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Piranesi, Juvarra, and the Triumphal Bridge tradition
Art Bulletin, The, June, 2003 by David R. Marshall
The Via Triumphalis
Determining the nature of the Via Triumphalis presents many problems. Some topographers have denied that a street of this name ever existed, (21) but inscriptions referring to the "curator" of the Via Aurelia Nova, Via Cornelia, and Via Triumphalis confirm its reality. (22) Since the Via Aurelia Nova and Via Gornelia were both on the right bank of the Tiber in the Vatican area, it can he assumed that the Via Triumphalis was there as well. Other inscriptions indicate the presence of brickyards associated with a Street of this name. (23) Filippo Coarelli has suggested that the name must predate the fourth century B.C.E., since it is unlikely that such a name would have been chosen following the building of the Via Appia, after which new roads took the name of the public official responsible for them. (24)
Today, the Via Triumphalis is generally identified with the route known since the Renaissance as the Via Trionfale, a section of which still bears this name, which diverged from the Via Cassia at La Giustiniana near the "Tomb of Nero," descended Monte Mario, crossed the Prati di Castello, and entered the Vatican at Porta Angelica. It is then supposed to have crossed the Ager Vaticanus and the Pons Neronianus. At this point, Renaissance and later antiquarians conflate the issue of a road called the Via Triumphalis with the issue of the route followed by triumphal processions. Hence, nineteenth-century excavators, to some extent still under the spell of the Renaissance topographers, identified remains near the Via del Pellegrino in the Campo Marzio as belonging to the Via Triumphalis. Rodolfo Lanciani, for example, in the Forma urbis Romae (1893-1901) indicates it as a road running from the Pons Neronianus to the Theater of Pompey, the later part of which more or less follows the route of the Via del Pellegrino (Fig. 6). (25)
If this was the route followed by Roman triumphs on entering the city, a number of topographical problems emerge. According to the ancient sources, the pompa triumphalis crossed the pomerium, the symbolic city boundary beyond which soldiers could not take their weapons, through a gate in the Servian Walls called the Porta Triumphalis. This gate can be identified with one arch of a double arch known as the Porta Carmentalis, (26) whose location is consistently indicated by the ancient sources as being near the Capitol. Present opinion locates it near S. Omobono toward the Foro Boario. (27) It is represented on a number of coins and reliefs, including the Aurelianic Adventus and Profectio reliefs on the Arch of Constantine. (28) This location corresponds to what is known about the location of the Republican pomerium. During the reign of Claudius, however, the pomerium was enlarged, taking in at least part of the Campus Martius, which since Republican times had undergone considerable development. (29) This raise s the possibility that the road from the Pons Neronianus crossed the pomerium before reaching the Porta Carmentalis, which would imply a new Porta Triumphalis, for which there is no evidence. On the contrary, the detailed account of the triumph of Vespasian and Titus in 79 C.E. by josephus (The Jewish War, 7.123-27) makes it clear that the traditional Porta Triumphalis near the Capitol was still in use. (30)
