Obelisks_of_Rome

List of obelisks in Rome

List of obelisks in Rome

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The city of Rome harbours thirteen ancient obelisks, the most in the world. There are eight ancient Egyptian and five ancient Roman obelisks in Rome, together with a number of more modern obelisks; there was also until 2005 an ancient Ethiopian obelisk in Rome.

19th century collage of the twelve obelisks in Rome at the time (the Dogali obelisk was found later). Note the photos of 10 and 11 are incorrectly swapped.
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The Romans used special heavy cargo carriers called obelisk ships to transport the monuments down the Nile[clarification needed] to Alexandria and from there across the Mediterranean Sea to Rome. On site, large Roman cranes were employed to erect the monoliths.

Ancient Egyptian obelisks

See also: List of Egyptian obelisks

At least eight obelisks created in antiquity by the Egyptians were taken from Egypt after the Roman conquest and brought to Rome.

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Ancient Roman obelisks

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At least five obelisks were manufactured in Egypt in the Roman period at the request of the wealthy Romans, or made in Rome as copies of ancient Egyptian originals.

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Obelisk of Axum

The Obelisk of Axum in Rome in 2002

There was also an Ethiopian obelisk in Rome, the Obelisk of Axum, 24 m, placed in the Piazza di Porta Capena. It had been taken from Axum by the Italian Army during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in 1937. It was struck by lightning in May 2002. After being restored, it was returned to Ethiopia in April 2005.

Modern obelisks

The Marconi obelisk, in the centre of the EUR district

There are five well-known modern obelisks in Rome:

Former locations of some obelisks

See also

Monoliths

Roman triumphal monuments

Notes

  1. [A 1]
    Supported on bronze lions and surmounted by the Chigi arms in bronze, in all 41 m to the cross on its top

References

  1. [1]
    "NOVA Online | Mysteries of the Nile | A World of Obelisks: Rome". PBS.
  2. [2]
    "Menhir's, Obelisks and Standing stones".
  3. [3]
    Touring Club Italiano, Roma e Dintorni.
  4. [4]
    Travels and Adventures, Chapter 3, Pero Tafur, digitized from The Broadway Travellers series, edited by Sir E. Denison Ross and Eileen Power, translated and edited with an introduction by Malcolm Letts (New York, London: Harper & brothers 1926):
    On the other side of it is a high tower made of one piece of stone, like a three-cornered diamond raised upon three brazen feet; and many, taking it for a holy thing, creep between the ground and the base of that tower. This was a work undertaken in honour of Julius Caesar and assigned for his burial, and on the top of it are three large gilt apples in which is the dust of the Emperor [sic] Julius Caesar, and certainly it is a noble edifice and marvellously ordered and very strange. It is called Caesar's needle, and in the middle and at the base, and even at the top, are a few ancient letters carved in the stone which now cannot well be read, but in fact they record that the body of Julius Caesar was buried there.
  5. [5]
    Pedro Tafur's Andanças (1874 edition) referenced in the Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, Joan Corominas, José Antonio Pascual, 1987, Editorial Gredos, Tome I, ISBN 84-249-1361-2, entry carnicol, page 880.
  6. [6]
    L'Italia. Roma (guida rossa), Touring Club Italiano, Milano 2004
  7. [7]
    Edward Chaney, "Roma Britannica and the Cultural Memory of Egypt: Lord Arundel and the Obelisk of Domitian", in Roma Britannica: Art Patronage and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Rome, eds. D. Marshall, K. Wolfe and S. Russell, British School at Rome, 2011, pp. 147-70.

Further reading

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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Obelisks_of_Rome, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.