Delve into Roman engineering and architecture with John Sherlock
Thank you very much for coming back to the auditorium and if you’re watching on the screen then thank you very much for watching uh this is my second talk it’s a 45 minute talk on Roman Ingenuity and engineering and I’m very glad they put me on in the afternoon because if you
Try saying that in the morning you can sometimes get quite confused I’m an engineer by training not an architect and Engineers are people who tend to find practical solutions to problems you probably know the story of the three students um there was a mathematician a physicist and an engineer and they were
Competing for some prize and the challenge was to find the exact height of a very tall Church Tower so the mathematician goes to the top that all they’re given is a is a barometer like this one to um to measure this height so the mathematician goes to the top of the
Tar let’s go the barometer times until he hears the crash and does his calculation and works out the height of the tire physicist thinks well that’s a bit of a waste of a good barometer so he measures the atmospheric pressure at the bottom then he measures the atmospheric
Pressure at the top does his calculation and measures the height that way the engineer walks round and round the church until he see is a small door marked sacy when he knocks on the door and a man comes in he says if you can tell me the exact height of that tire
I’ll give you this very nice barometer so Engineers tend to find extremely practical solutions to problems this is what we’re going to cover in the next 40 minutes or so you’ll notice that the word new occurs quite a lot because we’re going to cover quite a lot of
Innovation that came about during the Roman period of architecture and then we’ll finish with a look at the legacy of The Classical period and how it still impacts building design today now last time we looked at the spread of building design from ancient Greece where it first landed in Europe
Europe you might say my suggestion to the captain that this is the itinerary we might follow was not that well received so he said no we better stick to the one in the brochure so we’re doing this tour of the agnc but at the same time we’re taking this historic
Tour through architecture from ancient Greek times right up to the present day and if you want a copy of this timeline do help yourself there should be some on the bar at the back and if you want to download one from my website you can get one from my website they’re very useful
They’re nice card ones though I should do recommend you take one because on the back it’s completely blank and you can use it to make a list of something important um before you leave so they’re they’re extremely useful these card timelines if you think the timelines too
Big then there may be a supply of little bookmarks which are rather smaller take a handful of those if you’d rather or take both if you’d rather now so we’re doing these two Journeys one is the journey around the agnc the other is this historical journey and last time we were together
We covered the sort of Greek period this time we’re going to cover the Roman period Then when we get together for a third time I’m going to try and cover about a thousand years of history in 40 minutes which will be quite a challenge which is the entire medieval period and
Then in the last talk we’ll look at the Renaissance or Renaissance um now I’ve said that these are highly generic terms and you us start of an argument if you make it this simple but these are the terms that I use classical for sort of ancient architecture medieval for the sort of
Middle bit and Renaissance or Renaissance for the last 500 years there are huge generalizations and I’m sure someone here will disagree with me so um but it’s enough to get us started and each colored band is a particular style and last time we used some osber Lancaster cartoons to pick out the main
Languages of architecture but very helpfully the European Central Bank has put the various languages onto the backs of Euro notes so on the five euro note you get these class classical motifs on the 10 EUR note you get the Romanesque or as it’s called in a lot of Europe the
Norman um style then you get the gothic style on the 20 EUR note and then on a 50 EUR note you get various Renaissance Styles you might say that that’s palladian on the 100 EUR note if you’re ever Rich enough to have one of those then you get this Baroque or Barack
Style and um You probably get even more styles on even more expensive notes but I’ve never had one as as big as that so uh um it’s quite important for us in Britain at the moment to get Euro notes well we still can well we’re still allowed to because as you may know
Britain and the European Union have parted company quite recently but these are just names and you’ll always find somebody who’s got a slightly different nenat so if someone looks at that and says well no way is that Barack then let them have their view in my view that what we’re looking
