GENERAL DESCRIPTION
CLOSED FOR RESTORATIONS
In 28 BC Augustus erected a monumental tomb for himself and his descendants in the northern part of the Campus Martius. The site was chosen for its strong values ??and political propaganda. The plain of Campo Marzio, located between the Capitol, the Tiber, outside the Pincio and Quirinal pomerio, the sacred boundary of Rome that the army could not cross in weapons, derives its name from the Altar of Mars, altar connected to their military prowess of God, and according to tradition was the property of Tarquini, who, after the famous banished from Rome, he was taken to the benefit of the people romano.Il Campo Marzio hosted many important buildings in the Republican era, but it is only with Augustus, who suffers a total renewal. The princeps poses a particular care in landscaping of the central area and one to the north: remember the Theatre of Marcellus, the Baths of Agrippa, the Pantheon, the Saepta, the Ara Pacis and the Mausoleum of course.
The first to be buried was the nephew Marcellus, who died in 23 BC, followed Agrippa, Octavia, Druze, and after Augustus, Caligula, Claudius, British, Nerva and Vespasian. Nerone was excluded. In the Middle Ages the tomb was occupied by the fortress of the Colonna, then underwent numerous devastations, until in 1939 he was released from the houses that were huddled.
The mausoleum has a circular with a diameter of 87 meters and is composed of a series of five concentric rings with radial walls that form the backbone. The exterior of the mausoleum was covered with travertine to a height of 12 meters and a Doric frieze. Front of the building stood two Egyptian obelisks (now placed one in the square of the Esquiline and the other in Piazza del Quirinale), the door was flanked by bronze tablets containing the Res Gestae Divi Augustae, a sort of summary of the exploits of the princeps. The monument was bordered by a hedge of cypresses.
You enter the monument for a tunnel that leads to a wall in radial cross-section whose sides are two steps leading to the burial chamber. The cell is circular with three recesses at the sides, and is surrounded by an annular corridor. At the center of the cell stands a large pillar inside a small square room, the tomb of Augustus real. On top of the pillar, outside, and in direct relation to the tomb, it was a bronze statue of Augustus, who pointed away from the location of the mausoleum. |