Sepulcrum Caeciliae Metellae
About
A soaring drum-shaped tomb raised at the third milestone of the Appian Way for Caecilia Metella, daughter-in-law of the general who crushed Spartacus. Its 20-meter cylinder of travertine once carried a marble frieze of ox skulls and garlands, giving the road below the nickname Capo di Bove. Sitting on a square base of solid concrete, it was built to be seen from far down the road toward Rome. By 117 CE it had already loomed over Appian traffic for close to a century.
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.
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 →