Ethos

Tours and activities shown above earn Ethos a commission at no extra cost to you.

Obelisco Mattejano (Obelisco Capitolino)

Historic site · Celio, Italy

An Egyptian obelisk standing in the garden of Villa Celimontana, the twin of the one on piazza della Rotonda. Roma Capitale gives the original height as about 7 metres, of which only the upper section of about 3 metres survives; the lower part was never recovered. It is crowned by a bronze ball said by some to have held the ashes of Octavian.

History

The surviving upper section carries hieroglyphs naming Ramesses II and came from Heliopolis. It stood on the Campidoglio beside the stair to the convent of Santa Maria in Aracoeli before Ciriaco Mattei obtained it from the Comune and set it in his villa, where it stands in the garden. Roma Capitale records that on the Campidoglio four lions at the corners of the base supported the shaft, that the obelisk fell and was carried off and forgotten, and that Ciriaco Mattei found it again at the end of the 1500s. His heirs left villa and obelisk neglected, and the next owner, Manuel de Godoy, formerly Spanish first minister in the Napoleonic period, saw to its conservation.

Visit

More in Celio