Trajan's Column. The story of a symbol

The exhibition Trajan's Column. The story of a symbol, organized and promoted by the Colosseum Archaeological Park and the Galileo Museum - Institute and Museum of the History of Science, curated by Alfonsina Russo, Federica Rinaldi, Angelica Pujia, Giovanni Di Pasquale, tells the story of the famous Column, celebrating its, at the same time, magnificence.

Designed by the architect Apollodorus of Damascus by order of the emperor Trajan, the Column was inaugurated on 12 May 113 AD. Its construction in the various phases represented a challenge for Roman engineers at the time: from the extraction of the marble from the Carrara quarry, to the transport of the latter by land, by sea and by river, from the processing and finally to the installation, in the construction site of Trajan's Forum, it was the result of an engineering and technological process which still arouses great wonder nowdays. So much so that, in the following centuries, there were numerous attempts to replicate, design, reproduce it, becoming a symbol that inspired emperors, kings and Popes.

The exhibition setup highlights above all this symbolic function with two narrative registers: the historical and artistic one, with the reconstruction of the frieze on a 1:1 scale whose spirals wrap around the pillars of the Colosseum, and the more technical one, with the explanation of the stages of transport and processing of marble, also illustrating the political use that the kings of Europe made of it by commissioning reproductions and casts. The exhibition itinerary, however, is marked by the presence of archaeological finds, machine models, 3D reconstructions and multimedia insights.

The exhibition is accompanied by a summary with panels and in-depth texts accompanied by unpublished images and a bibliographic attachment which summarizes the main scientific publications dedicated to the Column in recent years, represented by exhibition catalogues, miscellanies of studies, collections of scientific essays. During the duration of the exhibition, themed conferences and dedicated podcasts are scheduled and a study day is planned for the spring that will take stock of the latest research, conservation issues and the topic of casts.

Photo credits: courtesy of the Colosseum Archaeological Park