Designed by the American architectRichard Meier and built in steel, travertine, glass and plaster, the museum is the first great architectural and urban intervention in the historic centre of Rome since the Fascist era. It is a structure with a triumphal nature, clearly alluding to the style of imperial Rome. Wide glazed surfaces allow the viewer to admire the Ara Pacis with uniform lighting conditions. The white colour is the trademark of Richard Meier, while the travertine plates decorating part of the building are a consequence of in-progress changes, after a design review following controversies with some nostalgia for the previous pavilion that was built in 1938 by the architect Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo. The challenging design of Meier wants to assert itself in the very hearth of the town, becoming a nerve and transit centre. The complex was intended to include a crosswalk with an underpass linking the museum to the Tiber river; presently the underpass design seems to have been abandoned completely.
History
The building, designed by architect Richard Meier, was inaugurated and opened to the public after seven years of works, on April 21, 2006. During the night of May 31, 2009, unknown persons defaced the white outer wall with green and red paint and placed a toilet bowl at the foot of the wall. On December 12, 2009, a group of activists of Earth First!, during the Copenhagen Summit, colored the water of the fountain green and affixed on the side facing Via Tomacelli a banner saying "Earth First! Act Now". The officers and the employees of the museum intervened immediately, removing the banner and emptying the fountain.
Criticisms
The building has attracted conflicting opinions. The New York Times judged it a flop, while the famous art critic and polemicist Vittorio Sgarbi called it, "A Texas gas station in the very earth of one of the most important urban centres in the world", and the first step towards an "internationalisation" of the city of Rome. Nonetheless, opinion was not unanimous at all and, for instance, Achille Bonito Oliva praised Meier's design. In November 2013 a faulty roof allowed water to leak into the building during heavy rain. Staff members had to use buckets to remove water from the top of the altar. During one of his first declarations after being elected Mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno announced his intention to remove Meier's building, on the grounds that the Roman right wing had always disapproved. However, Alemanno himself later pointed out that the removal was not a priority of his administration.
