Columns of San Lorenzo
About
These sixteen Corinthian columns were carved in the 2nd or 3rd century CE, decades after this snapshot, for a pagan temple or bath complex elsewhere in Mediolanum. Workers salvaged and re-erected them here in the 4th century to front the newly built Basilica of San Lorenzo, giving the church a monumental Roman colonnade it never originally had. They now form the best-known Roman-looking streetscape in modern Milan, along Corso di Porta Ticinese. Because the columns postdate 117 CE, they do not belong on a snapshot of that year.
What happened here
A single shaft, standing alone, carrying a statue or a story. The freestanding column is a Roman way of putting one thing above everything else in a crowded skyline, and where it is set matters as much as what is on it. Some carry a spiral relief read from the ground with difficulty and never meant to be read closely — the point is the sheer weight of narrative. Others carry a portrait, and the portrait is replaced when the politics change while the column stays. The drums are hollowed for an internal stair in the ambitious ones. At the base there is usually an inscription and, often enough, a burial. Around it, day to day, people sell things and arrange to meet.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →