Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella

The Mausoleum of Cecilia Metella rises as a massive, circular drum of travertine stone, sitting atop a square base near the third milestone of the Appian Way. Built toward the end of the first century before Christ, this tomb honors a noblewoman whose family connections linked her to the most powerful figures of the late Roman Republic. Her father, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus, was a consul, and she married into the family of Marcus Licinius Crassus, the triumvir who famously suppressed the slave revolt led by Spartacus.