Obelisco Flaminio

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Obelisco Flaminio in the center of Piazza del Popolo
Obelisk in Piazza del Popolo

The Obelisco Flaminio is an Egyptian obelisk in the center of the Piazza del Popolo in Rome .

description

It is 23.9 meters high (with base and cross 36.50 meters) and thus the second highest after the obelisk on the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano . He is surrounded by four Egyptian-style lions. The obelisk was started by Seti I and completed by Ramses II . In Heliopolis .

Augustus brought it around 10 BC. To Rome and had it set up on the spine of the Circus Maximus . There he stood until the early Middle Ages. At some point it fell over and was covered by rubble, earth and rubbish. In 1471 he was discovered by Leon Battista Alberti , but then forgotten again. In 1589 Pope Sixtus V had the obelisk moved to its current location and erected there by his architect Domenico Fontana . At the top he had his coat of arms, three mountains crowned by a star, placed. This coat of arms can also be found on the obelisks in front of the Lateran and on St. Peter's Square . Giuseppe Valadier then, when redesigning the square at the beginning of the 19th century, created the fountain with Egyptian figures that now surrounds the obelisk.

The ancient dedicatory inscription is identical to that of the obelisk in Piazza Montecitorio , the second obelisk that Augustus brought to Rome. Three pages of the hieroglyphic text come from Seti I, the fourth from his son Ramses II. It is an invocation of the god Horus , in which it is also mentioned that Seti set up the obelisk in Anu (Heliopolis).

Two sides of the base still show the dedicatory inscription from the years 10/9 BC. BC, which indicates that Emperor Augustus gave the obelisk as a gift to the sun after Egypt was brought into the power of the Roman people.

See also

literature

  • Klaus Bartels : Rome's speaking stones. 2nd edition, von Zabern, Mainz 2001, ISBN 3-8053-2690-4 .
  • Ernst Batta: Obelisks. Egyptian obelisks and their history in Rome. Insel, Frankfurt a. M. 1986, ISBN 3-458-32465-8 (Insel-Taschenbuch, 765).
  • Richard Hillinger, Christian E. Loeben: Obelisks. Heliopolis, Luxor, Cairo, Byblos, Rome, Benevento, Istanbul, Urbino, Florence, Kingston Lacy, Munich, Paris, Durham, London, New York, Berlin. Exhibition in the Italian hall of the Landshut city residence from 23.5. until 2.6.1992. City of Landshut, Landshut 1992, ISBN 3-927612-06-5 .
  • Reinhard Raffalt : Concerto Romano. Prestel, Munich 1955; 14th edition 1999, ISBN 3-7913-2236-2 .
  • Eckart Peterich : Rome. 2nd edition, Prestel, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-7913-2043-2 .
  • Samuel Ball Platner, Thomas Ashby: A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Oxford University Press, London 1929, pp. 366-371 ( online ).
  • Cesare D'Onofrio: Gli obelischi di Roma. Rome 1967

Web links

Commons : Obelisco Flaminio  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Bartels , in Freiburger Universitätsblätter Heft 163, 43rd year (2004): Rome's speaking stones: A walk over the seven hills and through two millennia (p. 32 f.)

Coordinates: 41 ° 54 ′ 38.6 "  N , 12 ° 28 ′ 34.8"  E