Beneventum – Benevento

What is there today

The stops below are grouped by where they are; each has its own page.

The arch and the museums, in the upper town. The Arch of Trajan was built between 114 and 117 at the start of the Via Traiana, Trajan’s shorter variant of the Appia from Benevento to Brindisi (it.wikipedia). It is a single arch 15.6 m high and 8.6 m wide, of limestone faced with Parian marble, and both main faces are covered in reliefs: the side facing the town shows Trajan’s works of peace and his care for its citizens, the outer side war and his care for the provinces; inside the archway two panels show Trajan in Benevento, sacrificing at the opening of the road and founding the alimenta, his scheme for the children of Roman Italy (it.wikipedia; en.wikipedia). The Lombards built it into the town walls as the Porta Aurea, which helped preserve it, and the houses that had grown against it were cleared in 1850 (it.wikipedia). Restoration of its stone surfaces began on 11 May 2026 (the Ministry of Culture), and a press report of 1 June 2026 shows it in scaffolding and expects the works to take ten months (Fanpage). About 70 m away, the former church of Sant’Ilario a Port’Aurea holds the Museo dell’Arco, a video presentation of the reliefs (the province’s museum network). The Temple of Isis that the emperor Domitian had built here in 88–89 has never been found, but the Egyptian sculpture recovered from it around the town since the late 19th century - priests, divinities, falcons, lions - led the Egyptologist Hans Wolfgang Müller to rank Benevento, with Rome, as the largest centre of Egyptian finds outside Egypt (it.wikipedia). It is shown in the Egyptian section of the Museo Arcos, on Corso Garibaldi; one of the temple’s two obelisks stands in Piazza Papiniano and the other is in the Museo del Sannio, in the cloister of the Lombard church of Santa Sofia; the museum also has statues of Trajan and his wife Plotina (the province’s museum network; it.wikipedia).

The theatre and the forum, in the south-west of the old town. The Roman Theatre, probably begun under Trajan and inaugurated by Hadrian between 125 and 128, was restored under the Severans (it.wikipedia). Of its three storeys only the lowest survives, a ring of 25 arches, with the seating and part of the stage building; published figures put the diameter of the seating at 90–98 m (it.wikipedia; en.wikipedia). Houses built into it in later centuries were cleared in excavations that began in 1923, and it reopened in 1957 and still stages performances (it.wikipedia; en.wikipedia). About 220 m away, the Arco del Sacramento, of the late 1st or early 2nd century, is a brick arch stripped of most of its marble facing that once led into the forum; its restoration exposed a bath complex beside it, and an urban archaeological route through the area opened in 2009 (it.wikipedia). Close by, in the Triggio district, the so-called Terme di San Cristiano are vaulted rooms of a probable 2nd-century bath building, built into houses and courtyards and partly used as storerooms (it.wikipedia).

Santi Quaranta and the Appia, at the western edge. The Santi Quaranta are the remains of a cryptoporticus, a system of vaulted corridors whose main gallery runs 60 m; their date and purpose are disputed, from the 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD (it.wikipedia). Bombing in the Second World War damaged it badly, and it is now looked after by a group of volunteers (it.wikipedia). In front of it, the Ponte Leproso carried the Via Appia from Capua across the Sabato into the city: of its six arches the two nearest the town keep Roman masonry, though much altered, while the rest are an 18th-century rebuild, and it has been closed to motor traffic since 2004 (it.wikipedia). Next to the Benevento Appia station are the excavated remains of the amphitheatre, found in 1985: foundations and stretches of its radial walls, from a building reconstructed at about 160 by 130 m, where Nero may have watched gladiators in 63 (it.wikipedia; OpenStreetMap).

Two bridges out of town. The Ponticello, about 550 m north-east of the arch, is a small single-arched Roman bridge, the first on the Via Traiana, now pedestrian and ringed by a roundabout (it.wikipedia). The Ponte delle Serretelle, 2.8 km south-west of the centre, is an ancient bridge beside the Serretelle stream, since diverted from under it, whose surviving fabric looks medieval and was probably restored in the early 19th century; one of its side arches has collapsed and by 2016 it was overgrown and decaying (Pleiades; it.wikipedia).