book V, Vitruvius turns to the fact that a basilica should be built near the forum. He laid out the standard proportions and designs of cathedrals and then presented his own example as an example of a different but equally ideal version.

6. But the most solemn and beautiful cathedrals can also be built in the style of the church I built in Fano and the buildings I supervised. The proportion and symmetry relationship are established as follows. In the middle, the main roof between the columns is 120 feet long and 60 feet wide. The aisles are twenty feet wide under the main roof and around the spaces between the walls and columns. The columns were of full height, with capitals measuring fifty feet, and each five feet thick, and behind them were pilasters, twenty feet high, two feet and a half wide, and a foot and a half thick, supporting the beams on which the upper floors of the aisles were supported. Above them are other pilasters, eighteen feet high, two feet wide, and one foot thick, supporting the beams that support the principal rafters and the roof of the aisle, which is lower than the main roof.

7. The remaining space between the beams supported by pilasters and columns is left for windows between the columns. The columns are: on the width of the main roof, four at each end, including the right and left corner posts; on the long side near the forum, eight, including the same corner posts; and on the other side, six, including the corner posts. This is because[136] The two middle columns of this side were omitted so as not to obscure the portico of the Temple of Augustus (built in the middle of the side wall of the basilica, facing the Forum and the Temple of Jupiter) as well as the tribunal in the former temple, which had the shape of a semicircle with a curvature less than a semicircle.

8. The edge of this semicircular opening was forty-six feet in front, and had a curvature of fifteen feet inwards, so that those standing before the judges would not interfere with the merchants in the cathedral. Around the perimeter above the columns was placed an lintel, consisting of three pieces of timber two feet high fastened together. They return from the inner third pillar to the antar protruding from the front door and touch the left and right edges of the semicircle.

9. Above the architrave, and scattered at regular intervals on supports directly above the capital, are placed piers, three feet high and four feet wide on each side. Above them is a projecting cornice made of two timbers two feet high. Tie beams and pillars placed above them, directly above the column axis, narthex and narthex walls, support one gabled roof of the entire cathedral, and another gabled roof starting in the middle, over the narthex of the temple.

10. Thus, the gable top extends in two directions like the letter T, giving a beautiful effect to the exterior and interior of the main roof. Furthermore, by omitting decorative entablatures, a row of screens, and a second tier of columns, troublesome labor is saved and the overall cost is significantly reduced. On the other hand, supporting the columns themselves at an uninterrupted height directly to the beams supporting the main roof seems to lend an air of luxury and dignity to the piece.

During the early imperial era, Fano became the largest city on Italy’s Adriatic coast. Despite invasions by Germanic tribes and the collapse of the Western Empire, it continued to exist as a Roman city until the sixth century, when it was destroyed by the armies of the Italian Ostrogothic king Vitiges during the war to reconquer Italy launched by the Byzantine general Belisarius. The Byzantines rebuilt it and made it the capital of the five Adriatic cities, but Vitruvius’s “most noble and beautiful” cathedral was lost forever.

Vitruvius originally included an illustration of his work alongside the description, but there were no illustrations On Architecture survived. Since the rediscovery and publication of Vitruvius’s treatises in the 15th century, scholars, artists, and architects, among them Andrea Palladio and Raphael, have attempted to reconstruct the design of the Fano Cathedral. Despite all the precise details of the description, people have been arguing about it, describing it, modeling it, recreating it and finding every detail of it for 500 years.

Now that the cathedral has been discovered, city and heritage officials’ top priority is to protect the remains from natural disasters without completely shutting down the busy area surrounding the downtown square. Of course, they also need funding, and lots of it, both for the immediate needs of the site and for years of research and further excavation.