Trajan's Column. The architecture on the sculpted frieze

Thanks to his studies on Dacian architecture Dinu Antonescu (1909 - 1998) takes a remarkable place among the historians of architecture in Romania. He made his studies in very unfavorable conditions. The scholarship at Romanian School in Rome (1937-1939) represents the only period of time during which he could totally dedicate himself to his researches. Being member of the first team which supervised the production of the casts moulded on the Column in Rome he complete the study on the representations from the Column frieze. Those are the starting point of the present study and the basis of his future works. After the Second World War he starts a university career but three years later he is excluded from university because of "hostile attitude towards the institutions of the state". As he was forced to carry on his professional activity solely in state design institutes and he did not have the possibility to perform systematic field study of the vestiges from Dacian sites the more his conclusions steel seems surprisingly to us even today. Except for short visits Dinu Antonescu did not have the possibility to perform systematic field study of the vestiges which he analysed. He was forced to direct his interpretations exclusively on the support offered by the existent archaeological bibliography, which was extremely lacunar in regard of the data specific to architecture. While the study he brought out in the volume "Introduction to the architecture of the Dacians" was published in 1984 his main study "Trajan's Column. The architecture on the sculpted frieze", started in Rome and completed till the end of his life has never been printed. Some fragments were included in volume "Introduction to the architecture of the Dacians" and in some other studies on Dacian architecture published in other publications. It is still the only study dedicated especially to the ensemble of architectural representations depicted on the sculpted frieze. One of the fundamental merits of this book is surely given by the deciphering on the frieze of the Column of the types and peculiarities of Dacian buildings.