Location
Giacoma Lauro, Splendore dell'antica e moderna Roma. 1612-1640. Special Collections, Wellesley College.
Trajan’s Column was, at the time of its construction, merely one aspect of Trajan’s Forum. Located near the original Roman Forum and the Capitoline Hill, Trajan’s Forum was the largest of the Imperial Fora. On this 17th century engraved map by Giacomo Lauro, Trajan’s Column can be located within a square labeled as Trajan’s Forum; however the monument’s further context with the Forum’s other structures is not so easily visible on this map.1
In antiquity, Trajan’s Column was situated behind the Basilica Ulpia and the rest of Trajan’s Forum in a rather enclosed square between several buildings. Though the statue of Trajan atop the Column would have been easily visible, the tight situation of the Column meant that the majority of the highly detailed narrative frieze would not have been visible to a ground level viewer. Although some scholars have postulated that the top of the frieze might have been more visible from potential balconies on the two adjacent libraries,2 there was no single spot to view the monument’s entire relief.3 Its position at the far end of the Forum would have enhanced the Column’s additional function as a viewing platform, which allowed viewers to look over the rest of Trajan’s Forum, a testament to and celebration of the emperor’s military triumphs.4
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1 Giacoma Lauro, Splendore dell’antica e moderna Roma, 1612-1640, Special Collections, Wellesley College.
2 Francesco de Angelis, “Sublime Histories, Exceptional Viewers: Trajan’s Column and its Visibility,” in Art and Rhetoric in Roman Culture, eds. Jas Elsner and Michel Meyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 92.
3 Andrew Fear, “An Unwinding Story: The Influence of Trajan’s Column on the Depiction of Warfare,” in War as Spectacle: Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Display of Armed Conflict, eds. Anastasia Bakogianni and Valerie M. Hope (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 242.
4 Fear, “An Unwinding Story,” 244.