Description
The Mausoleum of Caecilia Metella is a Roman tomb in the shape of a round tower, on the Via Appia Antica, in Rome. The travertine cylinder, about 30 meters wide, has dominated the road for two thousand years, and is one of the best-known monuments on the Appia.
We know almost nothing about her. The inscription says she was the daughter of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus, the conqueror of Crete, and the wife of a Crassus, perhaps the son of the man who put down the revolt of Spartacus. The mausoleum celebrated the family more than her.
The monument dates from the second half of the first century BC. It rests on a square base and has a drum of travertine blocks, 39 meters high with its battlements. It probably ended in a small dome, now gone.
High up runs a frieze of festoons and ox skulls. From those bucrania the area took in the Middle Ages the name Capo di Bove, “Ox Head.” Lower down is the inscription, accompanied by war scenes.
The burial chamber, which takes up the whole height of the building, is reached by a corridor opened in the base. The furnishings are gone: a sarcophagus taken to Palazzo Farnese was attributed to Caecilia, but may have belonged to another woman.
It is not clear what inspired a round tomb: perhaps Hellenistic mausolea, perhaps Etruscan tholoi. Similar buildings went up in those years in Sepino, Gubbio, Pompeii and other cities.
In the Middle Ages the tomb changed jobs. In the late thirteenth century the Caetani, the family of Pope Boniface VIII, turned it into the tower of a castle straddling the Appia, with other towers, a village and a church dedicated to St. Nicholas of Bari.
The battlements too were raised in those years. The castle then passed to the Savelli, the Orsini, the Colonna, the Cenci and finally, with the surrounding lands, to the Torlonia.
Don't miss the Castrum Caetani, the fortified village that extends beside the mausoleum: its walls and the structure of the church of San Nicola, well restored, remain.
We know almost nothing about her. The inscription says she was the daughter of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus, the conqueror of Crete, and the wife of a Crassus, perhaps the son of the man who put down the revolt of Spartacus. The mausoleum celebrated the family more than her.
The monument dates from the second half of the first century BC. It rests on a square base and has a drum of travertine blocks, 39 meters high with its battlements. It probably ended in a small dome, now gone.
High up runs a frieze of festoons and ox skulls. From those bucrania the area took in the Middle Ages the name Capo di Bove, “Ox Head.” Lower down is the inscription, accompanied by war scenes.
The burial chamber, which takes up the whole height of the building, is reached by a corridor opened in the base. The furnishings are gone: a sarcophagus taken to Palazzo Farnese was attributed to Caecilia, but may have belonged to another woman.
It is not clear what inspired a round tomb: perhaps Hellenistic mausolea, perhaps Etruscan tholoi. Similar buildings went up in those years in Sepino, Gubbio, Pompeii and other cities.
In the Middle Ages the tomb changed jobs. In the late thirteenth century the Caetani, the family of Pope Boniface VIII, turned it into the tower of a castle straddling the Appia, with other towers, a village and a church dedicated to St. Nicholas of Bari.
The battlements too were raised in those years. The castle then passed to the Savelli, the Orsini, the Colonna, the Cenci and finally, with the surrounding lands, to the Torlonia.
Don't miss the Castrum Caetani, the fortified village that extends beside the mausoleum: its walls and the structure of the church of San Nicola, well restored, remain.