At there is Barack or Baro so we’re through the recap already let’s get into the meat of today’s topic and talk about the various Roman Innovations how did they innovate well from their forerunners the classical Greek Architects they inherited this wonderful inheritance of proportioned order stone masonry and
Sculpture in stone and if you miss the last talk one of the other things they inherited is this incredible tradition of optical tricks I’m just going to point out a couple of them just in case you miss them everything is leaning in slightly that scaffolding is a perfect
Vertical and the whole Temple leans in slight slightly the gap between columns one and two is much narrower than the gap between columns 2 and three because daylight was often seen between gaps between columns 1 and two so if the Gap wasn’t narrower it would look wider and
The other thing to note is that most classical temples are built on a convex platform because if it was absolutely level it would look as though the thing was sagging slightly in the front so uh when you see a classical Temple observe the fact that the uh stonework that it’s
Built on is ever so slightly convex now the helenistic empire under Alexander the Great stretched right out into the East here and to the South but the Roman Empire was even larger and it was expansionist it went right the way around the the Mediterranean right up into England uh almost into Scotland in
Fact it did go into Scotland and innovative solutions were needed so Rome inherited and celebrated the classical Greek orders of architecture the orders that we talked about last time the Doric order the ionic order and the Corinthian order and this is surely one of the most iconic structures in ancient Rome the Coliseum
Sometimes called the flavian amphitheater and if you look very carefully what you can see is the Greek orders of architecture celebrated there’s the Doric order down at the bottom there’s the ionic order halfway up and at the top the Corinthian order so there was this celebration of the ancient Greek orders of architecture
That had been inherited but these three inherited orders or pattern were modified and added to by the Roman designers and I’m just going to try and describe slightly how they were modified this Doric order was modified with the ring across there you can see a ring across the top and also
They produced a fluteless or grooveless version of the Doric order which became known as the Tuscan order when it came to ionic they were very keen on this kind of four Volute version the Greeks were quite happy with the two Volute version well actually that’s a four Volute
Version and this is an eight Volute version but it doesn’t matter which side you look at this one you always see the volutes and the Romans much preferred that kind of three-dimensional uh column and then they took the Corinthian order down at the bottom here and they
Combined it it with the ionic order and they produced this new order which has become known as the composite order of architecture so these orders were modified the classical Greek orders were modified to produce five orders and all five orders have been heavily uh revived so this is
Part of bini’s uh Piaza around the St Peter’s cathedral in Rome and there you can see Tuscan order columns is how they’re decorated there’s a picture of a composite order capital I took this picture in that museum that I was talking about last time it’s a museum in
Burma modern day Burma which is the new name for the old city of pergan in Western turkey and the composite order which is the most sophisticated has been imitated again and again if you’ve been to Venice you’ll see padio facades padio love the composite order if you’ve been to London
You’ll see uh Christopher Ren’s uh St Paul’s Cathedral he loved the composite order as well so if you look carefully at the columns on uh St Paul’s Cathedral you’ll find that some of them are composite order so from the Roman times we have these five orders or patterns of
Classical architecture the Doric Ionic and Corinthian that were inherited from the ancient Greeks and then the Tuscan and the composite which were the New Roman Innovations these five orders are celebrated in a building in England and only a few of us are from England so I
Won’t test you to see if you know where this is uh but on this Tower of the five orders as it’s called which is in the bodan library in Oxford in England you can see down at the bottom there the Tuscan then going up you see dork then
Going up a bit more you see ionic then you see Corinthian and right at the top you see composite and there sitting in the middle is King James looking very happy with himself because he’s just uh commissioned this brand new translation of the Bible so we’re talking about a
Building that dates from the early 1600s the Tower of the five orders in the bodan library in Oxford we talked a little bit last time about the Roman author Vitruvius Vitruvius said that architecture needs to be fermitas utilitas venas durable useful beautiful because if you followed these patterns these orders then you
Would be able to imitate the perfect proportions of nature so that’s what vrus wrote uh vrus was a a Roman AR uh writer and architect lived just in the century before Christ so about 100 us BC now let’s move on to structures and these on the left are the structures
