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Orologio di Augusto

Historic site · Colonna, Italy

A buried Roman monument: a great trapezoidal travertine pavement marking the hours, the seasons, the months and the signs of the zodiac in gilt bronze letters, in the area running from Palazzo Montecitorio to the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina. Roma Capitale publishes two addresses for it in two different rioni — Via In Lucina 16/a in Colonna and Via di Campo Marzio 48 in Campo Marzio — so the monument spans the rione line. This guide carries the Colonna address and makes no claim on the Campo Marzio half.

History

Roma Capitale records that it was built in 10 BC, as the inscription at the base of the Montecitorio obelisk — originally its gnomon — records, and that it was positioned so that the gnomon's shadow fell towards the Ara Pacis on Augustus's birthday, 23 September. Excavation in a cellar on Via di Campo Marzio recovered part of the pavement, which Roma Capitale says is perhaps of a later Domitianic phase rather than the Augustan one, with four zodiac names legible in Greek — Virgo, Leo, Taurus and Aries — and the start of Summer. The part that has been recovered is the pavement in that cellar; the monument itself stays buried.

Visit

Via In Lucina 16/a, Roma RM

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