Obelisco Lateranense, Rome

Obelisco Lateranense commands Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano. It is an ancient Egyptian obelisk, now part of Rome’s urban landscape. The shaft narrows almost imperceptibly as it rises from its elaborate pedestal; its carved faces preserve an unusually direct connection with Egypt.

Egyptian pharaohs Thutmose the Third and Thutmose the Fourth commissioned it during the fifteenth century before Christ, for the temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak. That makes it Rome’s oldest obelisk. Emperor Constantius the Second brought it here in three hundred and fifty-seven, and the city prefect Memmius Vitrasius Orfitus set it on the divider of the Circus Maximus.

After it was found broken into three pieces in fifteen eighty-seven, Pope Sixtus the Fifth had Domenico Fontana erect it here the following year. The reassembly altered its dimensions. Yet its stone shaft rises thirty-two point eighteen metres; pedestal and cross carry the whole to forty-five point seventy metres.

It remains the world’s tallest monolithic obelisk. The lost Roman inscription at the base celebrated Constantius’s installation, and its text survives because it was copied when recovered.