Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella and the Castrum Caetani site features

The Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella is a huge stone drum standing directly on the Via Appia at the third mile, and the first impression is of sheer mass: a cylinder about 11 metres high on a square base, so wide that from the road you cannot see past it.

Its skin is travertine, and only partly intact. The cylinder is faced with slabs of travertine, pale grey-gold and pitted, laid in regular courses; the square base below is preserved only in part, so the drum appears to sit on broken ground.

The carving is all at the top. A marble frieze runs round the highest part with garlands of flowers and fruit swagged between ox skulls — the bucrania, bare-boned and frontal — and is interrupted by a high relief with a trophy of arms and a barbarian prisoner, his hands tied behind his back. Below it, a great funerary inscription is walled into the upper part.

Then the Middle Ages arrive on top. The drum is crowned not by a Roman cone but by a ragged line of medieval crenellations, because the Caetani made the tomb the main tower of their castle.

Beside it stands the rest of the castle, roofless. The residential part is a tall open rectangle of brick and tufa walls, with crenellations along the top and fine mullioned windows punched through — sky where the roof was, and a floor of beaten stone.

Inside that hall is the museum. The Museo dell'Appia stands its statues in a row along one wall — white marble, mostly headless, draped — with sarcophagi, inscriptions and reliefs set along the other, all of it taken from the funerary monuments that faced onto the road outside.

And the burial chamber is a cone open to the sky. Conical in form, faced with brick, and open at the summit with an oculus.

The bucrania frieze

Ox skulls and garlands of flowers and fruit in marble round the top of the drum — the origin of the name "Capo di Bove".

The trophy relief

The frieze is interrupted by a high relief with a trophy of arms and a barbarian prisoner with his hands tied behind his back.

The funerary inscription

Walled into the upper part of the mausoleum, naming Cecilia Metella.

The travertine drum

A tall cylinder faced with slabs of travertine on a powerful square base, preserved only in part.

The burial chamber

Conical, faced with brick, open at the summit with an oculus.

The Castrum Caetani

The castle of the early 14th century that made the mausoleum its main tower, with crenellated walls and fine mullioned windows.

The Museo dell'Appia

Statues, sarcophagi, inscriptions and reliefs from the funerary monuments that faced onto the road.

San Nicola a Capo di Bove

Part of the Castrum, and the only testimony of Cistercian Gothic architecture; its external structure with the apse survives.