al. Above the pilasters were groups of men and horses
in bronze, of admirable workmanship. The basement was protected around
by a sidewalk and a railing of gilt bronze, supported by marble pillars
crowned with gilded peacocks, two of which are in the Giardino della
Pigna, in the Vatican. A grand circular mole, nearly a thousand feet in
circumference, and also faced with blocks of Parian marble, stood on the
square basement and supported in its turn a cone of earth covered with
evergreens, like the mausoleum of Augustus.

Of this magnificent decoration nothing now remains except a few blocks
of the coating of marble, on the east side of the quadrangle, near the
Bastione di S. Giovanni. All that is visible of the ancient work from
the outside are the blocks of peperino of the mole which once supported
the outer casing. The rest, both above and below, is covered by the
works of fortification constructed at various periods, from the time of
Honorius (393-403) to our own days. In no other monument of ancient and
medieval Rome is our history written, molded, as it were, so vividly, as
upon the battered remains of this castle-tomb. Within and around it took
place all the fights for dominion with which popes, emperors, barons,
barbarians, Romans, have distracted the city for fifteen hundred years.

Of the internal arrangement of the monument nothing was known until
1825, when the principal door was discovered in the middle of the square
basement facing the bridge. It opens upon a corridor leading to a large
niche, which, it is conjectured, contained a statue of Hadrian. The
walls of this vestibule, by which modern visitors generally begin their
inspection, are built of travertine, and bear evidence of having been
paneled with Numidian marble. The pavement is of white mosaic. On the
right side of this vestibule, near the niche, begins an inclined spiral
way, 30 feet high and 11 feet wide, leading up to the central chamber,
which is in the form of a Greek cross.

There is no doubt that the tomb was adorned with statues. Procopius
distinctly says that, during the siege laid by the Goths to the castle
in 537, many of them were hurled down from the battlements upon the
assailants. On the strength of this passage topographers have been in
the habit of attributing to the mausoleum all the works of statuary
discovered in the neighborhood; like the Barberini Faun now in Munich,
the exquisite statue of a River God described by Cassiano