A 3,300-year-old Egyptian obelisk in a Roman square

Two pharaohs carved an obelisk for the sun god Ra

The Flaminio Obelisk is a 3,300-year-old Egyptian obelisk, now the centerpiece of Piazza del Popolo in Rome. It is carved from a single block of red Aswan granite, almost 26 meters tall. With its base and the cross on top, it reaches 36.5 meters, and it weighs 235 tonnes.

It did not start here. Pharaoh Seti I ordered it carved around 1290 BCE, for the Temple of Re in Heliopolis, near modern Cairo. Seti died before artists finished the carving. His son, Rameses II, completed the fourth face and had it raised at the temple. Its hieroglyphs still name both kings and invoke the sun god Ra.

It stood in Egypt for well over a thousand years. Then, around 10 BCE, Augustus had it shipped to Rome after conquering Egypt. He set it up on the spina, the long central barrier of the Circus Maximus, Rome's great chariot-racing stadium. Chariots thundered past it there for centuries.

A fallen obelisk lay buried for over a thousand years

Sometime after Rome's fall, the obelisk toppled and snapped into three pieces. It lay buried under mud and debris for more than a thousand years, forgotten under the ruined Circus Maximus.

Workers rediscovered it by chance in 1587, broken but intact enough to rebuild. Pope Sixtus V had it recovered and assigned the job to his architect, Domenico Fontana. In 1589, Fontana re-erected the obelisk in Piazza del Popolo, giving it a new Roman base topped with the pope's own family crest and a Christian cross.

It stood plain there for over two centuries. In 1823, under Pope Leo XII, the architect Giuseppe Valadier added a raised platform with four basins and four stone lions in an imitation Egyptian style, the setting that still surrounds it today.

Stone lions and restored hieroglyphs still ring its base

The lions Valadier added in 1823 still ring the obelisk's base today. Water runs from their stone mouths into four round basins, a design meant to evoke Egypt, though it is pure 19th-century invention. The obelisk's granite inscriptions, carved by Seti's and Rameses's workers over 3,000 years ago, have survived Rome's weather since. A restoration finished in 2013 worked to protect the stone and keep its hieroglyphs readable.

Historians still argue over small points in its story. Some call the Flaminio Obelisk the oldest in Rome; others rank it second-oldest, depending on how they count. The exact year Augustus brought it to Rome is also disputed, with most sources saying 10 BCE and a few giving 1 BCE instead.

Three of Rome's busiest streets converge on this obelisk

The obelisk now stands where three of Rome's busiest streets meet: Via del Corso, Via del Babuino, and Via di Ripetta. This fan of roads, called the Trident, spreads out from the piazza toward the city center. Two nearly identical churches frame the opening of Via del Corso, and the old city gate, the Porta del Popolo, sits just behind the obelisk to the north.

The granite itself is the oldest object in the square by far, cut from Aswan quarries in Egypt more than 3,000 years before anyone built the churches or gates around it. Its hieroglyphs still name Seti I and Rameses II on three of its four sides, and still invoke Ra, the sun god they carved it for.

Santa Maria del Popolo stands a short walk north, its chapels holding paintings by Caravaggio. The Fontana del Nettuno, Piazza del Popolo sits closer still, a Neptune fountain added to the piazza's west side in the 1820s, around the same years Valadier gave the obelisk its lions.