Montecitorio Obelisk: The Hand of Augustus's Sundial
Why is it significant?
Face the front of Palazzo Montecitorio, home of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, a palace begun by Bernini, and in front of it a tall needle of red granite topped with a bronze globe. This obelisk was once the hand of the biggest clock Rome ever built.
Key Facts
| Place | Montecitorio Obelisk: The Hand of Augustus's Sundial |
|---|---|
| Address | Piazza di Montecitorio, 00186 Roma RM, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.90070, 12.47870 |
| Part of Walk | Emperors Underfoot: Augustus and the Buried Campus Martius of Rome |
| Generated | Generated |
Face the front of Palazzo Montecitorio, home of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, a palace begun by Bernini, and in front of it a tall needle of red granite topped with a bronze globe. This obelisk was once the hand of the biggest clock Rome ever built.
It was carved for the pharaoh Psamtik the Second in the 6th century BC and stood in Heliopolis, the city of the sun. Augustus brought it to Rome around 10 BC, together with the obelisk that now stands in Piazza del Popolo. The inscription he added to its base dedicates it to the Sun, as a gift, because Egypt had been brought under the power of the Roman people.
He set it up on the Campus Martius, a short way north of here, as the pointer of a gigantic sundial, or more precisely a meridian: a long line of bronze set into travertine paving, marking the length of the noon shadow through the year. Pliny the Elder tells us a mathematician called Novius Facundus designed it and put a gilded ball on the tip, so the shadow would end in a sharp point. Then Pliny adds, a little smugly, that by his own day the readings had been wrong for some thirty years. Perhaps the ground had settled, perhaps the Tiber's floods had shifted the foundations.
A famous theory by the German archaeologist Edmund Buchner claimed that on Augustus's birthday, 23 September, the shadow pointed straight toward the Altar of Peace. It is a beautiful idea, and still fiercely debated. What is certain is that Augustus wanted the sun and the calendar themselves to seem to turn around him.
The obelisk fell, broke and vanished under houses. It was dug out in 1748, in pieces, and in 1792 Pope Pius the Sixth had it repaired, partly with granite taken from another ruined monument, the column of Antoninus Pius, and raised here, where Italy's laws are now debated. Walk north through Piazza del Parlamento and on to the calm square of San Lorenzo in Lucina, where part of the sundial itself still lies in the dark.