Beginner's guide: Roman architecture

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Roman architecture differed fundamentally from what had come before due to the discovery, experimentation and exploitation of concrete, arches and vaulting.

Roman art, archaeology & museums

The truth is that the route to the gallery is often ugly, built on crime, brute force, and lies. When we catch a glimpse of that reality, we must not look away.

Pompeii

destroyed 79 C.E.

Pompeii, once called the “City of the Dead,” gives a marvelous sense of day-to-day Roman life.

Wall painting

c. 400 B.C.E.–79 C.E.

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Paintings from antiquity rarely survive, but thanks to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the preservation of Pompeii and Herculaneum, we can see what the Romans saw.

Republic

c. 509–27 B.C.E.

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Between the period of Kings and Emperors, there was the Roman Republic, whose most important political institution was the Senate.

Early Empire

27 B.C.E.–117 C.E.

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With Augustus, the Roman Empire begins, and so does a 200-year period of peace and stability known as the Pax Romana.

Middle Empire

117–235 C.E.

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By the time of the emperor Trajan, the Roman empire encompassed the whole of the Mediterranean, Britain, much of northern and central Europe and the Near East.

Late Empire

235–410 C.E.

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In the third century C.E. the Ancient Roman Empire was threatened by economic crisis, weak and short-lived emperors and usurpers, and the loss of territory to barbarian invasions.