After the resounding success of Alessandro Haber’s performance at the Palatine Museum, “Songs of stone” continues with a cycle of poetry readings dedicated entirely to the Roman Forum.

We’re kicking things off on Saturday 5 December: starting at 21:00 on the Parco archeologico del Colosseo Facebook page and YouTube channel, Michele Placido will read several poems by the writer and poet Gabriele Tinti inspired by the statuary once present in the Portico Dii Consentes (Portico of the Harmonious Gods) in the Roman Forum, on the slopes of the Campidoglio.

The Portico, once a place of worship, is situated beside the aedes Divi Vespasiani along the clivus Capitolinus, on the other side of which stands the monumental Temple of Saturn. The building, heavily reconstructed in the 19^th century, was identified thanks to a late inscription present on its architrave. Inside the monument, the simulacra of the Harmonious Gods were kept. The Dii Consentes are the twelve deities of the Roman pantheon, six male and six female, organized in couples: Jupiter-Juno; Neptune-Minerva; Mars-Venus; Apollo-Diana; Vulcan-Vesta; Mercury-Ceres. Their cult in the Forum is documented in the 1^st century BC by Varro, who mentions the gilded statues of the gods. The etymology seems to derive from the Latin verbs consentio or conso, which respectively mean “to agree” and “to deliberate”.

The poetry penned by Tinti and read by Placido will evoke some of those sculptures once present in the Portico.