Modes of Viewing the Urban Landscapes and Public Gardens of Early Imperial Rome

Abstract

It has been claimed that with Augustus, the Roman Empire and its capital underwent a transformation that divided them into welldefined and controllable spaces based on a rational use of information. Emperors like Domitian established a sort of symbolic and physical domination over their subjects by creating a medium of surveillance which is observable in architecture and sculpture as well as in literature. Yet the functions of early imperial public gardens and urban landscapes like
 the Campus Martius and the plot on which the Domus Aurea rose have not been fully explored in this respect. This article aims to demonstrate how viewing, gazing and surveilling operated symbolically in these spaces through architecture and sculpture by using Foucaultian concepts such as “heterotopia” and “surveillance” as well as “imperial gaze.” The gaze of the emperor was directed to the heterotopic microcosms created in public gardens and urban landscapes, and also to individuals - elite
 and commoners alike - within them. This is an “imperial gaze,” a subjective, epistemological, juridical mode of viewing that tends to categorize the landscape, its constituents and its activities within from an elevated point.