Crypta Balbi
This structure was a portico built by L. Cornelius Balbus the Younger (a general under Augustus) in the years 19-13 B.C., the same time that the adjacent Theatrum Balbi was built. Roman theaters generally included a portico where, as the architect Vitruvius tells us, scenery could be stored and the public could take refuge in case of rain.
Crypta Balbi
From Samuel Ball Platner, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, rev. Thomas Ashby. Oxford: 1929, p. 141-142.
Mentioned only in the Notitia (Reg. IX), but probably built by Balbus in 15 B.C. at the same time as his theatre (q.v.). The name is best explained as a term used for a vaulted passage lighted from above (RE IV.1732), and this building may have been a sort of ambulatory round the cavea of the theatre. No traces of it have been found, and the remains in the Via dei Calderari, formerly identified as the Crypta Balbi, belong to another structure (cf. Porticus Minucia; HJ 521, 545; Jord. II.534; Gilb. III.329).
Additional source material
- Ancient Library Sources (from Peter Aicher, Rome Alive: A Source Guide to the Ancient City, vol. 1, Bolchazy-Carducci: 2004) [Works cited]
- Latrina Crypta Balbi in Katherine Rinne's Aquae Urbis Romae: The Waters of the City of Rome, an on-line cartographic history of nearly 2800 years of water infrastructure and urban development in Rome.
- Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project
- German Archaeological Institute
- Flickr images
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