Obelisco di Montecitorio Rome travel tips - hotels, photos and maps

The situated obelisk in square Montecitorio is one of the obelisks of Rome . Originally realized to the period of the faraone Psammetico TWO (595-589 a.C.), was placed in the town of Heliopolis in Egypt . It was carried in Rome in 10 DC from Augusto, together to the obelisk Flamino, and placed like gnomone of the clock of Augusto in Field Marzio. The large meridian, I yield some intelligence of the mathematical Facondio Novo, was mail to the center of a surface of 160 x 75 meters, constituted from slabs of travertine, on which a quadrant with letters was drawn bronzee, with the indication of the hours, of the months, of the seasons and of the zodiacal marks. Beyond to perform its solar function of clock, the obelisk was orientated in such manner to project its shadow on the not distant Ara 23 September Pacis, day of the dies natalis of the emperor and coinciding with the autumnal equinox.

The enrolment mail on two sides of the base of the obelisk is the following one: Imp. Caesar stars fil. / Augustus / pontifex maximus / imp. XII cos XI trib pot XIV / Aegypto in potestatem / Roman populi redacta / alone donum dedit. A detailed description, that allows to know the typology, the appearance and the formal procedure of operation of the imposing solar meridian, is supplied from the historical Plinio the old one, in its Naturalis Historia XXXVI, 72-73.

Between the IX and the xi century, likely because of a fire either of an earthquake (perhaps for the earthquake of the 849) or during the siege of Rome of 1084 aside of Roberto the Guiscardo, the obelisk collapsed and, subsequently, itself interrò. Pope Sixtus V (1520-1590) fece undertake some attempts of to reassemble and raise the obelisk some assemblandone pieces that already had been found in 1502 in a cellar of the Wide one of the enterprise (road doing not more exist). After this fruitless attempt, other fragments had been recovered during the pontificated of Holy Pope XIV in 1748. From 1789 to 1792 Pope Pious it started the intense activities of reparation of the obelisk, that venne later on raised and restored what solar clock. The direction of the intense activities venne entrusted at the architect Giovanni Antinori than restaurò the large red monoliths of granite, (height 21,79 m. with the base and the globe 33,97 m), using between the other also the granite of the base of the column of Pious Antonino.

June 7 1998, with the inauguration of the new accommodation of Square Montecitorio, also the function was reactivated gnomonica of the obelisk. To the present one, at any rate, it is not more possible to rebuild complete the ancient and imposing midday augustea. A fragment of the horologium Augusti is still visible in the foundation of the Church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina.