Starting September 4th and for October also the Ara Pacis Museum will stay open until 11:00 PM on Saturdays. You can save on entrance also by getting a Roma Pass.

Not new, but I hadn't seen it before:

ANSA has some more details in their story of the paint attack on the Ara Pacis museum, and a picture:

(ANSA) - Rome, June 1 - A wall of Rome's controversial Ara Pacis museum was spattered in bursts of red and green paint on Monday in an attack by unidentified vandals.

Police arrived on the scene at dawn after being alerted to the paint splashes, which were in the colours of the Italian flag.

You just knew this had to happen eventually (sadly):

The Ara Pacis museum, a controversial modern museum in central Rome, has been hit by vandals with paint-filled balloons.

Vandals left a porcelain toilet and two packs of toilet paper next to the museum in the overnight attack, which appeared to be a comment on the design.

The paint on the white, block-like structure was red and green — the colours of the Italian flag.

There have been objections to the modern outline of the building by Richard Meier since the U.S. architect was hired to design it.

Right-wing Mayor Gianni Alemanno last year threatened to move the building which was a project of his predecessor. His criticism is that the modern structure doesn't fit with Rome's classical architecture.

The mayor has begun negotiations with the architect in an attempt to change the design. And he condemned the vandals.

Photo courtesy of the AP (Riccardo De Luca/Associated Press). If anyone has any photos they took email them to me and I will post them here.

I am trying to load this Ancient Rome 3D in Google Earth - http://earth.google.com/rome/
Has anyone done this? Is the Ara Pacis included? If I can get there I will post a screen shot.

The Comune of Rome has a new blog - an official blog - for Rome's museums. This is definitely cool - now I just need to work on my Italian. Link: Blog Musei in Comune Roma

One of the major features of the new Ara Pacis Museum was the alternate spaces for other exhibits and events:

The Musem of the Ara Pacis in Rome is hosting an important exhibition dedicated entirely to versatile Milanese artist – a sculptor, illustrator, graphic artist and industrial designer – Bruno Munari.

The exhibition follows on from an in-depth study and a project refined in the years that followed its inception. It includes some of the artist's most notable works, like his shop window displays from the 40s and 50s, the artistic contributions he made to architectural projects between the 50s and 60s, his graphic design projects and work done in collaboration with some of Italy's most significant cultural contributors in the period following WWII such as Einaudi, La Rinascente, Olivetti and Danese.

More from Meier about the proposed demolition (via Bloomberg):

"The longer I'm involved in this the more bizarre it seems,'' said Meier, who accuses Alemanno of animosity toward the arts.

And this nugget from Culture Minister Sandro Bondi:

"It's really difficult for me to find beauty in contemporary art,'' said Bondi in an interview in the current issue of Italian women's magazine Grazia. "If I visit a show, like many people I pretend to understand. But sincerely, I don't understand.''

I have to say that if i was the Culture Minister of any country I would make it and important part of my job to understand contemporary art. I may not like it - but I would know how to talk about it in a critical, informed manner - and not just say "I pretend to understand". This is shameful - I hope that something was lost in the translation of this quote.

Yes - this is ridiculous news. And sad. Sort of hard to believe that a modern government can act like the Taliban:

Aug. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government plans to tear down part of a Rome museum designed by U.S. architect Richard Meier, Corriere della Sera said, citing comments by Culture Undersecretary Francesco Giro.

A travertine stone wall at the Ara Pacis museum will be removed to facilitate viewing of two historic churches in the same square that houses the 2,000-year-old Mausoleum of Roman Emperor Augustus, Giro said yesterday at the museum, according to the report. A section of another travertine wall connected to the museum also will be knocked down, he said.

Giro said Roman Mayor Giovanni Alemanno agrees on the plan, and a joint meeting between the mayor's office and the Culture Ministry will be held in September or October to discuss technical issues, according to Corriere.

The Meier-designed museum was inaugurated in 2006 and houses the Ara Pacis, an altar constructed in 9 B.C. to commemorate the peace following Rome's Gallic and Spanish campaigns.

The official Ara Pacis Museum website has a gallery of images from the Mimmo Paladino, Brian Eno exhibit. Nice photos but too small!

Can anyone shed some light on what this is:

Photo courtesy of and copyrighted by World Architecture News, and Mahalie & Uglynoid

A recent editorial in World Architecture News says that the controversy about the Ara Pacis Museum possible being razed is quieting down:

Mary Lou Bunn, a communications spokesperson for Richard Meier’s office said, “things have been quiet” (since the announcement was made). She added that Meier “is willing to talk to the Mayor” about the matter and that “people at the firm are very attached to the project.” Ms. Bunn said that the Italian daily, the Corriere della Sera, had polled its readers about the matter with the results being that somewhere near 70% of respondents want the building to stay.

As I stated earlier, I think the odds of anything happening to this museum are close to zero. It is simple populist politics to make statements like Alemmano did, which the Italians are quite good at. At the same time, the article quotes a poll by Corriere della Sera showing that the "people" want the building to stay. There are other papers in Italy that if polled would probably show the opposite.

Rome's new mayor continues to make news:

Alemanno praised a district south of Rome, which Mussolini built as a symbol of fascism, calling it an example of “architecture that was part of the modernisation process and gave importance to Italy’s cultural identity”. The EUR district’s monumental style, built for an international exhibition that was abandoned because of the war, was modelled on that of ancient Rome.

