One of the most impressive mausoleums of antiquity, the Monte del Grano, was given this name because it resembles an overturned bushel of grain.
A 21 m long corridor leads to the vaulted burial chamber, with a diameter of 10 m. The room was once divided into two levels by a vault, now collapsed, where the remains of the impost can be seen. A small room was recovered from the upper story at the point where the corridor leads into the burial chamber.
The air and light filtered into the tomb from two oblique skylights. In the Middle Ages, the mausoleum was part of a vast farm estate called Casale delle Forme because it was near the aqueducts (called formae in medieval Latin). An inscription, now lost, recorded the 1505 construction of a tower on the mount that was blown down in January 1900.
According to the 16th c. humanist Flaminio Vacca, the figures portrayed on the sarcophagus, now in the Capitoline Museum, may be identified as the emperor Alexander Severius and his mother Giulia Mamea.
The mausoleum thus dated back to this emperor’s time (222-235 AD). The discovery of brick stamps on the walls of the cella and the corridor suggest that the sepulchre may have been built during the middle of the 2nd century.
In the eighteenth century, Piranesi drew a plan and a section of the mausoleum indicating a ring-shaped corridor leading to two other access corridors and a stairway that led to an underground room. Excavation experts of the 1991 X Ripartizione did not confirm this hypotheses.
It is not clear how the original outer sections of the tomb were arranged. It was certainly surrounded by a circular cylinder made of travertine blocks. Such a row was found when the park of Monte del Grano was restored.
The cylinder probably supported a cone-shaped burial mound, and might have been covered by vegetation, a practice coming from Hellenistic traditions (the most noteworthy example is the tomb of Augusto).
|
 | | | X Municipio
Piazza dei Tribuni (via Tuscolana) |  |
|
