BACK HOMEPAGE ARCHITECTURE PAINTING PHILOSOPHY FOUNDATION

B.1.6.5.2
RECENT PROJECTS

1991 - 2003
VITTORIO MAZZUCCONI
The Palatine Pyramid (2/15)

Rome 2000 - 2003

Project for a new Palatine plan
Museum and University Center

PALATINE PYRAMID Index
Index of RECENT PROJECTS

Italiano



View of the Pyramid from the Fòro

The Pyramid
We would like to make a work of our time too, or even a work of the time that will come. The addition of the remote past, of the past nearer to ourselves, of the present where all the ground left from the past has again become a virgin one, and of our aspirations in which the phantom of future civilization tries to take shape…, all this produces as in a magic equation an unexpected result: a Pyramid, almost big as the Keope’s one, to be built on this site. A reversed pyramid, in order to touch the ground only with its point, thus avoiding disrupting the archeological remnants.
Why a pyramid? As a first approach because of the mentioned respect due to the archeological site, and furthermore for more complex reasons which might be found on a ground deeper than the one of this hill vicissitudes. Although Rome was an immense empire, central in mankind history, in order to make the origin of this reemerge we need to go back to the ancient Egypt, that so great an influence exerted over Roman civilization.
Very much like a pyramid, history builds itself century after century, stone after stone, until it reaches the present, which is the pyramid point. When we reverse the pyramid, it is like going from this present point towards a more and more wide future, as if all the succession of events were having course in a gigantic clepsydra. Moreover, we are bound to tie this present, as a contact point between the past and the future, to the ground where Rome was born, thus recognizing the sacred character of this birth, as if it were the very center of history.

The ancient Pharaoh, Romulus who founded Rome and the Emperors who later on governed it, while extending its domination to the whole world known at the time, are first-rate personages in this history. Nevertheless there also are other prominent men in history, who took part in the event, like the Egyptian priest, the Etruscan one who traced the furrow on the square city foundation rite, the architect who designed the Domus Augustana. Not to speak of that Great who, with his message, shook the Roman civilization on its very foundations, until their total destruction.
Furthermore we can see quite miserable people at work, either the populace that stole all which was possible in the fabulous palaces, or the princes that stole even more for enriching their palaces and churches, not to talk of the Popes who not only helped in a determinant way to such an enormous pillage but built with the salvage materials a new Rome, no less monumental than the ancient one. The overthrowing of the Roman civilization, with the reversal of the columns while raising the cross, was an event of unspeakable spiritual power, but what shell we say noticing that this very same columns were raised not for God’s glory but for glorifying a new political power, and even an ambiguous and disputable one?
We may reach to the conclusion that, no matter the human fortunes or miseries, the political or religious ideologies, in Rome the Spirit always finds the conditions to inspire ideals of greatness, universality and deep synthesis on all plans, spiritual, historical and artistic.