That you find in any ancient Greek city site note in particular the gymnasium which is an interesting word gymnasium which has come to mean a training place in a lot of European languages but the Romans added some distinctive new shapes the first thing they added was the Basilica shape now
We’ll see a lot more of the Basilica shape as we enter the Christian era because that’s a very good uh shape for designing a early Christian church but the Basilica shape is actually pre-christian and this is a picture of an all brickbuilt Basilica in Tria which
Is in modern day Germany not far from Frankfurt and uh this Basilica dates from uh the 300s so that’s the 4th Century a ad but it’s essentially a pre-christian Roman uh design the other thing that the Romans did was they modified the theater design a lot we talked a little bit last time
About the difference between Greek and Roman theaters and basically a Roman Theater you what you tend to find is a semicircular performing space here and a very high skiny behind the uh behind the stage whereas in a Greek Theater you find a much larger performing space
Often circular and a very low skinny but it’s not a hard and fast Rule and the reason it’s not hard and fast is that the Roman Architects discovered a lot of ancient Greek theaters and converted them and improved them to make them into Roman theaters so it’s sometimes quite
Hard to tell whether you’re looking at an ancient Greek Theater or a ancient Roman Theater or an ancient Greek Theater that has then been romanized such as the great theater at epidor now a a Greek Theater should have room for a complete circle around the bottom
There and it should have a very low skiny at the back but it doesn’t always apply it’s not a hard and fast Rule and I said last time that if you’re an architectural purist you don’t get confused between theaters and amphitheaters because an Amphitheater technically goes all the
Way around amphi is the Greek for two or both and so a theater that goes all the way around in an oval shape would be called an Amphitheater and here again is the Coliseum in Rome one of the most fa uh famous uh amphitheaters in the world so the Romans invented the
Basilica they changed the shape of the theater they introduced the amphitheater what else did they introduce well they were quite keen on uh triumphal columns this is Tran’s column in Rome it’s not actually Tran at the top I think it’s probably St Peter at the top because Roman became a great Center of
Christianity uh after having been uh a great Center of Roman dominance so you’ll find a lot of triumf columns and the other thing that they introduced was a lot of bridges and aqueducts this particular uh picture is a place called Alcantara in Spain but there are quite a
Lot of Alcantara because it’s an Arabic name it simply means the bridge um so all over Spain or fine places called Alcantara because they have fine Roman Bridges rather like that one here’s a picture that my son took of the Roman aqueduct in sovia in
Spain and here is a picture of the r pug guard this is a Roman aqueduct near neem in France let’s move on to new motifs because the Romans also introduced a number of new motifs this is the Meson Kare in neim and a particular Motif that
It exhibits is this idea of the engaged column the column is no longer structural it is decorative and there you can see the load is being carried by the wall but the uh columns are there for decoration rather than for structure another Innovation was the palter uh this idea of a square again
Decorative column rather than a circular one uh was a a Roman well I wouldn’t say it’s an innovation but it was an idea that they popular arised and another useful word is edicule just as a molecule is a building block in chemistry so an edicule is a building block in
Architecture and Roman designers thought well if I put the thing on a pedestal two nice columns and a pediment on top it looks rather nice so we’ll make that into a motif and so all over Roman architecture and again uh Roman imitation architecture you find this decorative motif of edicule here’s a
Picture I took of um Osborne house in the aisle of white just south of England Osborne house was where Queen Victoria um went to when she needed a little bit of retreat from Affairs of state and where she finally died but there you can see a fine imitation Roman edicule in Osborne house
One other Roman Innovation this idea of the curved pediment do you see that pediment the back of the theater there is curved that’s a Roman idea uh you won’t find those in ancient Greek architecture uh this is a theater in Merida in Spain which dates from about 15 years
BC so we’ve talked about new orders new structures new motifs the other innovations that the Romans made was the widespread use of brick and I don’t know which tours you were on yesterday but our guide was very quick to point out that when you can see Stone it’s
Probably from helenistic times but if you see Brick it’s almost certainly from Roman times and indeed the Romans popularized the use of brick they weren’t the first brick makers by any means because of course we read in the Old Testament about brick making but they were probably the first in Europe
