In-depth Visual Documentation
This web site honors all those who have worked to bring the Ara Pacis so impressively back to life.
Posted 15 April 2011
Any significant additions will be dated.
Charles S. Rhyne
Professor Emeritus, Art History
Reed College
The main purpose of this web site is to make available a more comprehensive body of images of the Ara Pacis than previously available in any print or web publication. The Ara Pacis Augustae is a complex masterpiece, with elaborate reliefs including more than a hundred figures and voluminous vegetation filled with the details of nature. It is also a much damaged and reconstructed monument, making it important to distinguish original marble portions from later hypothical reconstructions and more recent changes. This web site attempts to provide in-depth visual documentation in support of the in-depth scholarly publications that have so enriched our understanding of Augustan art and society.
This web site includes images of closely related material and photographs of the new Museo dell'Ara Pacis, in which the altar is now newly restored and displayed.
I think of this web site partly as a supplement to the superb 2006/2009 volume, Ara Pacis, by Orietta Rossini, Responsabile Ufficio Ara Pacis, which provides authoritative, up-to-date reviews of all aspects of the monument, with outstanding illustrations. This is now the single most informative book about the Ara Pacis Augustae.
