Ara Pacis Museum

This guide to the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome follows the Altar of Augustan Peace from its dedication in 9 BC through burial by Tiber floods, its rediscovery in fragments scattered across European museums, and Mussolini's 1937 race to reassemble it in time for Augustus's two-thousandth birthday. You'll hear about the engineers who froze the ground beneath a Rome cinema to extract it intact. Look closely at the south frieze showing Augustus and his family in procession.