| Antiquarians and archeologists have long studied and excavated ancient monuments in the hope of recapturing their original forms. This dissertation does the opposite: it aims to understand three ancient monuments---Rome's theaters of Pompey, Marcellus and Balbus---not as they were, but as they have become. It examines the ways in which these remarkable structures, inherited by successive generations, were reinhabited, reimagined and transformed over the centuries following antiquity.;Rome's three theaters are among the most famous monuments of the ancient world, but they also became celebrated landmarks in their new incarnations, as the seats of some of Rome's most powerful medieval and early modern families. Even so, the post-antique histories of the theaters, particularly those of Pompey and Marcellus, have remained largely obscure---until now. Drawing on archival materials, pictorial sources and physical evidence, this dissertation reconstructs the evolution of the theaters though time: their breakdown during Rome's decline, their reconstitution as medieval family compounds, their transformation into early Renaissance palatia, and their continued evolution as ever more elaborate formal palaces. It also examines the motivations and methods behind the owners' successive interventions on the structures, in light of family histories, social context and changing models of aristocratic habitation.;The buildings produced by this series of transformations are very different from the great aristocratic palaces usually studied by art historians, but they offer two significant points of interest. One is a very practical but understudied aspect of the survival of antiquity: not the transmission of texts or forms, collectible remains or reusable fragments, but of habitable structures in situ. The other is an essential aspect of architecture in time: how buildings, even monuments created as the very symbols of endurance, exist in a state of flux, continously transformed through the twin agencies of physical age, and of the changing needs and desires of those who own them. |
