Pietre che camminano: il colore e il prestigio dei marmi antichi nell’Ottocento roma

One of the peculiarities of the Papal architecture of the 19th century in Rome is the use of stones and coloured marbles, often for reuse, according to the taste and the building practice of the great Renaissance and Baroque tradition. The use of ancient, prized and sometimes rare stones attributed to the architectures a strong prestige and a symbolic charge, binding them ideally to the immortal values of Classicism and the great Christian architecture of imperial matrix. Furthermore, the retrieval, transport and processing of the stones, intended for these architectures, represented steps of a flourishing and profitable economic activity in the Papal State; steps all of which had a direct impact on the town, its economic organization and urban structure. The Confession of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, made between 1861 and 1864, represents in its architectural and chromatic syntax (geometry of the intarsia, colours and patterns of the stones, their distribution) the result of a conceptual process and of a coordinated activity of specialized workers: a world that closes its long life cycle at the dawn of the 20th Century.