Mar 18, 2026

SoA faculty member Anthony Buccellato presented his paper “San Clemente and the Pedagogy of Section” on Mar. 13 at Les Leçons de Rome, 9e édition, in Lyon, France.

The paper framed the Basilica of San Clemente as a conceptual tool for teaching students to read Rome as a layered and continuously reworked city. Emerging from Buccellato’s teaching in Undergraduate Architecture’s Rome program, the research challenges plan-first approaches to teaching the city and positions San Clemente as a key site for demonstrating the necessity of section in understanding Rome as a stratified palimpsest.

A sketched illustration of the Basilica di San Clemente, divided into four sections. The top section depicts the medieval basilica with labeled features. The second section shows the 4th-century church with arches and frescoes. The third section illustrates the 1st-century level with remnants of a temple and cave-like structure. The bottom section represents a natural spring, noted for its sacred presence and flowing water, surrounded by vegetation and a visible underground stream.
Student sketch by Ariana Castro Vittor (BArch ’27) of the Basilica of San Clemente in Rome, shown as a layered sectional drawing stacking the 12th-century basilica, the 4th-century church, the 1st-century Mithraeum, and an underground spring.

The presentation also featured student work produced through site visits to San Clemente, including a drawing by Ariana Castro Vittor (BArch ’27), which translated that inquiry into a visual study of the site’s stacked historical layers, from basilica to Mithraeum to subterranean water.