This paper analyzes the reuse of ancient tuff blocks in early medieval architecture in Rome, in both papal and private structures. The blocks are a well-known phenomenon, but they have not yet received any focused study. Short discussions in earlier scholarship have typically described them in utilitarian terms. I first identify a pattern of targeted reuse in papal building projects. I then argue that they would also have had symbolic value for an independent papacy wanting to display power. For later private builders, I propose that the blocks became prestige materials displayed on the houses of an ever-tightening aristocracy eager to be seen within some of the city's most important monumental spaces. I consider how the city's ancient monuments and their pieces were viewed in the early medieval period and how the blocks’ ancient contexts contributed to the symbolic value that I identify in them.
