Our walk starts with the visit to the Ara Pacis Augustae, a monumental altar dedicated by the Senate in 9 BC in order to celebrate the recovered peace in the Roman empire under Augustus’kingdom. We’ll go back to the sequence of events in the finding of this extraordinary monument and we’ll enjoy its fantastic relieves inside the new museum built by Richard Meier. Going out we’ll explore the sourroundings and we’ll see what remains of the old river harbour of Ripetta. Then we’ll get into the mausoleum that Augustus ordered to build for himself and his family and that has been recently restored and reopened to public. Once inside, we’ll recall the history of the Julio-claudian family and of the mausoleum itself, which was at first the burial place of all the emperors until the middle of the II century AD and then was transformed into a fortress, a garden, an arena for bullfights and finally into a theatre and an auditorium for music concerts.
