Discover Mausoleum of Lucius Munatius Plancus

The mausoleum of Lucius Munatius Plancus is a funerary building on the summit of Monte Orlando, the mountain above Gaeta. It was raised for Plancus, a Roman soldier and politician of the late Republic, and it survives in excellent condition: a perfectly circular drum, originally finished with a tumulus roof that no longer exists.

The building is a perfect circle, and the geometry is the architecture. The drum measures 29.54 metres across and 93.10 metres round the outside, standing 9 metres high, and it was designed to carry a tumulus roof that no longer survives -- so what you see is the masonry core of a monument that was meant to read as an artificial hill.

Inside, the plan is a ring and a cross. A circular ambulacro runs within the wall, and four cells open off it, each covered with a barrel vault and each set on one of the cardinal points. Nothing about the arrangement is decorative: the vaults brace the ring, and the ring carries the load that the earth mound once bore down on.

The one piece of designed surface is the inscription panel above the door, set inside a frame and still almost perfectly preserved. On a building with no orders, no columns and no sculpture on the exterior, that panel is the whole of the architectural rhetoric -- and it is a list of offices and conquests rather than an image.

The structure has been much restored. It was consecrated to the Virgin Mary in the late 19th century, a conversion that gave it a continuing use and is part of why a Republican-era tomb is still standing at full height.

The tomb is a drum: a perfect circle 29.54 metres in diameter with an external circumference of 93.10 metres, standing 9 metres high. That is the surviving part. It originally carried a tumulus covering -- an earth mound over the masonry, in the tradition of the great Roman circular tombs -- and that mound no longer exists, which is why the building now reads as a plain cylinder rather than the hill-with-a-wall it was meant to be.

The interior is organised on the compass. A circular corridor, the ambulacro, runs inside the drum, and off it open four barrel-vaulted cells set to the four cardinal points. It is a simple, rigidly symmetrical plan, and it is what has allowed the building to stand: a ring wall braced by vaults distributes its own weight.

The dedicatory inscription was set above the door inside a frame, and it is still almost perfectly preserved. That placement matters -- it is at the entrance, at reading height, on the face a visitor meets first. The text was commissioned by the man buried inside, and it lists what he wanted counted: offices, acclamations, a triumph, a temple, land distribution and two colonies.

What stands today is much restored, and the building was consecrated to the Virgin Mary in the late 19th century, which is part of why it survived at all.

Who was Lucius Munatius Plancus?

A Roman senator, consul in 42 B.C. and censor in 22 B.C. with Paullus Aemilius Lepidus. He founded the cities of Lugdunum, now Lyon, and Augusta Raurica, now Augst near Basel. He is also a classic example of surviving dangerous times by changing sides: he began under Julius Caesar, allied with Caesar's assassin Decimus Junius Brutus in 44 B.C., joined the Second Triumvirate in 43, went over to Mark Antony in 40, and abandoned him for Octavian in 32.

When was the tomb built?

It is dated to 22 B.C. and was raised at Plancus's own wish -- the year of his censorship, and some years before he died, which the English source places at about 15 B.C.

Is he actually buried there?

It is his tomb and it is identifiable, which makes it one of the very few surviving tombs of an important Roman historical figure. His body, however, vanished long ago.

What does the inscription say?

It gives his full filiation -- son, grandson and great-grandson of Lucius -- then consul, censor, twice imperator, septemvir of the epulones and triumphator over the Raeti, and records that he built the temple of Saturn from the spoils, distributed the fields in Italy at Benevento, and founded the colonies of Lugdunum and Raurica in Gaul.

How big is it?

29.54 metres in diameter, 93.10 metres in external circumference and 9 metres high.

What was on top?

A tumulus -- an earth mound covering the drum. It no longer exists, so the building now appears as a bare cylinder.

What is inside?

A circular corridor, the ambulacro, running within the wall, off which open four barrel-vaulted cells set on the four cardinal points. The cells hold an antiquarium with finds of various periods, and the main cell opposite the entrance has a copy of the statue of Plancus; the original is in Rome.

Why is a Roman tomb consecrated to the Virgin Mary?

It was consecrated in the late 19th century. A continuing religious use is one of the reasons such buildings survive rather than being quarried.

Where exactly is it, and do I need a ticket?

On Monte Orlando, the mountain above Gaeta, inside the Parco Regionale Urbano di Monte Orlando, managed by the Ente Parco Regionale Riviera di Ulisse. No admission price is published for the monument.