To start making bricks on an industrial scale why did they do this because the Roman Empire was so large there simply wasn’t enough Stone and in some parts of the Empire there was no stone at all so they used brick as a building material and Industrial scale brick
Making even meant that trade marks or Brands started to appear on Roman bricks and as we saw earlier some buildings were entirely constructed out of brick now there’s no need to remember all these different Roman techniques of brick laying but they invented lots of different patterned ways of brick laying
Perhaps just remember one or two of them the Opus reticulum which is uh sort of darmond bricks with retained at the end and the spartum method which looks a bit like a par floor that was a Roman invention and they also discovered a technique which they called Opus Keenum
It’s basically concrete they discover that if you grind particular types of stone up into a fine dust and mix with water and let it set it becomes very firm and very stable and this is a picture of the Interior Ruth of the pantheon which is a great circular
Building in Rome and it is roved with this massive concrete Dome the Romans of course bequeathed us Mosaic as a means of floor and wall decoration this example is from fishborn near Chichester in England not far from where I live um dating from about the 1 Century ad and they also invented underfloor
Heating this is an example in Oxfordshire in England uh basically it works by lighting a far by the side of the building and the hot fumes run under the building and keep the whole building warm why because in parts of the northern Roman Empire it got Jolly cold
And damp as I well know during the winter so uh having some kind of underfloor heating was well worth having but perhaps one of the most important Roman bequests to us and to later Architects is this idea of the arch because before the Romans became to dominate uh Europe we didn’t really have
Arches did we we basically had posts and lentils we could have rows of lentils like that triangular bits to keep the roof the rain out and that’s why a lot of of ancient Greek architecture looks mostly like this but just a minute what can you see right down here there’s some archw
Work right down here this is the path the Acropolis in Athens uh Athens was a Roman city for quite a long period of its history and there was quite a lot of Roman innovation in Athens and here in Athens is the odion of Herod atus dating from about 160
A and so with the Romans uh beginning to dominate Europe this idea of the arch the arch enters the Euro the architectural toolkit typically built over a wooden frame which can then be removed to leave a freestanding and a highly stable structure but if you have an engineering background you may recognize this
Diagram as a force diagram gravitational forces in Arches present certain challenges and if you built an arch with very thin columns like that and just left it the columns would probably fall outwards because of a lateral force and the arch would fall down on someone’s head and that’s not good when that
Happens for an architect when something falls on someone’s head so one way of solving that problem is to build solid walls on either side to prevent the sides of the Arches falling outwards which could be why early Arch work often looks like this you put very solid masonry either side of the
Arch another solution is to put lentil like that either side of the arch and that looks rather nice doesn’t it and that could be why so many Roman edifices have this sort of motif a circular Arch and a lentil on either side this is uh a building that you
Might see tomorrow if you visit ancient Ephesus it’s the Temple of hrin on curate’s Street in Rome times Emperors were sort of Godlike so if you knew that an emperor was coming to visit and indeed hrin did come and visit Ephesus then you made sure that
There was a temple uh dedicated to that particular Emperor so this is the Temple of hrin on Kate Street in Ephesus and this Motif has been imitated again and again here’s a Ser it’s called a seran Arch There Was An Architect called Sebastiano Serio he had nothing
To do with that nomenclature I have no idea why it’s called a seran arch but it is and that Motif is used again and again here we are now in the 18th century just outside London this is Chic house just outside London and there you can see a seran
Arch and another London architect who is quite uh well celebrated is Nicholas hawksmore another 18th century architect and he loved this motif of the seran arch the arch with a lentil on either side and this is his Church of Christ Church in spittle fields just outside
The center of London uh he was very fortunate to win a government commission to build quite a lot of churches around uh the outskirts of what was then London because the they weren’t considered to be enough churches around London so the government commissioned a whole lot more and hawksmore got the commission
