On the ancient Via Lata, the broad Roman road that traced the course of the present-day Via del Corso, once stood the Arcus Novus, a triumphal arch now entirely vanished. It was erected to honour Diocletian, perhaps for his tenth anniversary of rule or to commemorate a joint victory with his co-emperor Maximian. The arch was a familiar type in imperial Rome: a monumental passageway, clad in marble and adorned with reliefs and inscriptions, designed to assert authority and celebrate military success. Today, the church of Santa Maria in Via Lata occupies its footprint, a later Christian sanctuary built atop the remains of a pagan statement. No fragment of the arch survives above ground, and its precise form must be inferred from literary references and the odd reused block. The Via Lata itself, however, still follows the same straight line, a reminder that even the most solid-seeming monuments are subject to the slow, quiet erasure of time.
Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.
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