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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[M. 



exquisite drawings of the arabesque ornaments of some of the 

 vaults and ceilings in tlie modern compartment; these liave been 

 kindly furnished to me for the occasion by the obligeance of M. 

 Griiner, the author, honorary and corresponding member of this 

 Institute. 



It appears from various inscriptions that have been found and 

 preserved, that this mausoleum received the ashes of all the Anto- 

 nines; and the body of C'onimodus, after being dragged through 

 the Tiber, was also buried in it by order of Pertiuax. Something 

 was left by Hadrian for his successors to finisli, and it probably 

 continued to be the imperial place of burial until the time of 

 Septimus Severus; perliaps we may say to the middle of the third 

 century. Then its history as a sepulchre ends. But, before I 

 proceed to describe to you the original appearance and splendour 

 of this monument of Imperial Rome, let me bring together the fen- 

 notices which are found of it in ancient writers. Procopius is the 

 first who gives any description of what it was, in his account of an 

 assault made by the Goths outside the Aurelian gate (tlint is not 

 far from where the Gauls of 1848 very recently made their as- 

 sault) ; he thus writes — "The tomb of the Emjieror Hadrian is 

 situated outside the Porta Aurelia, about a stone's cast from the 

 bulwarks of the city, it is an object worthy of admiration. It is 

 built of Parian marble, and the blocks fit close to one another 

 without anything between to fasten them; it has four equal sides 

 about a stone's throw in length; it rises above the city walls; on 

 the top are statues of the same kind of marble, admirable figures 

 of men and horses. The men of old time (that is the Romans, 

 probably, in the time of Honorius), joined this monument with 

 the bulwarks of the city by two walls, because it appeared advan- 

 tageous for the defence of the city; it thus became a part of the for- 

 tifications, and had the apjiearance of a lofty tower covering the 

 entrance of the city." So far we learn that the mausoleum was 

 converted at a very early period (for Procopius saw it in 53+ a.d.) 

 into a fortress. Those beautiful statues, however, which the 

 secretary of Belisarius describes, were put to a strange use by the 

 defenders of Rome. Instead of more appropriate missiles and more 

 raw material, these masterpieces of sculpture were torn from their 

 pedestals and hurled upon the besiegers below; and perhaps the 

 breaking of the head of a Goth might cost a whole \'enus or a 

 Mars, a head of a Faun, or a foot of Hercules. I do not know what 

 to say of a passage cited bj' Salmasius from John of Antioch, who 

 lived A.D. 620. "The figure of Hadrian, " he says, "stood on the 

 top in a car drawn by four horses, of such colossal dimensions, that 

 a full grown man might pass through one of the horse's eyes." A 

 chronicler of the thirteenth century, commonly called the Anony- 

 mous, says that the tomb was faced with marble, and he talks of 

 gilded peacocks and a bull. The same mediieval sight-seer men- 

 tions also bronze doors and horses, which he saw about the mauso- 

 leum. But the earliest representation or drawing we have of the 

 mole is that now existing on the bronze doors of St. Peter's, made 

 in the days of Pope Eugenius, by Antonio PoUagio, about 1+81. 

 In Camucci's sketch, made a century later, some of the cornice is 

 indicated which he must have seen, and which be says was em- 

 bellished with ox-heads and festoons; and on the frieze there were 

 two inscriptions then to be seen belonging to Commodus and 

 Lucius Verus. Pope Clement VII. and his architect Labaeco 

 gave currency to the tradition, that the beautiful columns of 

 Paonazzetto, which stood in St. Paul's Basilica, once adorned the 

 upper stories of this mausoleum. Now with these notices of his- 

 torians and artists of old time, added to our own observations of its 

 present state, we are to make the description, both external and 

 internal, of this durable monument. 