After living here for a few years you start to understand the Italians fascination with Mussolini - but it is a false hope, based on nostalgia and selective memories (the trains ran on time, the modernizing of the infrastructure, etc.). It is much like the American Right's fascination with the post WWII boom and the longing for the "good old days" of a dad that worked and a mom that stayed home and baked cookies. These are just cultural myths - and even if they were real for a moment in time, they were eventually unsustainable. Instead of looking to the past we all should be looking forward, but as always, it is easier to blame others and long for better things than to roll up your sleeves and actually do something. Shipping 20,000 Romanians out of Italy isn't really going to stop the problems in Rome.

So while we were on holiday in Sorrento this news broke - which explains the spike in traffic to the site the last few days. Personally it sounds like a lot of hot air, and a lot of free publicity for the new (reportedly far right) mayor. This seems to be a tried and true trick of Italian politicians. Does anyone think that a brand new building like this is going to be razed? Would the Romans want to be compared to the Taliban? I don't think so - but for now it generates some news, sells some newspapers and makes the new mayor look tough.

"The famous American architect Richard Meier has denounced as incredible plans by Rome’s new right-wing mayor to dismantle a state-of-the-art museum designed by Mr Meier that opened just two years ago.

The white marble, glass and steel structure housing the Ara Pacis, an ancient Roman altar with a sculptured frieze on the banks of the Tiber, is regarded by some architectural experts as a masterpiece. Others, however, find it hideous, with some critics dismissing it as being “like a suburban swimming pool or a giant petrol station”. Silvio Berlusconi, whose centre-Right alliance won a sweeping victory in national elections last month, once described it as monstrous.

Gianni Alemanno, a member of the “post-Fascist” Alleanza Nazionale who overturned decades of centre-Left rule in a run-off election on Sunday and Monday, said bluntly that “Meier’s building is a construction to be scrapped”. He added that this was not his” top priority”, leaving the timing of the demolition unclear."

More here.

Just came across another batch of photos from the Valentino exhibit at a site called "eternally cool". Some nice shots in there.

Here is another event slated to take place at the Ara Pacis Museum:

Dissonanze, the festival for electronic music and multimedia art returns to Rome for the eighth year...

The 2008 edition of Dissonanze will also involve new spaces. The historic and architecturally acclaimed PALAZZO DEI CONGRESSI and L’AUDITORIUM PARCO DELLA MUSICA (which last year hosted the great Karlheinz Stockhausen: first and foremost) will remain this year – but another extraordinary space, the museum of the ancient l’ARA PACIS, will be added to the list.

The above is from BERLINISTA.

Contemporary Italian artist Mimmo Paladino and music legend Brain Eno have a new, site specific exhibit at the Ara Pacis Museum:

This event, which could well be described as long-awaited, is the second time that these two indisputably important contributors to contemporary culture have worked together; the first being almost ten years ago in 1999 at London’s “Round House”.

I can't find many details about the exhibit at this point - I am hoping there is some more coverage once it opens. From 11 March to 11 May, 2008.

Came across and interesting blog post about the Ara Pacis Museum:

"The contemporary fetishization of this moment in history comes from a desire to remember Rome's one-time value and, in turn, anticipate the return of this value. The construction of this new museum is a direct act of myth-making. This agenda is clearly mapped out in the ichnography of the building. The fear of fire, or at least the institutionalized residue of a fear of fire, presumably truly felt by someone at some time but we don't know who, introduces a second logic with a second ichnography. This system is laid out over the first system, using the architecture as its starting point. In this interplay between the two logics, two hands are obviously at play with two different agendas."

Don't know if I agree with the premise - but I will be sure to take note of the fire extinguishers on my next visit.

From the American Journal of Archaeology, some new Ara Pacis scholarship:

"The Ara Pacis presents the most important surviving programmatic statement of the middle years of the Augustan principate. Recent scholarship has focused on the identity and significance of the altar’s children, but progress has been constrained by assumptions about Augustus’ dynastic ambitions. The altar reflects the political realities and ideals of the year 13 B.C.E., when adult generals were in ascendance, foreign children took center stage, and the political prospects of Gaius and Lucius Caesar were still uncertain."

There is a little more here, and it seems the full article will be posted in PDF format at some point.

Expect visitors to increase in 2008:

And travelers are rediscovering the Ara Pacis -- the first-century "Altar of Peace" built by Emperor Augustus to kick off the Pax Romana. It's wonderfully displayed in a state-of-the-art exhibit housed in a starkly modern building -- the first new construction in Rome's old center since 1938.

I love to hate this guy - from the TV show to the books to the armies of people that mob places he recommends, but then I read a very surprising interview of him that has made me soften my view - a bit. More after the fold.

"And Rome is starting to look more contemporary - in a uniquely Roman way. American architect Richard Meier's new museum for the Ara Pacis, opened in 2006, has been attacked as a coldly modernist intrusion into the city's past, and yet, what was more shocking, seeing it last summer, was an exhibition of dresses by Valentino that cluttered Meier's cool space. Valentino's opulently sheethed mannequins turned good taste into bad, and made the new building and the ancient Roman treasure it houses seem like backdrops for a Fellini film."

Just a snippet from an excellent, concise article from the Guardian about the new Gagosian gallery in Rome.