The jewel of Roman heritage reopens its doors
Still imposing after 2,000 years, a vast funerary monument that was once the resting place of Rome’s emperors is to reopen to visitors today after a five-year restoration.
It cost €12million (£10.4million) to restore the Mausoleum of Augustus, a fortress-like tomb for one of the greatest Roman emperors and his successors.
It is a place that, despite being right in the heart of the capital and just a stone’s throw from busy shopping streets, restaurants and hotels, has rarely been open to Romans during the last 80 years.
Benito Mussolini embarked on a project to return it to its glory days in the 1930s, wielding a pickaxe to demolish the first of 120 medieval buildings that crowded around the monument.
But the project was interrupted by the war in 1942 and Il Duce’s dreams of being buried in the mausoleum as a modern-day emperor came to an inglorious end when he was killed by partisans. The mausoleum fell into disrepair.
It has been revived with the help of an €8million donation from TIM, an Italian telecommunications firm, with the rest of the money provided by the city of Rome.
“Finally, the mausoleum is reopening and we are restoring to the world a jewel of humanity’s heritage after many years of closure,” said
Virginia Raggi, the mayor of Rome. “Rome needs to make the most of its past in order to look to the future.”
The restoration should be “an important symbol for the recovery of not just the city but the whole country [following the pandemic]”, she said.
A tall entrance leads into the monument, which consists of concentric corridors around a central cylindrical structure where the remains of Augustus and his successors, including Tiberius, Claudius and Caligula, were kept. The outer walls of the monument are high, but they were once twice as impressive, reaching nearly 150ft. On top stood a huge bronze statue of Augustus, now long gone.
Vast slabs of marble litter the inner courtyard, the remains of the cladding that once adorned the 300ft-diameter monument. Engineers carried out massive structural consolidation work, stabilising the walls and covering them with a protective layer of “pignoccata”, a special mortar mix. Iron girders and steel rods were used to reinforce vaulted ceilings.
Augustus began the construction in 28BC following his victory in the Battle of Actium in 31BC. “Augustus used architecture as a statement of political power. He built a huge bath complex and the Pantheon, but the mausoleum was the biggest project of all,” Tania Renzi, a historian, told The Daily Telegraph.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, it was converted into a fortress by the Colonna family of Rome, then became a palazzo for a Florentine banker.
In the 18th century, it was used as an arena for bullfighting. There are also the remains of marble urinals, a legacy of the early 20th century, when the mausoleum was turned into a 3,000seat concert hall.