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Pyramid of Caius Cestius
The year is 18 BC, and a dying Roman magistrate named Caius Cestius writes the most demanding will ever recorded... his heirs have exactly 330 days to build him a pyramid, or they lose everything. They succeeded. Standing before you at Via Raffaele Persichetti is Rome's only surviving pyramid, soaring 36.4 meters high, covered in gleaming Lunense marble. What you see outside is Egyptian, but step inside through that barrel-vaulted chamber, and you'll find something purely Roman... delicate frescoes of nymphs and four winged Victories painted on white walls, their colors still vibrant after two thousand years. This land was once pastoral fields where Romans buried their dead outside the city walls. But in 275 AD, Emperor Aurelian needed to build defensive walls fast... so he simply built around the pyramid, transforming Cestius's tomb into a fortress bastion. That decision saved it. Rome once had several pyramids, including one where St. Peter's steps now stand, but they were demolished for building materials. Only this one survived. In 2015, a Japanese businessman named Yuzo Yagi donated 2.7 million euros to restore it, saying Italy had changed his life. Inside that burial chamber, medieval tomb raiders tunneled through the northern wall centuries ago, stealing the cinerary urn and chunks of those precious frescoes... but what remains still whispers of Roman ambition reaching toward Egyptian eternity.
Did You Know?
- The Pyramid of Caius Cestius was built in just 330 days—because Gaius Cestius left strict instructions in his will that his heirs would lose their inheritance if the pyramid-tomb wasn’t completed within that tight deadline after his death, a remarkable feat of ancient Roman construction and testament to the family’s obedience and ambition.
- The pyramid’s sharp, steep angles were inspired not by the famous pyramids of Giza, but by the Nubian pyramids of Meroë (modern Sudan), reflecting Rome’s fascination with all things Egyptian after the conquest of Egypt in 31 BC, yet creating a unique Roman-Egyptian hybrid that still stands out in Rome’s cityscape.
- During the Middle Ages, people mistook the pyramid for the tomb of Remus, twin brother of Rome’s mythical founder Romulus, and it wasn’t until 17th-century excavations—ordered by Pope Alexander VII—that inscriptions and artifacts inside confirmed it was the resting place of the relatively obscure magistrate Gaius Cestius, dispelling centuries of legend.