The mausoleum was formed of a square basement, which measured 

 253 feet on each side, making a perimeter of 1012 feet. The 

 door, or entrance, was in the middle of the south side, facing the 

 passage across the bridge. At the four angles of this solid base- 

 ment were colossal statues, or trophies ; I rather suppose them to 

 have been those horses which are mentioned by the monk of 

 Antioch; in the centre of this massive foundation, which was 

 adorned by festoons and bucrani, rose the round tower, which 

 still, in a great measure, exists and serves as the donjon or keep of 

 the castle. This tower did not diminish towards the top as some 

 have supposed, for Procopius measures the diameter at the top 

 by the same expression of a stone's cast, as be measures it at the 

 bottom; though diminished by all the marble facings in width, it 

 still yields a diameter of 188 feet. The round mass %vas com- 

 pacted together of peperine stone and the usual materials em- 

 ployed in solid Roman works; but it was all faced with s(iuare 

 blocks of Parian marble. We must accede to the generally re- 

 ceived opinion that two magnificent colonnades went round the 



monument, dividing it into two stories, and that statues stood in 

 the intercolumuiations. Those statues were probably ckefx d'n-uvre 

 of art. The famous Barberini Faun, which was found by the pon- 

 tiff of that name in a ditch of the fort is a specimen; the dancing 

 faun in the Fbu-entine (iallery is another; these had cither fallen 

 from their place, or had been used by the troops of Belisarius for 

 overwhelming their assailants. The summit of the edifice, which 

 finished in a dome-shaped roof, was crowned, as some think, by the 

 large bronze jiine found in digging the foundations of S. Maria 

 Transpontine, and which is now to be seen in the gardens of the 

 Vatican. But it was more in conformity with the ambition of the 

 Roman emjierors to have their statues erected on the summit of 

 their monuments: witness the columns of Trajan and Marcus 

 Aurclius, and the corresponding sepulchre of Augustus. The 

 bronze pine would be a more appropriate ornament for some edi- 

 fice in tlie gardens of Domitia, in which the mausoleum was erected. 

 Moreover, we have it stated by one of the ancient writers I have 

 quoted, that there was the statue of Hadrian somewhere about the 

 tomb. I have therefore, in spite of some celebrated aiititpiarians, 

 taken the liberty to place the statue of Hadrian on the top of his 

 mausoleum. From the intimation we have of the ox-heads and 

 festoons, and the inscriptions on the frieze, I have represented the 

 basement as Doric; the first row of columns above would naturally 

 be Ionic; and if the columns of St. Paul's Basilica were really taken 

 from this tomb, they speak for themselves, and will justify us in 

 exhibiting the upper row in the glory of the Corinthian. Upon 

 these data and surmises, therefore, I have presented to you the 

 mausoleum in its exterior, as I suppose it originally to have been; 

 and we may safely conclude that it remained in all its pristine 

 magnificence until the time of the Emperor Honorius, +02. Let 

 us now go within. The spiral corridor, which leads from the en- 

 trance to the sepulchral chamber, was entirely excavated in 1820. 

 Beginning from the original entrance facing the bridge, a lofty 

 arch of travertine stone forms the ingress, and leads into a spacious 

 vestibule. Opposite the position of the door of entrance there is a 

 large niche, which no doubt contained the statue of the emperor; 

 a colossal head, now in the Vatican, and a hand discovered in the 

 excavations, probably belonged to the said statue. In a compart- 

 ment on the left side of the niche is a fragment of a cinerary vase 

 of marble, with some letters upon it, which was lying there 

 %rhen I examined the interior of this monument in 1829. The 

 spiral corridor, by which we now begin to ascend, is about 11 feet 

 in width and 30 feet in height, built of the finest brickwork; the 

 bricks 6 feet long; but tlie whole has been coated with precious 

 marbles, as appears from the continual fragments still found, and 

 the traces of them yet sticking to the walls. The ascent is not 

 by steps, but by a gently inclined plane, winding round the monu- 

 ment, and showing specimens of the mosaic flooring still adhering 

 to their original places. This wonderful passage was lighted from 

 .above by those openings called in Italian abhaini; they are cut 

 through the massive covering in pyramidal forms. The light can- 

 not enter by them now on account of the modern works of the 

 forte, which lie over them; and hence this corridor can only be seen 

 by means of torches at present. Pursuing this circular passage we 

 ascend until we arrive where the modern staircase and the light of 

 day meet us, and turning by an arch we come upon the sepulchral 

 chamber. It occupies a space of about 25 feet square, and is 

 liglited by a window at each side, which exhibit at the same time 

 the immense thickness of the walls. Beneath the modern steps are 

 found some cells with lateral niches; in the one on the left of the 

 staircase the French consuls were imprisoned in the great revolu- 

 tion. The Sarcophagus of black and white granite, now in the 

 Museo Pio Clementino, together with the busts of Hadrian, very 

 probably once occupied this chamber. We must not, however, 

 omit to mention that the large basin of porphyry, which serves 

 for the baptismal font in St. Peter's, and the porphyry urn which 

 was taken from the tomb of Pope Innocent II., and several objects 

 of equal value, all came out of the mausoleum. So that if we 

 consider its mai'ble-lined walls, both inside and out, the mosaics of 

 the floors, the beautiful columns which encircled its peristyles, the 

 exquisitely finished statues which adorned the upper stories, tlie 

 bronze figures which ornamented the basement and surmounted 

 the dome, the alabaster urns and sarcophagi of precious marbles 

 which this treasure house once concealed, it would be difficult to 

 over-rate the magnificence and cost of this gorgeous monument, or 

 to exaggerate the folly of the man who reared it for such a pur- 

 pose. But the imperial architect little dreamed the purpose to 

 which posterity would put his proud sepulchre, nor to wliat 

 strange vicissitudes he sliould be indebted for the perpetuating 

 of his name and the celebrity of his grave. 



