The sepulchre of Elio Callisto, called "the Devil’s Chair", is located along via Nomentana beyond the piazza from the Church of S. Agnese.
The tomb, dated at the mid second century A.D., is located on two levels in the temple style. A stairway under the podium leads to the lower room partially underground and has two symmetrically placed arcosoli in each wall. There are five rectangular and arched niches above them, with small splayed windows overhead.
The floor is paved with white mosaic tiling.
The walls are in opus vittatum mixtum (which suggests a late restoration) with a dome-shaped vault, an architectonicfeature seldom appearing in Roman architecture of the time.
The upper chamber is also interesting and has a large niche opening at the back wall, framed by a jutting aedicule supported by two brick columns. The tympanum is curved and has a shell-shaped stucco covering. Rectangular niches surmounted by a tympanum with a ledge supported by corbels, are placed in the side walls.
The vaulted ceiling of the area was created by covering the square room with a calotte placed on spherical pendentives of the bridge type at the corners, an uncommon method for the mid second century.
The facade of the tomb has entirely collapsed, but its three sides remain. Externally, the monument appears as a customary type of brickwork tomb, with Corinthian pilaster strips in bricks that frame parts in brick and rectangular windows. The frieze is original and its multi-coloured bricks, are arranged flatly, side by side and the resulting effect is a lapidea isodoma structure.
The attribution of the tomb to Aelius Callistion, a freedman of Adriano, is still a controversial matter.
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Piazza Elio Callisto (Via Nomentana) |  |
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