Pyramid of Cestius & Porta San Paolo
Why is it significant?
Stand on the pavement and look up at the white pyramid, sharp and gleaming against the sky, wedged into a stretch of ancient brick wall. It looks like a mistake, like a piece of Egypt dropped into Rome by accident. In fact it is one of the best-preserved monuments of the age of Augustus.
Key Facts
| Place | Pyramid of Cestius & Porta San Paolo |
|---|---|
| Address | Piazzale Ostiense, 00153 Roma RM, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.87660, 12.48110 |
| Part of Walk | The Keyhole and the Amphora Hill: Aventine Secrets & Testaccio's Roman Soul |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand on the pavement and look up at the white pyramid, sharp and gleaming against the sky, wedged into a stretch of ancient brick wall. It looks like a mistake, like a piece of Egypt dropped into Rome by accident. In fact it is one of the best-preserved monuments of the age of Augustus.
After Rome conquered Egypt in 30 BC, the city went mad for everything Egyptian: obelisks, sphinxes, gods... and pyramids. A wealthy magistrate named Gaius Cestius decided he wanted one for his tomb. The inscription tells us he was a member of the college of priests who organised the banquets for the gods, and that the pyramid was completed in three hundred and thirty days. It is about thirty-six metres high, brick and concrete clad in white marble. Rome once had at least one other pyramid, near the Vatican. It was demolished.
This one survived because of a wall. Around 270, the emperor Aurelian, fearing barbarian invasions, ringed the city with new walls, and his builders saved time by using existing structures. The pyramid became part of the defences. Next to it rises the gate the Romans called Porta Ostiensis, today Porta San Paolo, where the road left for the port of Ostia and for the basilica of Saint Paul.
Look for the plaques on the gate. On the tenth of September 1943, just after Italy's armistice, German troops advanced on Rome. Here, around this gate, Italian soldiers and ordinary citizens, some of them almost unarmed, fought to stop them. They lost, and the city was occupied for nine months, but Romans remember this as the first battle of the Resistance.
The pyramid's marble had turned black with soot by the end of the twentieth century. It was cleaned between 2013 and 2015, paid for by a Japanese businessman who loved Rome, and now it shines as Cestius intended. And the walk ends here: from the hill of the knights to the tomb of a man who just wanted to be remembered. Two thousand years later... he is.