To browse Academia. It brings together specialists in archaeology, architecture, art history, history, liturgy and topography to discuss recent research on S. Giovanni in Laterano. As the first public building for Christian worship and the Cathedral of the Bishop of Rome the site is of exceptional importance. Papers will address the origins of the site, its topographical context, the building, its history and its decorative scheme up to Entry to the conference is free, but those wishing to attend are asked to register at lateran.
This will greatly assist in the administration of the conference. A study of the Christianization of Rome in late antiquity; the imaginative influence of Jerusalem; and the development of the Lateran borgo. This essay surveys church building in Rome in the fifth century. The character of Roman church building was established once and for all in the second half of the fourth century, as the architectural legacy of Constantine was embraced by his imperial successors, and at the same time reduced to a type that was easily reproducible by patrons of lesser means.
The emergence and persistence of this type suggest that the papal administration actively participated in church building even before the pope became the leading sponsor of new ecclesiastical construction in the fifth century.
As patrons, popes inherited the duty of secular rulers to embellish their capital with opulent, showy buildings, but initially they were without the technical, material, and creative resources that had migrated to the chief sites of imperial activity: Milansucceeded in by Ravennaand Constantinople.
Thus the colonnaded thin-walled construction introduced by Constantinian architects became an invariable norm, as it was conducive to relatively simple designs that could be realized with either new or reused materials and made to look splendid by surface coatings of marble and mosaic.
