Mausoleum of Augustus

Is it worth the trip?

Not on its own while it is closed. You cannot go in, and from the square you see a large ruined drum behind site hoarding. Still, it is the tomb of Augustus, it stands in central Rome, and it is about 80 m from the Ara Pacis museum, across the square (OpenStreetMap), so if you are visiting the altar, walk across the square and look.

Once the mausoleum reopens, the answer is likely to change. The restoration finishes the rooms inside and the burial chamber, and adds a new route through the green ring round the drum (Sovrintendenza Capitolina). But no opening date has been published, so check before you plan around it.

Getting there and what it costs

The mausoleum stands in Piazza Augusto Imperatore, between Via di Ripetta and the Via del Corso (en.wikipedia; de.wikipedia), about 800 m from the Pantheon in a straight line. The bus stop “Ripetta/Ara Pacis” is about 70 m away (OpenStreetMap).

There is nothing to pay because there is nothing to enter. The Sovrintendenza Capitolina, which runs the monument, has suspended entry and visits since 6 June 2022. The final phase of the works began when the square reopened on 6 June 2025, was planned to take 18 months, and is expected to end in late 2026, but no reopening date or tariff has been published (the operator; Turismo Roma, read 20 October 2026). The square itself is open to everyone. At its southern end there is a café with a ticket office and a bookshop (Turismo Roma); the bookshop, which also sells tickets for the city’s civic museums, is open every day from 10.00 to 19.00 (the operator).

History

Augustus began the mausoleum in 28 BC, on his return from Egypt after his victory at Actium in 31 BC (it.wikipedia). Whether it was modelled on the tomb of Alexander the Great, which he had seen in Alexandria, on the great round tombs of the Hellenistic world, or on Etruscan burial mounds is still debated (fr.wikipedia). The Greek geographer Strabo describes a great mound near the river on a high base of white stone, covered to the top with evergreen trees, with a bronze statue of Augustus on the summit and a large grove with fine walks behind it (quoted by the Sovrintendenza Capitolina).

Published figures put the diameter at 87 to 90 m: the operator gives 300 Roman feet, about 87 m, and en.wikipedia 90 m. A travertine-faced base about 12 m high carried a second, higher storey, and the gilded bronze statue of Augustus stood about 30 m up (Sovrintendenza Capitolina). A long corridor led to a round burial chamber with three niches for urns, and Augustus was perhaps buried in a room inside the central core. Two granite obelisks stood in front of the entrance; they were set up again in the Piazza dell’Esquilino behind Santa Maria Maggiore in 1587 and in the Fountain of the Dioscuri on the Piazza del Quirinale in 1783. Bronze tablets near the door carried Augustus’s own account of his achievements, the Res Gestae, whose text is now written out on the wall of the Ara Pacis museum facing the mausoleum (Sovrintendenza Capitolina; fr.wikipedia).

The first to be buried there was Augustus’s nephew Marcellus, his designated heir, who died in 23 BC; Augustus himself followed in AD 14 (it.wikipedia). The emperor Nerva, in AD 98, was the last emperor buried in it (it.wikipedia), and the tomb was opened once more, early in the 3rd century, for the ashes of Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus (fr.wikipedia; Sovrintendenza Capitolina). By tradition the Visigoths plundered it when they sacked Rome in 410, stealing the urns and scattering the ashes (it.wikipedia; fr.wikipedia), though the topographers Platner and Ashby held that the story has no historical foundation (en.wikipedia). One urn survived: Agrippina the Elder’s, used as a grain measure in the Middle Ages, is in the Capitoline Museums (it.wikipedia).

In the 12th century the Colonna family turned the ruin into a fortress. Later it served as a garden and a vineyard, from 1780 as a wooden amphitheatre for animal fights, bullfights and fireworks, and from 1907, when the city bought it, as the Augusteo, a concert hall of 3,500 seats and home of the Santa Cecilia academy (fr.wikipedia), where Toscanini, Mahler, Stravinsky and Mascagni all conducted (it.wikipedia). It closed in 1936. Between 1936 and 1940 the buildings round it were demolished and the monument was cleared, and the architect Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo laid out Piazza Augusto Imperatore around it (it.wikipedia). The archaeologist Filippo Coarelli called the square one of the most sinister achievements of Fascist architecture (fr.wikipedia).

For decades afterwards the mausoleum was closed and neglected. With a grant from Telecom Italia announced in 2017 (en.wikipedia) it reopened on 1 March 2021, by booking only and free until 21 April (it.wikipedia), and closed again in June 2022 for the last phase of works (it.wikipedia). The new museum layout is by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, funded by the Bulgari group (Turismo Roma; Sovrintendenza Capitolina).