The next thought is if we put two lentils like that why don’t we Arch those little gaps as well and then you get a very stable structure capable of supporting a huge amount of masonry which might be why so many triumphal arches basically look like this now that’s an engineer view I’ve
Heard all sorts of stories about you know the main person goes through the middle and the out Riders go through the outer arches but actually from an engineering point of view that is an incredibly stable structure and it’s been imitated again and again that’s the famous arch of Constantine in Rome but
Here is the arc to Triumph to Carousel in Paris um a 19th century edifice and this is the Marble Arch in London this used to be the grand processional entrance to Buckingham Palace but uh designed by an architect called John Nash but it got moved at the time of the
Great exhibition in London this is 1851 it got moved to the middle of a roundabout so now you can see there are buses going all the way around it it’s quite hard to get to without getting run over um but that is the Marble Arch in
London and there you can see a classic uh Revival triumphal Arch another technique is to put arches in a row rather like this and that’s probably the reason that uh so many uh fine Roman structures such as the pondu Garder neem have quite thin pillars because the
Archers are all in a row and therefore the lateral force is well absorbed when you were in Athens you might have seen this the arch of hadrien the same old hadrin he got everywhere and uh you can’t help thinking when you look at this that the Romans are cocking
A snoop at the ancient Greek Architects and saying well actually an arch spans a much wider Gap than a Poston lintle ever did Roman thinking went on to say well if we can do arches couldn’t we also do vaults along tunnels and about 10 years ago my wife
And I were lucky enough to visit uh a place called aeno which is in Anatolia in Western turkey and there on a Hilltop we found this magnificent Temple and as we got closer to it we realized we were looking obviously at an ionic order Temple but we couldn’t immediately work
Out whether it was from the helenistic period or from for the Roman period until we went downstairs and we found the whole thing was built on this huge Vault and there to give you a sense of scale you can see my wife and her sister at the bottom this is enormous Vault on
Which the temple is built and we’re talking about earthquake prone country so vaults are very good at resisted resisting shaking ground and I was on a cruise quite recently with um a geologist and he was talking about a volcanic eruption somewhere in the West Indies and the only Survivor of this was
A prisoner who had been imprisoned in a vaulted cell and the vaulted cell was completely undamaged in the eruption and everything else was destroyed so vaults are extremely stable and if you go a little if you walk around aseno you come across this great Roman Stadium the super structure
The bit above ground level has almost all disappeared because the earthquakes have shaken it so much but it was built upon vaults and you can see that the vaults are still largely intact there’s the Roman Theater you can tell it’s Roman because of this High scene behind
Again a lot of it collapsed in the earthquakes and there in the middle of the village is the town Bridge ancient Roman arches modern day Turkish commum lying on top of it but essentially solid Roman arches that have survived for the best part of 2000 years and the lovely thing about going
Around that part of the world I don’t know if it’s still true they probably cleared it up now but you could go into the river and there you find amongst the rubbish can you see an old tractor tire there and then amongst the rubbish you find bits of dressed Roman Stone just
Tossed into the river like any old rubbish an archaeologist’s dream so the next bit of Roman thinking was well if we have vaults couldn’t we also have a complete Arch that goes in 360° a dome so we’re now going to watch a short video which introduces the idea of the Dome here we
Go the Dome did not come to the Romans by chance it emerged out of a form they used for Bridges buildings and aqueducts the arch Roman Builders realized that if they rotated the arch in a circle it would become this symmetrical strong three-dimensional shape a dome which was first used for such
Everyday buildings as baths but even such small structures reveal the virtue of the form domes create totally open interior spaces the pantheon was designed for Roman Emperor hadrien to accommodate vast crowds but its size reveals the fundamental engineering problems of all domes throughout the Dome or curved roof
Of the pantheon the masonry pushes Inward and upward on the masonry above it this Inward and upward force of the lower masonry combined with a downward force due to gravity of the upper masonry creates compression and makes the Dome stable at the top it is even possible to make a hole or Oculus
Because compression in the rim makes it strong and stable but the masonry use to construct the Dome is very heavy the enormous weight of the Dome caused a stretching called tension which expanded the base of the Dome and cracks began to appear to save their Dome from collapse Adrian’s Builder added enormous
