ROME - Jupiter, imposing in the center with its scepter.
On the right the bride Juno and on the left Minerva with spear and helmet.
And then, right in front, Isis with the torch and perhaps the ears of corn clasped in her hand, Anubis with the body of a man and the head of a jackal and, who knows, the scholars interpret among the colors stolen by time, probably also Serapis who of Isis he is husband and brother.
"That the Romans prayed them together, with a marked and widespread religious syncretism, was known. But never had we found the Capitoline and Egyptian triad represented so explicitly all together in a sacred domestic environment".
This is told by the archaeologist Mirella Serlorenzi, director of the Baths of Caracalla, which from today host a piece of that Rome that right there, a few meters away,
it existed before the construction of the large spas.
A rich Rome, with frescoed Domus as in Pompeii and in which local gods were venerated but also overseas at the same time.
It is the Rome of the Domus di Vigna Guidi, a small and emblematic jewel, which after decades returns to show itself with an extension of the offer of the tour itinerary of the archaeological site (therefore without an additional ticket).
"After the dark months of the pandemic and the closures - explains the Special Superintendent of Rome Daniela Porro - we want to bring the Baths back to life with some important cultural operations, from the works of Giuseppe Penone to the reconstruction of this domus from the Hadrianic age, therefore from the second century AD, which was buried precisely for the construction of the baths ", around 206 AD together with the
entire neighborhood adjacent to Porta Capena.
Who was the owner is one of the still unsolved mysteries.
"Surely a wealthy exponent, given the use of expensive materials such as cinnabar red and Egyptian blue for the paintings - says Serlorenzi - And perhaps, given the presence of the divinities, also linked to exchanges with Egypt".
Rediscovered in the mid-19th century by the honorary Inspector Giovan Battista Guidi on the south-east side of the spa, again buried and then brought to light in the 70s of the last century, the building is also one of the rare testimonies in Rome of a housing typology developed on two floors,
where the presence of a shop next to the vestibule and an independent staircase suggest an insula with upper-middle-class apartments on the upper floors and an elegant domus on the ground and first floors.
Studied, investigated, the frescoes removed to secure them, after decades in the dark in the crates of the Superintendency deposits, now the Domus (or at least part of its paintings) shines again in the reconstruction of two of the main rooms "just 50 meters from where they were at the time ".
It is a Triclinium on whose ceiling what could be a feminine Dionysus stands out, but the environment, says Serlorenzi, "is still the subject of studies and research for its overall restoration".
And above all there is the large frescoed room, which reveals a first decoration,
typical of the Hadrian age, with a recurrence of architectural perspectives, human figures, statues and rampant felines;
and a second "coat", just fifty years later, which at the time covered it entirely but today is more deteriorated.
A radical change with those deities of the Greek-Roman and Egyptian pantheon who transformed the room into a private place of worship.
What happened in between?
Perhaps the owner of the Domus changed or perhaps new needs arose.
And who is really the third Egyptian God?
These are some of the mysteries still to be solved.
A radical change with those deities of the Greek-Roman and Egyptian pantheon who transformed the room into a private place of worship.
What happened in between?
Perhaps the owner of the Domus changed or perhaps new needs arose.
And who is really the third Egyptian God?
These are some of the mysteries still to be solved.
A radical change with those deities of the Greek-Roman and Egyptian pantheon who transformed the room into a private place of worship.
What happened in between?
Perhaps the owner of the Domus changed or perhaps new needs arose.
And who is really the third Egyptian God?
These are some of the mysteries still to be solved.