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Christopher Siwicki is an Honorary Fellow at the Norwegian Institute in Rome and was a postdoctoral researcher there from 2021 to 2024. He is the author of Architectural Restoration and Heritage in Imperial Rome (Oxford, 2019). Together with Stephen Kay, he directs the ‘First Mile of the Via Latina Project’, co-funded by the Hans Rasmus Astrup Foundation.
January 2026 saw the opening of the Norwegian Institute’s digital exhibition Deceptively Unchanged: Historic Images of the First Mile of the Via Latina. The exhibition is part of the ‘First Mile of the Via Latina Project’, a collaboration between the Norwegian Institute in Rome (DNIR) and the British School at Rome (BSR), to study the history, archaeology, and topography of one of the city’s principal roads, from antiquity to the present day.
The exhibition showcases a selection of photographs taken in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from the archive collections of the DNIR and BSR, to illustrate the historical development of the area and the ways that the appearance of its monuments have changed over time.
The Via Latina – A Major Route through Southern Italy
Laid out in the mid-fourth century BC, the ancient via Latina headed southeast from Rome towards the Alban Hills, continuing some 200 kilometres to the town of Capua in Campania. It was an instrument for facilitating trade, communication, and military expansion into Southern Italy. While parts of the road have been well-studied, there is much still to learn about the character and monuments of the initial stretch closest to the city, which included Roman tombs, villas, temples, and early Christian churches. Understanding the development of the area involves historical research, new non-invasive geophysical survey, examining still-standing buildings, and consulting archive material, not least, old photographs.
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When Old Photos Reveal New Stories
Historic photographs, fascinating in their own right, can be a fundamental resource in the study of archaeology and topography, as earlier images often show features that have subsequently been lost. Conversely, the exhibition also highlights how certain elements that appear to be ‘historic’ or ‘old’ were actually the product of more recent interventions.
For example, in the forecourt of the church of San Giovanni a Porta Latina is an eight/ninth century AD wellhead, decorated with an abstract representation of the Tree of Life and an inscription referring to its donor Stephanus. Today, the wellhead is framed by two ancient columns shafts, topped with reused ancient marble capitals (page 7 of the exhibition): the group looks like a typically eclectic medieval ensemble. However, the earlier photographs illustrate that in the nineteenth century the column shafts had plain stone brackets above them (page 6). Seemingly, these were substituted in the 1930s/40s with the capitals to give the ensemble a more ‘medieval’ look.
Indeed, the photographs in the exhibition show how the entire church of San Giovanni a Porta Latina was ‘restored’ to its medieval appearance in the early twentieth century (page 4 and page 5). Today visitors are confronted with what appears to be a monument little changed in the last 800 years, the photographs show this is a deceptive impression.
Hans Peter L’Orange and DNIR’s Photographic Collections
The photographs in the exhibition from the DNIR collections are from the Hans Peter L’Orange archive, the Institute’s first director. Recently digitised in collaboration with the University of Oslo, they are now accessible for consultation on the Alvin platform. L’Orange’s primary interest was to document fragments of medieval architecture across Italy; accordingly, his photographs are often excellent on detail but lacking in wider visual context.
Relevant to the first mile of the via Latina are fourteen photographs taken by L’Orange in 1938/9 of the church of San Giovanni a Porta Latina (not all are included in the exhibition). Concordant with his interests, these record the medieval column capitals and decorative ornament of the church, but not the building as a whole or its wider surroundings. Nevertheless, L’Orange’s photographs reveal how medieval sculptural and architectural pieces that were attached to the wall in his day have more recently been moved and employed in new contexts, for example, the façade of the lectern and altar (page 11 and page 12).
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Inadvertently, in photographing a medieval column capital inside the church, L’Orange also captured part of the twelfth century fresco cycle along the nave, showing the crucifixion of Christ (page 9). A comparison with the condition of the fresco today reveals just how extensively it has been ‘touched up’ by conservators (page 10).
A Digital Format for an International Audience
The creation of a digital exhibition allows some of the results of the on-going work to be shared with audiences in Rome, Norway, and anywhere in the world alike. It is hosted on the DNIR’s new digital exhibitions platform (operated by the company Emme. Bi. Soft), which allows for the easy sharing of material between research bodies (an English language version of the is hosted by the BSR).
The exhibition and the project as a whole marks an important collaboration between two of the foreign research institutes in Rome; the possibility of building such international connections and of sharing expertise and resources is one of the reasons why the Norwegian Institute is such an important centre of academic research.
