Museo Nacional de Arte Romano
Rafael Moneo
1979-1986
Site of the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano, Mérida, Spain
The city of Mérida, located in the Badajoz province of Spain, lies on the site of one of the greatest cities of the Roman Empire, Emerita Augusta. Emerita Augusta was founded in 24 B.C. during Augusts’ reign and was a prosperous city right through to the fall of the Roman Empire. It was almost completely sacked and ravished following the Muslim invasion to make way for an Arab settlement and has since kept its foothold as the modest rural city of Mérida.
Excavations of the city in the nineteenth century unearthed a great number of Roman artefacts, including monuments, statues, great ruins, among various other antiquities. Today, Mérida serves an archaeological and tourist function in Badajoz, drawing crowds to the arenas and amphitheatres of the ancient Roman Empire and provides an inexhaustible source of historical souvenirs from Roman times. Mérida is renowned as one of the largest and best-preserved Roman cities in Western Europe.
At the mouth of the excavation site is the National Museum of Roman Architecture (Museo Nacional de Arte Romano) by Spanish architect and Pritzker Prize winner, Rafael Moneo. Moneo’s goal for the design of the project was to give the visitors an insight into the Roman influence over the architecture of this Iberian outpost at the height of the Roman Empire. In typical Moneo style, this museum is a seamless amalgamation of both contemporary and historical references. This museum was the missing link that would join the Roman city of Emerita Augusta and the modern city of Mérida.(10-4)
“Architecture belongs to the site. Architecture should be appropriate which means it should recognize in some way the attributes of the site. To understand what these attributes are, to hear how they manifest themselves, should be the architect’s first move when starting to think about a building.”
- Rafael Moneo (5)
The museum was to replace a pre-existing museum, opened in 1838, on the same site. Moneo was commissioned for the job in 1979, the bimillennial anniversary of Emerita Augusta’s founding. Its design would champion the city and cement Mérida as an archaeological hotspot.
Rafael Moneo
Rafael Moneo was born in Tudela, Navarra in Northern Spain on the 9th of May 1937. In his youth, Moneo was enticed by philosophy and art. As he grew, he was influenced more and more by his father, an industrial engineer, which lead him into the world of architecture. He attended the Madrid University School of Architecture and graduated in 1961.
He travelled extensively throughout Europe, building a repertoire of architectural knowledge through his work with Jørn Utzon and Alvar Aalto. He returned briefly to Madrid before joining a fellowship at the Spanish Academy in Rome for two years. Upon his return to Madrid in the mid 1960’s, Moneo set up an architecture firm. His first commission at his new firm, the Diestre Factory in Zaragoza, came to him in 1965. In 1966 he took up a teaching position at the Madrid University and immersed himself in a network of architects and designers like Aldo Rossi, Álvaro Siza and Peter Eisenman. At this time, he also began publishing his writings in his magazine series “Arquitectura Bis”.
Moneo is a highly decorated architect; he is the first Spanish recipient of the Pritzker Prize, which he was awarded in 1996, he was awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in 2003 and the 2012 Prince of Asturias Award. He is known for his contextual designs that relate fluently with their surroundings while maintaining level of modernity. In his essay about Moneo for the Pritzker Prize, critic Robert Campbell praises Moneo for his ability to achieve a “timelessness” in his designs. He writes; “a Moneo building creates an awareness of time by remembering its antecedents. It then layers this memory against its mission in the contemporary world”.(3,6–8)
The National Museum of Roman Art came to Moneo soon after his completion of the Logroño City Hall and the Bankinter Building in Madrid. These commissions had gathered some attention to Moneo and he was enjoying a rise to fame in the late 1970’s. During the construction of a retaining wall on Calle José Ramón Mélida, which ran alongside the 1838 museum, the excavators discovered the extended ruins of the old city of Emerita Augusta; aqueducts, peristyles of Roman houses, Renaissance courtyards, cisterns, sewage pipes and the remains of an early Christian church. These ruins needed to be respected and therefore the idea came to construct a museum on the site that paid homage to the historical identity of Emerita Augusta, while also reflecting the contemporary style of Mérida. The first hurdle that Moneo came up against was the contradicting orientation of the ancient city and the modern layout of Mérida, the latter prevailed.
