Youcef CHENNAOUI2/ Filippo FANTINI1 / Francisco Juan VIDAL1
(1Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Spain / 2École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture d’Alger; Algeria)
Abstract: During the restorations carried out between 1964 and 1972 of Hadrian’s Villa it was found a strange marble handmade, broken into various pieces that once assembled seemed to be a sort of maquette of a stadium. For many years scholars and researchers tried to guess and interpret its real function (an architectural model, a marble fountain, a game, etc.) but still remained some doubts. Thanks to a new research came out some relevant outputs: first of all, the handmade was a model of an amphitheatre that was never built inside the Villa, but the second result was even more interesting because it dealt with the architectural designing of a specific typology of buildings that we can find in almost all places visited by Hadrian during his reign: Cesarea of Mauretania (Cherchell, Algeria) , Virunum (Klagenfurt, Austria) Schythopolis (Beth-Shean, Israele), Lucera (Italia).
Methodology: the fragments of the marble model were surveyed by means of 3D laser scanner, and then optimized for the virtual assembling by means of reverse modelling tools. From the orthographic high resolution images of the model, together with relevant sections, it was possible to compare them with the ancient standard measures used during imperial age and we detected the presence of actus quadratus.
Innovations: the modular structure for the dimensioning of the cavea allowed us to investigate also the design of Cherchell’s amphitheatre and consequently understand the deep relation between architectural design and urban planning of this important capital of the Mauritanian province. The following step of the research is to deepen the knowledge of the amphitheatre built in Cesarea during the reign of Juba II by means of a photogrammetric survey with the aim to understand its relation with the unbuilt amphitheatre of Hadrian’s Villa.