Aosta · Italy

Arch of Augustus

Two thousand years ago this arch was a message. Rome had just defeated the Salassi, the mountain people who lived here before, and in the same year, 25 BC, founded a new city on their land and named it for the emperor: Augusta Praetoria. Aosta. The name the town still carries is his. The arch was the exclamation mark on that victory. Bronze statues and captured weapons once stood above the columns; by the early Middle Ages they had gone, melted down for the metal. Now look at the centre. A crucifix. A monument to a pagan emperor had ceased to be legible here, so the image of Christ was hung within it and the arch became Saint-Vout, the holy face. Two empires, Rome and the Church, held in the same stone. Not a ruin, then, but a claim two thousand years old that no one has succeeded in pulling down.

Go deeper

Who were the Salassi?

A Celtic-Ligurian people who held these valleys and the passes north: the Little and the Great St Bernard. Those were the real prize. Whoever controlled the passes controlled the traffic between Italy and Gaul, and the Salassi taxed it. Rome spent more than a century trying to break them. Terentius Varro Murena finished the job in 25 BC. Ancient writers speak of tens of thousands of captives sold into slavery. The city went up on their land almost immediately, with three thousand Praetorian veterans settled inside its walls. After that, the Salassi drop out of the record.

What happened to the statues?

Nobody knows exactly. The top of the arch carried bronze statues and captured weapons: the Roman way of saying we won, and here is what we took. They were gone by the early Middle Ages, taken for the metal more than out of spite: bronze was worth melting down. The attic above the columns has been rebuilt more than once, and in 1716 it was given a slate roof to stop rainwater eating the conglomerate. So what you see up there today is protection, not decoration.

What's Saint-Vout?

Saint-Vout is the local name for the crucifix hanging under the arch: from the old French vout, meaning face, the holy face. It was put there in the Middle Ages, and Aostans stopped calling the monument an arch at all: for centuries it was simply the Arch of Saint-Vout. People crossed themselves as they walked under it. The original wooden crucifix is now in the Cathedral Treasury Museum, a few minutes' walk from here; what hangs in the arch is a copy.

Where it is

Piazza Arco d'Augusto - Place Arc d'Auguste, 11100 Aosta · 45.73926, 7.32814 · Open in Maps

Listen where it happened

Part of Memoro, a free audio guide you open in your browser. No app, no account.