Fano is a small town, with a population of around 60,000, about 100 kilometres south of Ravenna on the Adriatic coast. It is a rather sleepy and not very touristy spot, with some attractive churches, a Roman triumphal arch put up by the emperor Augustus, serving as a city gate, a good little art gallery and the remains of the Roman temple which gave the town its name: the Fanum Fortunae, or the shrine of the goddess Fortune. In the terminology of old guidebooks, it’s worth a visit, even if not worth much of a detour.
But for classicists, it is renowned for something extra. It was the site of a basilica, or hall, which was the only building designed by the Roman architect and architectural theorist, Vitruvius, that he claimed as his own work and described in his handbook. This handbook, De Architectura (On Architecture), was written under Augustus and the key passage is Book V, chapter one, comprising several paragraphs of technical description. They start:
Basilicæ, similar to that which I designed and carried into execution in the Julian colony of Fano, will not be deficient either in dignity or in beauty. The proportions and symmetry of this are as follow. The middle vault, between the columns, is one hundred and twenty feet long, and sixty feet wide. The portico round it, between the walls and columns, is twenty feet wide. The height of the columns, including the capitals, is fifty feet, their thickness five feet, and they have pilasters behind them twenty feet high, two feet and a half wide, and one and a half thick, supporting beams which carry the floor of the portico. Above these, other pilasters are placed, eighteen feet high, two feet wide, and one foot thick, which also receive timbers for carrying the rafters of the portico, whose roof is lower than the vault.
And so it continues in similar nerdy detail – not hugely inspiring, perhaps, but important for the simple reason that these are his only words on a structure he actually built himself.
Rediscovered in the Renaissance, Vitruvius became a handbook for architects of that time, who tried to follow his instructions and to reconstruct on paper, and in stone, the buildings he mentioned, including his own basilica (as you can see at the top of this post). But despite a few unconvincing guesses in Fano no one has succeeded in pinning down the hand of the master – until now.
Some not hugely impressive remains, recently excavated in the town centre, have been shown to match up closely with Vitruvius’ description, in such key details as overall dimensions and the number of columns. It is undoubtedly great for architectural historians to have the chance to line up the written description with the masonry, and it is bound to launch any number of important specialist studies over the next few years. But I fear you won’t now be able to avoid it on any visit to sleepy Fano.
There was no stinting on hyperbole in the press conference revealing the discovery a few days ago. “A discovery we have been waiting for over 2,000 years”, said the mayor of the town, in one of the more measured contributions (though he went on to call it the “discovery of the century”). The Italian culture minister hyped it further, comparing it to the discovery of Tutankhamun.
It won’t be long before a whole array of “Vitruvius cafés” opens nearby, offering their souvenir Vitruvius fridge magnets and tote bags. But the equal of the tomb of Tutankhamun? Even this fan of Roman architecture says, “hardly”.
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