Mausoleum of Augustus

Stand at the edge of the piazza and look down. The modern pavement stops at a railing, and below it the ground drops away into a wide, round hollow of brick and pale stone. The city sits several metres above this old floor. Traffic moves along the Tiber nearby. Pigeons settle on the curved walls. What you are looking at is the tomb of the first Roman emperor, a man who ruled an empire from Spain to Syria.

The man was Augustus. He was born Gaius Octavius, and he became the adopted heir of Julius Caesar. In 31 BCE he defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the naval battle of Actium. Soon after, while he was still in his early thirties, he began to build this tomb. Construction is usually dated to around 28 BCE. That timing is important. A young ruler was building his own grave decades before he needed it.

Why so early? Historians often read it as a political message. Antony had reportedly asked to be buried in Alexandria, beside Cleopatra. Romans saw that wish as a betrayal of Rome. Augustus answered with stone. His tomb would stand in the heart of Rome, in the open field called the Campus Martius, the Field of Mars. The message was simple: this man belonged to Rome, and Rome belonged to him.

The word mausoleum comes from Mausolus, a ruler in what is now southwestern Turkey. His enormous tomb was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Augustus borrowed the idea of a grand royal tomb, but the shape here follows an older Italian tradition. The Etruscans, the people who lived in central Italy before Rome's rise, buried their nobles under round earth mounds. This monument is that same mound, made much larger.

And it was large. The circle measures nearly ninety metres across, and it is often called the largest circular tomb of the ancient Roman world. Look at the walls in front of you. They are built in rings, one inside the next, like the layers of an onion. Between the rings, builders packed earth and rubble. The outer face was once covered in bright white stone. What you see now is the core, without its shining skin.

The Greek geographer Strabo saw the tomb in its early years and described it. He wrote of a high mound on a base of white marble. Evergreen trees covered it to the very top. A bronze statue of Augustus stood on the summit. Behind the tomb, he said, there were groves and walkways. Try to picture it here: a green hill above the river, crowned with a gleaming emperor.

Now for a surprise. The first person buried here was not Augustus. It was his young nephew Marcellus, who died in 23 BCE. Augustus had treated him as a likely heir. Over the following decades, the tomb received many members of the family, including his close friend and general Agrippa. One person was deliberately kept out. Augustus excluded his own daughter Julia, whom he had sent into exile. Even in death, the emperor decided who belonged.

Augustus himself died in 14 CE and his ashes were placed inside. At the entrance stood two bronze pillars. On them was his own account of his life and achievements, known in Latin as the Res Gestae, meaning things done. Those bronze pillars are gone. But copies of the text were carved in other cities of the empire. The best surviving copy is in Ankara, in Turkey. You can also read the full text on the wall of the Ara Pacis museum next door.

Two Egyptian-style obelisks once stood beside the entrance. They have not disappeared. Centuries later, popes moved them to new places in the city. One now stands near the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. The other stands on the Quirinal Hill, outside the presidential palace. So when you walk across Rome, you may pass pieces of this tomb without knowing it. The city has always recycled its past.

After the fall of the empire, the tomb lived many strange lives. In the Middle Ages, the powerful Colonna family turned it into a fortress. Later it became a private garden. In the eighteenth century it served as an open-air arena for bull games and public shows. Fireworks rose from it. Then, in the early twentieth century, it became a concert hall called the Augusteo. Orchestras played inside the emperor's grave for nearly three decades.

The square around you tells the next chapter. In the 1930s, Mussolini's government wanted to present itself as the heir of ancient Rome. Workers demolished the concert hall and many old houses that pressed against the tomb. The piazza was rebuilt with severe, pale buildings. Look at their facades. You can still see Latin inscriptions and mosaic panels from that period. The ancient ruin and the fascist architecture now stand face to face.

For many years after that, the mausoleum was closed. Weeds grew on the walls, and Romans walked past a fenced, neglected ring. A long restoration followed, and the tomb opened again to visitors in 2021. Today, walkways lead you through the inner rings, into narrow corridors and up toward the central chamber. The air feels cooler inside. The brickwork is close enough to study, with its patches and repairs from two thousand years of use.

Before you leave, stand at the railing once more. Notice how far the old ground sits below the modern street. That difference is the slow work of centuries: floods, rubble, new buildings on old foundations. Across the piazza, the glass pavilion of the Ara Pacis shines in the light. Behind you, cars and scooters pass without slowing. Augustus planned this tomb to last forever. It has, in its way, though not in the form he imagined.