Arco dei Gavi Site Features

The arch is a single opening flanked by paired Corinthian columns on tall pedestals, with a heavy entablature and attic above.

It is comparatively small and restrained -- a family monument rather than a triumphal statement -- and its proportions are careful rather than overwhelming.

Niches in the piers once held statues of the Gavii, and inscriptions named them; the family put its own members where an emperor would have put himself.

The architect's signature, L. Vitruvius L. L. Cerdo architectus, is carved on the arch.

Beside it lies a stretch of Roman paving from the Via Postumia, with the ruts cut by cart wheels still visible in the stone -- moved here with the arch and, for many visitors, the more affecting object of the two.

The architect’s signature

L. Vitruvius Cerdo carved his name on the arch. Almost no Roman building names its designer, and this one was made by a freedman.

A family, not an emperor

Statue niches and inscriptions commemorated the Gavii themselves -- private citizens taking a monumental form usually reserved for the state.

The Via Postumia paving

A section of Roman road surface alongside, with cart ruts worn into it.

Taken down and put back

Demolished in 1805 and reassembled in 1932 from its own numbered stones.