Trajan’s Column
A 30-metre marble column tells the story of the emperor Trajan’s wars against the Dacians in a relief band that winds 23 times around the shaft. Inside, a spiral staircase leads to the top. It became the model for victory columns for two thousand years.
The column was dedicated in AD 113 as part of Trajan’s Forum, the last and largest of the imperial forums in Rome. It was erected to celebrate victory in the two wars against the Dacians in present-day Romania, in 101–102 and 105–106. The architect was probably Apollodorus of Damascus, who designed the forum and built Trajan’s famous bridge over the Danube. The inscription on the base says that the column’s height shows how high the hill was that was dug away to make room for the forum. The base later became the emperor’s tomb, where the urn with his ashes was placed.
The column consists of around twenty huge drums of Carrara marble, hollowed out so that a spiral staircase of 185 steps leads to the top. The relief band is about 200 metres long and shows more than 2,500 figures. It depicts not only battles but also the army marching, building camps and bridges, making speeches and receiving the Dacians’ surrender. Trajan himself appears some sixty times. The band was once painted. The column stood between two libraries, one Latin and one Greek, and from their upper floors the higher parts of the relief could be seen at closer range.
The column survived the Middle Ages, partly because the popes protected it. In 1588 the lost imperial statue on top was replaced with a bronze statue of the apostle Peter. The Column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome copied the idea, and later Trajan’s Column became the model for the Vendôme Column in Paris and many victory columns in 19th-century Europe. Plaster casts made in the 19th century have become important, because the marble has since been damaged by air pollution. The relief is one of our most important sources for how the Roman army looked and worked.