The spiral frieze
Two hundred metres of continuous carving with over two thousand figures โ the key pictorial record of the Roman army.
Alvesgaspar โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Jebulon โ CC0 ยท Stefano Lovato from Bologna, Italia โ CC BY 2.0 ยท Stefano Lovato from Bologna, Italia โ CC BY 2.0
Not on the column itself. But full plaster casts of the frieze are displayed at eye level in Roman museum collections โ the only way to actually read it.
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A thirty-metre marble column raised in AD 113, wrapped in a carved frieze that would run two hundred metres if unrolled โ a continuous illustrated account of Trajan's Dacian wars (modern Romania) with more than two thousand figures. That frieze is the single most important visual document of the Roman army in existence: from it historians know how armour and helmets looked, how bridges and camps were built, how soldiers marched. What survives of our picture of military Rome largely comes from this stone. Trajan's ashes were buried in its base โ he was the only emperor allowed burial inside the sacred boundary of the city. A statue of St Peter has stood on top since 1587, placed by order of Pope Sixtus V in place of the lost original of Trajan. It is viewed free from the pavement and the Via dei Fori Imperiali railing at any hour, and cannot be climbed. Bring a zoom lens if you want to read the upper scenes.
Two hundred metres of continuous carving with over two thousand figures โ the key pictorial record of the Roman army.
Trajan's ashes were interred in the pedestal โ the sole exception to the ban on burial inside the city.
Trajan's Forum, Via dei Fori Imperiali, Rome
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