I Viaggi del Professor Dressel

At the opening to the public of an ancient cistern inside the Trajan’s Market with a display of nearly 200 amphorae dating from the Roman imperial age, Hubstract has created an introductory video, in view of the entrance of the hall, and 5 panels disclosure of the entire construction.

The film has made extensive use of reconstructions of green screen and 3D modeling.

The video is a short film that tells the work of Heinrich Dressel, the epigraphist that in 1878 he was called to collect the inscriptions on a huge deposit of amphorae just found. Built between the warehouses of Museum of the Imperial Forums and the Viterbo studies.

In 1878, in Rome near Castro Pretorio, a worker of the Municipal Archaeological Commission holds the pick and hits the cobbled floor. From the darkness emerges a deposit of amphorae, intact. Is urgently called to gather evidence of the inscriptions on the findings, the epigraphist German Heinrich Dressel, Royal Academy of Berlin. The work is demanding: the amphorae are many and varied, and each has a specific story, to be deducted and imagining, interpreting the inscriptions. Dressel so begins a dialogue with the finding, questioning him as he was alive, in order to understand the story and contextualize the type. The spirits of the various amphorae, in turn, are immersed in the memories of a distant past but still lively. After the arduous search, Heinrich Dressel is able to develop a descriptive table, “Dressel Table”, thus inaugurating a new tradition of studies..

Today and always in Rome, in the Museum of the Imperial Forums to the Markets of Trajan, those same amphorae do their last journey, accompanied by new workers, towards the definitive museum exhibition: their stories continue to be heard by thousands of visitors.