General view of the Ara Pacis Augustae during restoration in the 1980s.
This image shows the Ara Pacis during the restoration work undertaken on it in the 1980s. It was during this campaign of cleaning that Peter Rockwell was able to inspect the monument close-up and it is from this period that the photos included in this database date. One of the major decisions that had to be made by the restorers in this period was whether or not to remove those details (such as noses) added to the monuments by earlier restorers, in the late nineteenth-century for example. In this case it was decided to leave most of these in place, deciding that they were part of the history of the monument, but in other cases such additions have been removed.
