Trajan's Column

Trajan's Column stands in Rome, completed around 113 AD and attributed to the architect and engineer Apollodorus of Damascus, commissioned to commemorate the Roman emperor Trajan's victories in the Dacian Wars against the kingdom of Dacia in what is now Romania. The column rises roughly 30 meters on a tall pedestal, its shaft wrapped from base to top by a continuous helical band of carved marble relief, some 190 meters unrolled, depicting a detailed narrative of Roman military campaigns, sieges and construction works across more than two hundred individual scenes. The column originally supported a bronze statue of Trajan at its summit, which disappeared during the medieval period; Pope Sixtus V had it replaced in the sixteenth century with the current bronze statue of Saint Peter, which stands atop the column today. Trajan's ashes were reportedly placed in a golden urn within the column's base after his death, an honor otherwise unknown for a burial inside Rome's ancient city walls, and the column has survived largely intact for nearly two thousand years, making its spiraling relief one of the most complete surviving records of Roman imperial military practice.