Il restauro dell’assenza. La contemporaneità del Mausoleo di Augusto / The restoration of the absence. The contemporaneity of the Mausoleum of Augustus

Abstract

Piazza Augusto Imperatore is the result of a continuous succession of positive and negative stratifications on the ruins of the Mausoleum, built as a funerary memorial to Octavianus Augustus in the Campus Martius. The city has interacted with the monument throughout its historical periods. Abandonment in the Middle Ages and the removal of marble for calcination led to the collapse of the vaults. On top of the remains, the Soderini Garden was built in the 16th century, transformed into an amphitheater, and finally into the Auditorium Augusteo. The demolitions of the 1930s and the urbanistic plans isolated the ruins, bringing them into contemporary time and space. The liberation interventions created a void and a separation between the building and the city. Since the postwar period, interventions of restoration have been designed and implemented to fill the ‘absence’ of what had been lost. Contemporary solutions have engaged with the stratified physical presence and the urban space, through the ongoing development of the square, the result of a continuous dialogue between the memory of the pre-existing area and the interventions of the modern city.