The story of this place
Dedicated in AD 113, Trajan's Column commemorates the emperor's two brutal wars against Dacia (modern Romania). A continuous spiral frieze 190 metres long winds up the 30-metre shaft, carved with some 2,662 figures depicting river crossings, sieges, sacrifices, and the suicide of the Dacian king Decebalus—the ancient world's most detailed war narrative in stone. A gilded statue of Trajan once crowned it; since 1587 St Peter stands there instead. Trajan's ashes were placed in a chamber in the base, making the column his tomb. Historians still mine its reliefs for details of Roman army equipment, engineering, and tactics found nowhere else.