Mausoleum Augusti
About
Vast circular tomb (90 m diameter, c. 42 m tall) built by Augustus in 28 BCE in the northern Campus Martius as the dynastic tomb for himself and the Julio-Claudian family, planted with cypresses and topped by his statue. Standing and receiving imperial burials (it remained the resting place of the Julio-Claudians and was still an active monument, though Trajan himself was interred instead at the base of his own Column) in 117 CE.
What happened here
The tomb is built where the traffic is: on the road out of town, facing the carriageway, close enough to read at walking pace. That is the design brief. Inside there may be a single chamber for one family or niches for dozens, with cremation urns or, increasingly, bodies laid out. Outside there is a portrait, an inscription giving the dead their offices and their years, and often a bench, because visitors come back. The family returns on the anniversary and at the February festival of the dead, brings wine and food, and eats a meal at the graveside. Endowments are left to keep it up and lawsuits follow when they are not honoured. A grand tomb is the last public building a family gets to commission.
In ancient writing
- Strabo, Geography 5.3.8
A great mound on a high white marble base by the river, planted to the top with evergreens, a bronze Augustus on the summit and the burial chambers below.
- Suetonius, Divus Augustus 100.4
Records that Augustus built it between the Via Flaminia and the Tiber bank in his sixth consulship, and opened the surrounding groves to the public.
Sources
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 →