Moneo reinterprets traditional Roman construction means and techniques throughout the design through his use of the opus caementicium; concrete walls faces with brick; however, he stimulates a sense of the contemporary by reducing the mortar of the brick joints, giving the walls a crisp finish. The brickwork is not a replication, but an evocation of the past. The majority of the museums volume is articulated by a series of grand rounded brick arches. It is again reminiscent of basilicas and triumphal Roman arches, a nod to the grandeur of the ancient Iberian city. These narrow arches divide the space laterally and allow for alcoves off of the central corridor, where mosaics, frames and ancient artefacts are displayed. The upper balconies of the “basilica” are populated with exhibition spaces resting on modern concrete slabs adorned with iron railings, which span the widths of the arches. These floating spans feel like modern additions embroidered into an existing fabric.
Exterior and interior of the Mueso Nacional de Arte Romano (4)
The use of material, technique and form stimulate memories of ancient Rome, while invoking elements of modernity that allow it to straddle the boundary between past and present. It is simultaneously historic, timeless and modern. The elongated brick network stretched over the arches in a triple-band blend together two worlds separated by thousands of years.
The building is placed on the site fluently, woven seamlessly into the fabric of the ancient Roman ruins, foundations and roadways. It is connected to the arena and amphitheatres via a tunnel that passes underground. This subterranean passage allows visitors access to the “crypt” that is the ancient Roman excavation beneath the museum. In this sunken passage, Moneo uses a floodlight to highlight the ancient foundations. He uses the same lighting to bring equal importance to the foundations of the columns that rise through the vast basilica above, blurring the line between the architecture of history and today.
Moneo again exercises his contemporary knowledge of design through his lighting style. Large skylights span across vaults of the arches to cast light throughout the nave of the basilica. These lights throw a warm glow over the already blazed red, orange and golden hues of the bricks. Moneo controls the light through these apertures and uses it to draw attention to the aged, ghostly paleness and palate of the antiquities on display in an ever-changing golden wash of sun. This panning spotlight emphasises the relationship between the art and the building itself. (1–5,9,10)
Worms eye view showing the skylights in the museum (3)
In this project, Moneo uses direct light to draw attention to the art pieces displayed in the museum. The light bursts through the skylights and the narrow windows along the top of the south façade and floods the walls with a warm luminescence. Moneo’s knowledge of light manipulation is put to work here, where through the use of effective fenestration, he can use the movement of sunlight over the building to display the antiquities in their pale, ghostly form. The aureate rays spilling heat and golden hues over the brickwork allows the walls to act as a stage for the hanging mosaics, frescoes and various other antiquities through the contrast in tones of the masonry and the ivory artworks.
The positioning of the openings further proves Moneo’s affinity for intelligent lighting design. The south facing façade opens at the meeting of the wall and roof and casts light laterally through the antechambers that lead from the main corridor of arches to illuminate the exhibition spaces. The skylights above sit between the arches and give the ceiling a sense of weightlessness. At the sight of great arches such as the ones in the National Museum of Roman Art, one would expect a strong, burly roof. Instead, when your eyes reach the crown of the arch, you are greeted with a box of light, another example of the intertwining of antiquity and the contemporary design.
The scale of light also draws attention to the cavernous atmosphere of the basilica, and as a result, the scale of the museum. The radiance of light opens up the space even further and seem to make the arches reach higher and span wider.
Moneo’s design in the National Museum of Roman Art gives us an insight into his proficiency in intelligent design. His work, as ever, is extremely aware of its surroundings and context while also implementing elements of modernity. His buildings are never duplicates of historic styles, but are referential, they evoke memories with a subtle imitation. His traditional design aesthetic and techniques seamlessly woven with modern ideals, such as light manipulation, are so clearly shown throughout this building. It is dominant and boastful in its scale, yet respectful in its manner and design.
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2. Ran. ArchiDiAP » Museo Nazionale d’Arte Romana [Internet]. 2015 [cited 2020 Oct 23]. Available from: http://www.archidiap.com/opera/museo-nazionale-darte-romana/
3. Langdon D. AD Classics: National Museum of Roman Art / Rafael Moneo | ArchDaily [Internet]. Archdaily. 2018 [cited 2020 Oct 23]. Available from: https://www.archdaily.com/625552/ad-classics-national-museum-of-roman-art-rafael-moneo
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6. Campbell R. Rafael Moneo 1996 Laureate Essay. 1996.
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9. Lifson E. Rafael Moneo 1996 Pritzker Laureate Biography [Internet]. The Pritzker Architecture Prize. 1996 [cited 2020 Oct 24]. Available from: https://www.pritzkerprize.com/sites/default/files/inline-files/1996_bio_0.pdf
10. Peckham A. Moneo, Libeskind and a question of influence. J Archit. 2008;13(1):23–51.
