Tabularium

"Tabularium" is a term for a record building. A number of other tabularia were scattered around Rome and other ancient Roman cities, but this article is about the prototype example.

Tabularium
File:Tabularium 3D.jpg
Location	Regione VIII Forum Romanum
Built in	78 BC
Built by/for	M. Aemilius Lepidus and Q. Lutatius Catulus
Type of structure	Basilica
Related	Roman Forum
Tabularium

The Tabularium was the official records office of ancient Rome, and also housed the offices of many city officials. Situated within the Roman Forum, it was on the front slope of the Capitoline Hill, below the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, to the southeast of the Arx and Tarpeian Rock.

File:010218 campidoglio tabularium 01.JPG

The interior

Within the building were the remains of the temple of Veiovis. In front of it were the Temples of Vespasian & Concord, as well as the Rostra and the rest of the forum. Presently the Tabularium is only accessible from within the Capitoline Museum, although it still provides a panoramic view over the Forum.

The Tabularium was first constructed around 78 BC, by order of the dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla. It was later restored and renovated during the reign of the Emperor Claudius, about 46 AD.

Architecture

The building itself had a facade of peperino and travertine blocks. The interior vaults are of concrete.

Its great corridor, 67 m (220 ft) long, raised 15 m (49 ft) above the forum on a massive substructure, is still partly preserved. This corridor was lighted through a series of arches divided by semi-detached columns of the Doric order, the earliest example of this class of decoration, which is in the Theatre of Marcellus, the Colosseum, and all the great amphitheatres throughout the Roman empire constituted the decorative treatment of the wall surface and gave scale to the structure.

The facade faced the back of the Temple of Concord in the Forum and consisted of three levels. The first story was a large and tall fortified wall with a single door and only small windows near the top to light the interior, forum level rooms. The second story featured a Doric arcade (partially preserved) and the third, no longer extant story, had a high Corinthian order colonnade. The upper floors of this structure was much changed in the 13th century, when the Palazzo dei Senatori was built.

See also

• Roman architecture
• List of Roman domes

References

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 

External links

• Tabularium at UCLA's Digital Roman Forum