(18th century) The pyramid was built for Gaius Cestius Epulo, the son of Lucius, of the tribe of Pobilia. The inscription on it mentions that Cestius was a
praetor, a tribune of the plebs, and a
septemvir of the Epulones. The tomb was completed in 330 days and was one of two pyramid shaped tombs in the city of Rome. Its construction was regulated by sumptuary laws, which limit extreme displays of wealth such as in feasts, clothing, funerals, and tombs. While these laws can be traced back to the mid-5th century BC, they were much more strictly passed and enforced around the time of Cestius’ death. (18th century) Some writers have questioned whether the Roman pyramids were modelled on the much less steeply pointed
Egyptian pyramids exemplified by the famous pyramids of
Giza. However, the relatively shallow Giza-type pyramids were not exclusively used by the Egyptians; steeper pyramids of the Nubian type were favored by the
Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt that had been brought to an end in the Roman conquest of 30 BC. The pyramid was, in any case, built during a period when Rome was going through a fad for all things Egyptian. The fusion of Roman and Egyptian styles is further highlighted by the fact that the exterior is distinctly "egyptianizing", while the interior displays classic Roman fresco paintings and a barrel vaulted ceiling. The
Circus Maximus was adorned by
Augustus with an Egyptian
obelisk, and pyramids were built elsewhere in the Roman Empire around this time. During the construction of the
Aurelian Walls between 271 and 275, the pyramid was incorporated into the walls to form a triangular
bastion. It was one of many structures in the city to be reused to form part of the new walls, probably to reduce the cost and enable the structure to be built more quickly. It still forms part of a well-preserved stretch of the walls, a short distance from the Porta San Paolo. The origins of the pyramid were forgotten during the
Middle Ages. The inhabitants of Rome came to believe that it was the tomb of
Remus (
Meta Remi) and that its counterpart near the Vatican was the tomb of
Romulus, a belief recorded by
Petrarch. Its true provenance was clarified by Pope Alexander VII's excavations in the 1660s, which cleared the vegetation that had overgrown the pyramid, uncovered the inscriptions on its faces, tunnelled into the tomb's burial chamber and found the bases of two bronze statues that had stood alongside the pyramid.
Percy Bysshe Shelley described it as "one keen pyramid with wedge sublime" in
Adonaïs, his 1821
elegy for
John Keats. In turn the English novelist and poet
Thomas Hardy saw the pyramid during a visit to the nearby
Protestant Cemetery in 1887 and was inspired to write a poem,
Rome: At the Pyramid of Cestius near the Graves of Shelley and Keats, in which he wondered: "Who, then was Cestius, / and what is he to me?" In 2001, the pyramid's entrance and interior underwent restoration. In 2011, further work was announced to clean and restore the pyramid's badly damaged marble cladding, through which water seepage has endangered the frescoes within. The restoration is sponsored by Japanese businessman Yuzo Yagi, whose €1-million donation resulted in a call for tenders to carry out the work issued by the
Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma whose officials drew up the project and are supervising such an intervention along with
Italy's Ministry of Cultural Heritage. Restoration work started in March 2013. The pyramid is the namesake of the
Piramide station of the
Rome Metro. ==See also==