18th-century engraved view of the Mausoleum of Hadrian (Castel Sant'Angelo) · Wikimedia Commons

Mausoleum of Hadrian (future Castel Sant'Angelo)

Mausoleum Hadriani

MausoleumItalia · Rome, Italy, right bank of the TiberBuilt 123 CE

Not standing in 117 CE

About

In August 117 CE this is open ground on the right bank of the Tiber, across the river from the Campus Martius, and nothing has been built on it. The tomb that will stand here is Hadrian's, and he becomes emperor in the same month this map is set — acclaimed within days of Trajan's death on 8 August. Brick stamps put the start of building no earlier than 123 CE, and the drum was finished and the mausoleum dedicated only in 139, a year after Hadrian himself died. It is marked here because the reign it belongs to begins at the snapshot.

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.