Museum of the Ara Pacis Historical Timeline

Last updated on September 29, 2026

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An altar with two recorded dates, a long disappearance, and a reassembly that changed which way it faces.

Chronology

4 July 13 B.C. — the Roman Senate commissions the monument to honour Augustus's return to Rome after three years in Hispania and Gaul. Structural impact: the altar is conceived as a public, senatorial act rather than a personal commission. What you see today: the reason the friezes are a state ceremony and not a portrait — the Senate is the patron.
30 January 9 B.C. — the altar is consecrated. Structural impact: completion, a little over three years after the commission. What you see today: the dedication ceremony itself is what the processional friezes depict.
Augustan period — the precinct walls are carved in Luna marble, the interior wall hung with bucrania and garlands and its lower part cut to imitate wooden planks. Structural impact: the monument is tied visually to the older altars placed at the boundaries of Rome's pomerium. What you see today: the plank pattern on the inside face, easily read as decoration and actually a claim to ancestral practice — the outer lower register is the acanthus frieze instead.
1568 — the first fragments of the Ara Pacis come to light beneath the Palazzo Peretti in Lucina and are dispersed to the Villa Medici, the Vatican, the Uffizi and the Louvre. Structural impact: the monument enters the modern record as scattered sculpture rather than as a building. What you see today: Ara Pacis fragments still held in the Villa Medici, the Vatican, the Uffizi and the Louvre, away from the monument.
1938 — the monument is reassembled in its current location, turned 90 degrees counterclockwise from its original orientation, with missing portions newly designed. Structural impact: the altar is reconstructed as a museum object in a new setting, and its compass orientation is permanently changed. What you see today: the entrance front, originally the west side, now facing south across the Lungotevere.
2006 — Richard Meier's pavilion replaces the 1938 shelter on the same site. Structural impact: a far larger glass and steel enclosure, divided into several rooms around the altar hall. What you see today: the building you approach from the Lungotevere, and an argument about it that is still running.

Verified against Wikipedia, September 2026.

External Resources

Sources & verification Covers the sourced claims on this page.

Checked against Wikipedia — The Ara Pacis Augustae is an altar in Rome dedicated to the Pax Romana, commissioned by the Roman Senate on 4 July 13 BC to honour the return of Augustus to Rome after three years in Hispania and Gaul and consecrated on 30 January 9 BC, Originally on the northern outskirts of Rome in the northeastern corner of the Campus Martius, the altar became buried under 4 metres of silt deposits and was reassembled in its current location in 1938, turned 90 degrees counterclockwise from its original orientation so that the original western side now faces south, The interior walls of the precinct carry a frieze of bucrania alternating with garlands of fruit and flowers, and the lower part of the interior wall is carved to imitate wooden planks, connecting the monument to earlier altars traditionally placed at the boundaries of Rome’s pomerium and reinforcing its link to ancestral ritual practices, The exterior decoration is divided into a lower register containing the vegetal frieze, a continuous frieze of acanthus scrolls filled with animals, birds, insects and mythological creatures often read as symbols of growth and abundance, and an upper register carrying the processional and mythological panels, Fragmentary sculptures from the Ara Pacis were first rediscovered in 1568 when portions of the frieze were uncovered beneath the Palazzo Peretti in Lucina near the basilica San Lorenzo in Lucina and the modern Via del Corso, and many of these early finds were eventually moved to collections such as the Villa Medici, the Vatican, the Uffizi and the Louvre, with further fragments found in 1859 beneath the Teatro Olimpia, Because the reconstruction had to be completed by 23 September 1938 and only limited ancient material and documentation survived, primarily a few Roman coins, the project required significant artist intervention, and the Italian artist Odoardo Ferretti assisted in designing the missing portions so the fragments could be assembled into the monument’s modern form, The Fascist-era building around the altar, known locally as the teca del Morpurgo, was pulled down in 2006 and replaced by a glass and steel structure in modern style designed by Richard Meier, standing on the same site as Mussolini’s structure, much bigger than the previous one and divided into multiple rooms and sections besides the main one containing the altar (September 2026).

Museum of the Ara Pacis Historical Timeline

Chronology

External Resources

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