Photo: Carole Raddato, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Mausoleum of the Julii

Mausoleum Iuliorum

MausoleumGallia Narbonensis · Saint-Remy-de-Provence, FranceBuilt 25 BCE

About

A local Gallo-Roman family called the Julii built this three-tiered tomb outside Glanum around 30-20 BCE to honor their father and grandfather. A square base carved with battle and hunt scenes supports a miniature triumphal arch, topped by a round temple sheltering two standing statues of the deceased. It stands roughly 18 meters tall and counts among the best-preserved Roman funerary monuments anywhere. Paired with a nearby arch, the site is still known locally as Les Antiques.

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

CIL, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XII 1012
The mausoleum carries its own dedicatory inscription naming Sextus, Lucius, and Marcus Julius as the sons who raised the tomb to their forebears.