Sala a Croce Greca

Speranza

Greek Cross Hall
Sarcophagus St Helena, cat. 238 Sarcophagus of Costantia, cat. 237

This hall, designed and built by the architect Michelangelo Simonetti during the pontificate of Pope Pius VI Braschi (1775-1799), came to constitute the entrance vestibule to the Pio Clementino Museum. Evidence for this remains in the Latin inscription Museum Pium above the imposing access, each side of which is flanked by an Egyptian style pillar-statue (telamones) in pink granite, which date from the beginning of the 1st century A.D. In the centre of the floor is a mosaic with a bust of Athena. In the hall, dominated by the presence of two huge porphyry sarcophagi, there is also the Verospi Augustus, a portrait statue of the emperor in heroic pose, perhaps posthumous, and a statue of Gaius Caesar, a nephew of the same Augustus.