Transformations
The prints presented in this category show ancient monuments that have one thing in common: their continuous visibility since their construction. They have outlasted the Roman culture that produced them and were not only preserved by later societies, but also creatively appropriated and transformed to varying degrees. In some cases, these complex historical processes were accompanied by massive structural changes, in others they took place without any significant intervention in the ancient substance.
Perhaps the most prominent example of such complex transformations is the Porta Nigra in Trier, a city gate built after 170 AD, which was converted into a church in the 11th century, or rather integrated into the walls of St. Simeon’s Church and thus preserved. The Igel Column, on the other hand, a burial monument from the 3rd century, remained largely unchanged and was ‘read’ in Christian terms and associated with Constatine in the following centuries. The prints in this category thus bring forward different functional contexts of the ancient buildings, as recognisable with the help of the diachronic perspective, and shed light on the specific treatment of antiquity after antiquity.