Layers of concrete called steep rings that push against the Dome and provide the inward Force the Dome needs to prevent the expansion the Pantheon’s thick walls now can push almost straight up supporting the weight of the heavy step rings and the rest of the Dome Hadrian’s Engineers also had to find
Ways to lighten their Dome and their Solutions are a classic case of engineering skill producing great art the Oculus that opening at the top of the Dome eliminates some Mass while creating the daily light show for which the pantheon is famous these intricate shapes called coffers also eliminate some masonry and
The Romans used low density concrete near the top of the Dome to reduce the weight even further the result was an almost impossibly huge Dome one that would remain the world’s largest for500 years so this vast space of the panthan is covered by this enormous dome
Which even today is still one of the largest in the world it’s not the largest but it’s still very large Dome uh there is an external picture of it and the area at the top here is completely open so if it’s pouring with rain and you’re standing in the middle of the pantheon
You will get wet but if it’s only lightly raining then there’s enough warm air to evaporate the dwood water so the interior stays dry it’s an extraordinary achievement here’s another internal view of the dome made of concrete showing these coffers which are there to reduce the weight and the Oculus at the
Top there also reduces the weight now last time we were together we talked a little bit about the golden rectangle and the golden rectangle keeps on popping up in Roman buildings too and the jewry is still out as to whether this is an intentional or an accidental aesthetic
But no one’s quite sure why the pantheon has that second pediment above the porch there but believe it or not that shape is an exact golden rectangle so it could be that the Architects thought well we better have a nice looking rectangle in here somewhere so that’s why they put it
In so we’ve covered a lot of um uh topics and the last topic that I just want to hit upon is the um the Legacy that has been left To Us by the Roman era of architecture and it’s a huge Legacy so many of our buildings today
And for the last few hundred years have been influenced by what the Romans left us here is the Magnificent Brandenburg gate in burlin I’m sure a number of you have been there and it is a classic Roman triumphal gate and there you can see it’s in the Doric order and if you
Look carefully you can see what we discussed the other day which is the slabs on tops of the columns and the little guut eye above uh just below each trigli this is not far from me this is the corn Exchange in Chichester in Sussex in England and there again the
Neoclassical design is based on a Roman temp Temple there you can see Doric order again with the slabs and the GU eye uh I hope that the city engineer of Chichester is not in the auditorium because I’m going to be slightly rude about the fact that a Street Lamp was
Allowed to be a fixed just there which I think is a terrible mistake because it completely destroys the symmetry of the thing but anyway that’s just my opinion it might be very useful I think is particularly useful at midnight if you’re walking down that street here we are in harut in Yorkshire
In England harut is an ancient Roman city and this is a 21st century shopping center but you can see it’s covered in Roman motifs again you can see seran arches you can see statues of the Great and the good on tops of plins right at the top there and when they’ve got more
Great and good people in Harriot I’m sure they’ll fill up all the plint but it is essentially a Roman inspired building harate is a great exhibition City there’s one of the exhibition Halls can you see that a modern architect has incorporated classical motifs again into that particular um
Design so we’ve covered I think all the topics that I really wanted to get through today uh but don’t forget that the most important thing possibly that the Roman ER did for architecture was the introduction of the arch so where you see arches it’s probably from a
Roman era that’s all I’m going to say today but do come back next time if you’re able to and we’ll talk about the medieval period of architecture and talk a little bit about Byzantine Romanesque and Gothic but until then thank you very much
Step back in time and explore the remarkable engineering feats of the ancient Romans with John Sherlock, a seasoned engineer, in his enlightening lecture, “Roman Ingenuity and Engineering.” With Mr. Sherlock as your guide, enhance your knowledge of Roman engineering and architectural marvels—from aqueducts to amphitheaters—and explore how these enduring structures left an indelible impact on civilizations across the globe. During this lecture, you will also gain a deeper appreciation for the ingenuity and precision of Roman architects and builders.
Explore our Ancient Mediterranean Treasures Itinerary:
https://www.vikingcruises.com/oceans/cruise-destinations/western-mediterranean/ancient-mediterranean-treasures/index.html
Broadcast on Viking.TV on March 17, 2024.
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