Piazza Augusto Imperatore

Located in a very special area of the historic center, in the northern part of the large Campus Martius plain and near the Tiber, the square is the result of urban transformations that reshaped the city’s landscape during the Fascist regime. As with other projects carried out during those years, such as the opening of Via della Conciliazione and Via dell’Impero, the project was accompanied by a systematic demolition, with the aim of highlighting and celebrating the largest circular funerary monument of the classical age, the Mausoleum of Augustus, placing it in a new architectural setting.

The historic district that surrounded the mausoleum built to house the ashes of Emperor Augustus and members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty (used over the centuries as a fortress, garden, amphitheater and concert hall) was demolished in 1934 and rebuilt according to the codes of rationalist architecture by Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo. Only the church of San Rocco (excluding the bell tower and the adjacent hospital) and that of San Girolamo dei Croati were spared from the demolition. Again with the aim of enhancing the monument, the square was surrounded to the north, east and south by three new large INPS buildings embellished with colonnades, bas-reliefs and mosaics. On the last side, close to the Tiber embankment, a glass and concrete case was built to house the Ara Pacis Augustae (in 2006, the structure was replaced by the museum designed by Richard Meier). The square and the mausoleum, restored and stripped of the cladding that had transformed it into a concert hall, were inaugurated on 28 October 1938, but the work, interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, was not completed until 1952.

In 2020 the winner of the 2006 international competition Urbs et Civitas group started an ambitious redevelopment and enhancement project for this area. Inaugurated in June 2025, the square has been redesigned as an organic, harmonious and accessible space that connects the testimonies of ancient, modern and contemporary Rome in a single architectural and urban design. The area of the Mausoleum of Augustus, isolated and decontextualized in the 1930s square, is now fully accessible and reintegrated into the urban fabric. In the new project, the current road level is connected to the original level of the mausoleum, highlighted and embellished by part of the original travertine paving. To reinforce the square’s vocation as meeting and gathering place, a large space with a café, ticket office and bookshop has also been added at the southern end of the area.