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Posts Tagged ‘The Arch of Constantine’

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The Arco di Constantino, or Arch of Constantine, was famously build by Emperor Constantine to commemorate a victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, fought in 315 CE. This is the most recent of the Roman triumphal arches still standing, and it has a few unique characteristics you won’t see anywhere else.

This arch is impressively sized at over twenty meters high, twenty-five meters wide, and seven meters deep, with three distinctive arches built into it. The center one is more than eleven meters high and six meters high, and is the largest, with smaller arches on either side.

The design of the Arch of Constantine is similar to that used in the Arch of Septimus Severus, which is located at the Roman Forum. Both of them have main sections that sport detached columns, and have an upper portion called an attic that bears a main inscription.

A visit to the Arch of Constantine is an easy thing to do while in Rome, since the arch itself spans the Via Triumphalis - the road used by victorious emperors on their way back to Rome. Constantine’s choice of this area to locate his arch tells us a lot about the message he wanted to send to rivals.

The arch is quite close to the more famous Colosseum, and is easy to visit by Metro. If you’ll be taking a tour of other ruins in this area of the city, you’ll almost certainly pass by the arch on your way.

Depending on the light when you view the arch, you may notice a few things about it. First, not all parts of it seem to be made from the same stone, and some are even a slightly different color.

That’s because other monuments were used in the construction of the Arch of Constantine, including pieces used almost in their entirety of the lower part of the arch. The finished piece was made up of other architecture.

The lower portion of the arch is solid marble blocks, with a staircase located high up in the thickness of the arch and hard to access from the ground. The attic is brick with a marble facing.

It’s been said that the builders borrowed pieces of other monuments to make construction go more quickly, or because they didn’t have the ability to build an entire arch from scratch. We don’t really know why they chose to use other pieces of architecture to make the arch, but this interesting detail makes it stand out from the rest.

The arch itself was incorporated into a Medieval family stronghold, becoming part of another structure. It wasn’t until the eighteenth century that excavation and restoration started, and it was kept up until the late 1990s.

If you’re on a trip to Rome, you’ll probably take the time to see the ancient monuments of this fascinating city. Don’t forget to take a little time out to see the Arch of Constantine while you’re there.