Turris Scipionum
About
A three-tiered funerary tower rose beside the Via Augusta six kilometers from Tarraco, built in the early 1st century CE for a family that owned the surrounding land. Two carved figures on its face were mistaken for the Scipio brothers by writers from the 15th to 19th centuries, giving the tower its lasting name even though the real Scipios died a century earlier. Twentieth-century research settled the dating and cleared up the misidentification. It ranks among the best-preserved Roman funerary towers on the Iberian Peninsula.
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 →