Statue of Trajan
The statue in 2010
Year1980 (1980) (erected)
MediumBronze sculpture
SubjectTrajan
LocationLondon, United Kingdom
Coordinates51°30′36″N 0°04′34″W / 51.509875°N 0.076174°W / 51.509875; -0.076174

The statue of Trajan is an outdoor twentieth-century bronze sculpture depicting the Roman Emperor Trajan, located in front of a section of the London Wall built by Romans, at Tower Hill in London, United Kingdom.[1]

Description and history

Trajan is shown bareheaded and wearing a tunic,[1] holding a scroll in his left hand while gesturing with his right hand raised.[2] A plaque at its base contains the inscription:

STATUE BELIEVED TO BE OF THE ROMAN EMPEROR TRAJAN/ A.D. 98–117/ IMPERATOR CAESAR NERVA TRAJANUS AUGUSTUS/ PRESENTED BY THE TOWER HILL IMPROVEMENT TRUST AT THE/ REQUEST OF THE REVEREND P. B. CLAYTON, CH, MC, DD, /FOUNDER PADRE OF TOC H.[2][3]

The statue was installed in 1980 as a bequest from P. B. "Tubby" Clayton, the vicar of All Hallows-by-the-Tower.[1][4] The Museum of London believes the figure to have been recovered from a scrapyard in Southampton in the 1920s, and notes that its head does not match its body.[5] There is no information presented at the site about the sculptor.[2]

It is a cast of a late 1st century statue found in Minturno, which is on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.[6] The upper part of the head is the result of restoration;[7] other casts are in Rome (at the via dei Fori Imperiali and Museum of Roman Civilization), Ancona and Benevento.

Trajan presided over the second-greatest military expansion in Roman history, after Augustus, leading the empire to attain its maximum territorial extent by the time of his death. He never himself visited Britain.[4]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Baker, Margaret (2002). Discovering London Statues and Monuments. Osprey Publishing. p. 165. ISBN 9780747804956. Retrieved 20 September 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 "Trajan – London, England, UK". Waymarking.com. Retrieved 20 September 2014.
  3. ↑ "Statue: Emperor Trajan statue". LondonRemembers.com. Retrieved 20 September 2014.
  4. 1 2 McNay, Michael (6 March 2018). Hidden Treasures of London. Random House. ISBN 9781847946171 – via Google Books.
  5. ↑ "Where To See Roman London". 19 August 2015.
  6. ↑ Philip Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London (p. 407) - Liverpool University Press, 2003. From this book we quote: "The statue is a bronze reproduction, not a very good one, of a marble statue of Trajan, discovered at Minturno, which is now in the Museo Nazionale in Naples."
  7. ↑ "Roma caput mundi", il mito della grandezza
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