Il Thermopolium ostiense. Storia e restauro di un wine-bar di età imperiale

The Thermopolium in Via di Diana, in Ostia antica, is a building dating back to the 3rd century AD. Used as an inn for wine mixing, inside you can still recognize the serving counter, shelves and marble tubs for washing dishes and a particular still-life, which must have recalled the products served in the room. An internal courtyard, with a fountain and masonry seats, allowed the local patrons to consume outdoors. The guise in which it appears today owes much to the restoration carried out by Guido Calza and Italo Gismondi in the 1920s. Initially, for the restoration of the façade, a layer of plaster was envisaged, the drawings of which are still preserved. Starting from 1923, however, the new project – later implemented – established to leave the brick facing in sight, partly for philological reasons, but above all for a stylistic change dictated by the new propaganda language of the regime. The contribution intends to focus attention on the events of the 20th-century restoration that affected the Thermopolium and on today’s conservation issues, especially of the masonry palimpsest in sight.