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Updated: May 25, 2025
But it was not always thus. The porous local travertine that gave their building material to the Greeks of the sixth century before Christ was once carefully stuccoed, and, in the manner of Hellenic art, painted in the most brilliant hues of azure and vermilion, so that it becomes hard for us to realise the original effect of such gorgeous masses standing erect in a landscape that is itself fraught with glowing colour.
The wall appeared to be built of solid blocks of travertine stone, rough hewn on the face but neatly fitted together. It would take two men several days to loosen a single one of these blocks, and if they finally succeeded in moving it, it must fall to the ground at once, for their united strength would not have sufficed to lower it gently.
Already Paul E. Denneville had been successful in working with material made in imitation of Travertine marble, used in many of the ancient buildings of Rome, very beautiful in texture and peculiarly suited to the kind of building that needed color. He it was who had used the material in the Pennsylvania Station, New York, in the upper part of the walls.
In the travertine are many fossil plants, all Recent except two, an oak and poplar, the leaves of which Professor Heer has not been able to identify with any known species.
But finally, having caused chips of the whitest marble that could be found to be pounded and reduced to a fine powder, and then sifted, he mixed it with white lime of travertine, and discovered that thus he had succeeded without any doubt in making the true stucco of the ancients, with all the properties that he had desired therein.
But I rather believe," he said, "that a lake in the immediate neighbourhood of the city furnished the quarry from which these stones were excavated; and, in half an hour, if you like, after you have finished your examinations of the temples with your guide, I will accompany you to the spot from which it is evident that large masses of the travertine, marmor tiburtinum, or calcareous tufa, have been raised."
The simple dignity of the plain travertine wall surfaces is heightened by tile-covered cornices terminated by pavilions. A rich foreground of rhythmic planting of trees, shrubbery and flowers, emphasizes the unity of the eight palaces, the corporate purposes of which have been so successfully interpreted by Architects Bliss and Faville.
Mingled with the hum of many voices and the patter of feet on the travertine pavement are the ringing sounds of the stonemasons’ chisels and hammers, for the Forum is undergoing a complete restoration. Although fifteen years have elapsed since the city was last visited by earthquake, the damage then done to the public buildings has not been entirely repaired. First the Gods, then the people.
He answered: 'I should like to hear these deputies speak. The Cardinal Marcello rejoined: 'Here we are. Michelangelo then remarked: 'My lord, above these three windows there will be other three in the vault, which is to be built of travertine. 'You never told us anything about this, said the Cardinal.
The bare, bleak interior of the ancient, old-fashioned basilica, with its blackened roof-beams, unadorned walls, Travertine columns of the severest Tuscan pattern, and plain window-lattices, made an austere setting for the trial.
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