Obelisco Aureliano

It is made of granite and is over 9 metres high. Like the obelisk in Piazza Navona, it was brought to Rome without inscriptions from Egypt by order of an emperor. In this case it was Hadrian, a great connoisseur of Egyptian art, of which he had collected remarkable examples in his villa in Tivoli, who ordered the transport of this obelisk to honour the memory of his friend Antinous, who drowned in the Nile in circumstances that have never been clarified.Hadrian wanted Antinous to be deified and in Egypt itself temples were erected dedicated to him and even a city was named Antinopolis. In Rome a temple was dedicated to him and the obelisk was one of the ornaments. On it inscriptions in hieroglyphics recalled the tragic events of the young man.In the year 300 the obelisk was transported to the Circus Varianus, near the present church of S. Croce in Gerusalemme, to mark the thorn and fell there. When it was found, it passed through various properties and was transported to different places, until it was acquired by the Vatican in the second half of the 18th century. It was then erected near St. Peter's. Only in August 1822, by order of Pope Pius VII, as part of the work for the complete reorganisation of the Pincio area and the public promenade, did it reach its final location in Viale dell'Obelisco.