Tomb of Caecilia Metella: The Castle of the Ox Heads
Why is it significant?
Stand before the massive drum of travertine on its square base, nearly thirty metres across, with a frieze of ox skulls and garlands running round the top and medieval battlements perched on it like a crown that doesn't quite fit.
Key Facts
| Place | Tomb of Caecilia Metella: The Castle of the Ox Heads |
|---|---|
| Address | Via Appia Antica 161, 00178 Roma RM, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.85220, 12.52090 |
| Part of Walk | Queen of Roads: Rome's Appian Way from the Baths of Caracalla to the Catacombs |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand before the massive drum of travertine on its square base, nearly thirty metres across, with a frieze of ox skulls and garlands running round the top and medieval battlements perched on it like a crown that doesn't quite fit. It is the most photographed tomb on the Appian Way, and the most theatrical.
It was built in the last decades BC for a woman: Caecilia Metella, daughter of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus, the general who conquered Crete, and wife of a Crassus, most likely a son of Marcus Crassus, the richest man in Rome and Julius Caesar's partner. Of her life we know almost nothing. No deeds, no portrait, no age. Only her name in marble on the side facing the road, and the biggest tomb in the neighbourhood.
Those carved ox heads gave the whole area its medieval name, Capo di Bove, ox head. In the early 1300s the Caetani, the family of Pope Boniface the Eighth, turned the tomb into the keep of a fortress, added a palace and a Gothic church across the road, and charged tolls on everyone using the Appia. The roofless ruins of their church of San Nicola still stand opposite.
Lord Byron came here in 1817 and wrote a string of stanzas in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage about this stern round tower, wondering who the woman inside had been, whether she was loved, whether she died young. Generals, popes, poets... all of them came to stare at the grave of a woman about whom history forgot to write a single line.
From here the Appian Way runs on, almost straight, between pines and broken tombs, towards the Alban Hills and, more than five hundred kilometres away, Brindisi. You have walked from an emperor's baths to a Roman lady's tomb, past apostles, popes, martyrs and a forgotten racetrack. Take a last long look down the Queen of Roads... for centuries, travellers coming to Rome from the south passed this very tower, and knew the city was close.