The Flaminio Obelisk (Italian: Obelisco Flaminio) is one of the thirteen ancient obelisks in Rome, Italy, and probably either the most ancient, or second most ancient. It is located in the Flaminio quarter on Piazza del Popolo, and named not just for the quarter, but the Flaminian Way, which began near by. Initially it stood at the Temple of Re, in Heliopolis (now a suburb of Cairo), before being moved to Rome after Caesar Augustus' conquest of Egypt, and previously stood in the Circus Maximus with another ancient Egyptian obelisk, the Campense Obelisk, presently located in Piazza di Monte Citorio, before being moved to its present location by Sixtus V in the 16th Century.
It is 24 m (67 ft) high and with the base and the cross reaches 36.50 m (100 ft).
History
The Nineteenth Dynasty pharaoh Seti I quarried this obelisk from granite quarries in Aswan. Before his death, artists inscribed three of the four faces of the obelisk, which Seti intended to erect in the Temple of Re in Heliopolis. Seti's son and successor Ramesses II completed its inscriptions and set it up in Heliopolis.
Egypt to Rome
It was taken from Egypt in c.1 BC by command of Augustus (together with the Obelisk of Montecitorio). It was installed on the spina of the Circus Maximus, followed three centuries later by the Lateran Obelisk. Like most Egyptian obelisks, the Flaminio Obelisk was probably one of a pair, but no trace of its companion has been found. In Seti I's dedicatory inscription on one side of the shaft, the king boasts that he would "fill Heliopolis with obelisks."
When Augustus decided to dedicate this obelisk he chose to maintain its dedication to the deification of the Sun which corresponded to Apollo, the tutelary deity of the emperor, and had dedications inscribed on two sides of the plinth supporting it. It is uncertain exactly when the obelisk fell, however at some point after the fall of Rome, it fell and broke into three pieces, along with the other obelisk present in the Circus Maximus. The obelisks vanished into mud after the Circus had fallen into ruins as a stream (Acqua Mariana), which passed through the area made the area sodden after it was made into a channel under Callistus II c. 1122 CE.
The Circus Maximus to Piazza del Popolo
The obelisk was rediscovered and excavated in 1471 by the architect Leon Battista Alberti during construction work on Piazza Navona. The obelisk received new attention in 1587 under Pope Sixtus V, during whose pontificate, it and the Lateran Obelisk and several others were sought out and recovered in order to be made into focal points of the city, including the Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome. It was initially intended to be erected before Santa Croce in Gerusalemme however when the initial plan failed, it was erected in the Piazza del Popolo by Domenico Fontana in 1589 before its present Basilica.
In between 1816 and 1824, the architect Giuseppe Valadier, under Leo XII, renovated the monument by embellishing it with a base having four circular basins and stone lions, imitating the Egyptian style.
Hieroglyphic Texts on the Obelisk
The following is based on Wallis Budge's Translation