Various / 2008-09-04 00:00:00

It opens upon a corridor leading to a large
niche, which, it is conjectured, contained a statue of Hadrian. The
walls of this vestibule, by which modern visitors generally begin their
inspection, are built of travertine, and bear evidence of having been
paneled with Numidian marble. The pavement is of white mosaic. On the
right side of this vestibule, near the niche, begins an inclined spiral
way, 30 feet high and 11 feet wide, leading up to the central chamber,
which is in the form of a Greek cross.
There is no doubt that the tomb was adorned with statues. Procopius
distinctly says that, during the siege laid by the Goths to the castle
in 537, many of them were hurled down from the battlements upon the
assailants. On the strength of this passage topographers have been in
the habit of attributing to the mausoleum all the works of statuary
discovered in the neighborhood; like the Barberini Faun now in Munich,
the exquisite statue of a River God described by Cassiano dal Pozzo,
etc., as if such subjects were becoming a house of death. The mausoleum
of Hadrian formed part of one of the largest and noblest cemeteries of
ancient Rome, crossed by the Via Triumphalis. The tomb next in
importance to it was the so-called "Meta," or "sepulcrum Romuli," or
"sepulcrum Neronis," a pyramid of great size, which stood on the site of
the church of St. Maria Transpontina, and was destroyed by Alexander VI.
in 1499.
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