A modern take on Roman architecture - Moneo's Roman Museum

Tuesday, October 28, 2019                                                                               Merida

Soaring arches and light filled ceiling of Moneo's Roman Museum

The Roman Museum, designed by Rafael Moneo, is a breathtakingly beautiful and

light filled space that perfectly displays the impressive Roman artifacts from the 
excavations around Merida. To do the space justice, I've copied an article from ArchDaily, 
which describes in architectural language, the features of this beautiful space.  
The photos are mine, but the words come from their article.

The new Roman Museum, opened in 1986, is directly across the plaza from the Roman theater and amphitheater excavations 

Museum entrance - clean and romanesque

Article from ArchDaily, May 2015:

Arches have long been used to mark the greatest achievements of Roman civilization. 

Constantine, Titus, and Septimus Severus built them to commemorate their military victories.

Engineers at Segovia and Nîmes incorporated them into their revolutionary aqueducts. And 

fifteen hundred years after the Fall of Rome, Rafael Moneo gave a modern touch to the 

ancient structure in Mérida's breathtaking National Museum of Roman Art, located on the 

site of the former Iberian outpost of Emerita Augusta. Soaring arcades of simple, 

semi-circular arches merge historicity and contemporary design, creating a striking yet 

sensitive point of entry to the remains of one of the Roman Empire's greatest cities.

Moneo's commission for the museum came in 1979 as part of the Spanish government’s 

celebration of the bimillennial anniversary of the founding of Emerita Augusta. Replacing 

an 1838 museum on the same site, it was built in the middle of one of the largest and best 

preserved Roman cities in Western Europe, immediately next to an amphitheater and one 

of the most spectacular surviving ancient theaters in the world – the Roman Theater of

Merida. 

The light pours in illuminating the artifacts, statues and mosaics

The ceiling allows maximal natural light

Mosaics are displayed to show off their beauty, framed by the buildings arches

Occupying the lot across the street from the theater, the bulk of the museum is contained 

within a lofty, above-ground building where space is articulated by a series of soaring brick 

arches. This part of the building is a modern take on the basilica type, with upper-story 

exhibition spaces replacing clerestory balconies along an open, amplified central “nave.” 

Natural light pours in from skylights above the thin arches and fills the space with a warm glow.

Beneath the ground level, a subterranean “crypt” immerses visitors into a pristine 
Roman-era excavation of the old city, allowing the museum to simultaneously conserve 
and exhibit the archeology of the site while interpretively replicating its architecture.

In this spectacular texture of vertical elements, Moneo articulates a strong polemic on 

historicity and modernity by freely borrowing ancient motifs and contemporizing them in a 

way that is neither blindly imitative nor satirically reductive. The triple-banded arches are 

allusions to the brickwork of the Roman theater across the street, engaging the entirety 

of the archeological site in a continuous dialogue while asserting a character all their own. 

The bricks are precise, rhythmic, and beautifully scaled to evoke a sense of refinement 
only conceivable in a modern project, particularly when partnered with the sleek iron railings 
and floating concrete slabs of the upper floors. Yet, there is something fundamentally timeless 

about the simplicity of the structures and their clear invocation of Roman precedent. Form 

and material belong neither to the present nor to history, allowing the design to straddle the 

gap between the two in a manner uniquely befitting of a modern-day archeological museum.

A reproduced room from on of Merida's Roman houses

The interplay of the modern and the ancient exists at even the most conceptual level of the
 museum's architecture, which carefully balances curated museum exhibits with physical 

immersion into untouched archeology. In the museum "crypt," the excavation of the ancient 

city is rhythmically punctuated by the ordered column grid supporting the structure above, 

a bold yet sensitive superimposition of two disparate historical conditions. Nearby, a 
complete Roman road runs its jagged course through the middle of the museum, 
breaking from the regimented orthogonality of Moneo's design as if to assert its 
unscripted authenticity and unmovable presence in the face of modern civilization. A 
subterranean tunnel further engages visitors with the greatest landmarks of 
Emerita Augusta, ushering them directly into the Roman theater and amphitheater 
across the street. These are elements of a design driven entirely by the unique 
conditions of its site, demonstrating a commitment to deliberate purposefulness 

that prioritizes program and thematic integrity over unnecessary architectural noise.

A Roman road runs through the museum

A glass wall leads to the underground excavations and crypt

The cavernous above-ground exhibition spaces appeal to history in another way still, 

appropriating the enduring power of architectural ruin. The iconic image of dereliction—

a field of freestanding columns that have long outlived the roof they once supported—

is hauntingly evoked in the main galleries. Massive structural arches that seem capable 
of supporting a weighty roof are capped instead by a light, glassy covering, creating an 
interior condition that feels entirely exposed to the outside world, as if time has slowly 
worn through the protective covering of architecture. As a result, the space is burdened 
by none of the oppressive weightiness of a traditional roof and the immersive experience 
within the archeological site feels all the more authentic.

Arches and walkways mimic the tiers of the Roman theaters and amphitheaters

In an era in which museum commissions too often represent opportunities for architects 

to pursue personal agendas with little sensitivity to the objects they are intended to display,
 Moneo’s museum in Mérida is refreshingly self-aware of its purpose as an exhibition space 

for the city's ancient past. The architecture, independently spectacular though it is, serves 

not to shamelessly promote itself, but to dramatize the achievements of Roman culture 

without overshadowing them. It is a masterful negotiation of the ancient and the modern, 

the inventive and the referential, and a successful rethinking of the museum typology 

through thoughtful contextualization.