The Arch of Portugal

Relief depicting the Apotheosis of Sabina, wife of Hadrian

The Arch of Portugal was a triumphal arch in Rome built in the imperial period. But that is pretty much where agreement about it ends, because it was torn down in 1662, keeping modern scholars from getting a good look at it. All that survives are three lovely reliefs.

It stood on the Via Corso, and in fact Pope Alexander VII had it demolished because it impeded traffic along that important road. At the time it was thought that this had once been part of the aqueduct that carried water to the Baths of Nero, but modern archaeologists have found the foundations of that aqueduct 200 meters away, so that interpretation is out. Incidentally the arch has nothing to do with Portugal; it acquired that name in the late 1500s because a Portuguese cardinal lived nearby.

Now scholars think it was built as a triumphal arch.

But when? The three surviving reliefs all depict Hadrianic scenes, of which the most famous shows Hadrian's wife Sabina being escorted to heaven by a female genius. These reliefs survived because they were installed in a church after the arch was demolished and now reside in the Capitoline Museum.

Here Hadrian oversees food aid to the poor.

The Adventus of Hadrian, showing him welcomed by personification of Rome, the Roman Senate, and the people of Rome.

But for reasons that nobody has yet explained to me, and I have checked a dozen web sites, scholars generally think the arch was not built in Hadrian's time. Instead opinion places it either a few decades after Hadrian's death in the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180), or in the third century, perhaps the reign of Aurelian (270–275). The theory is that the Hadrianic reliefs were spolia taken from some other building or structure that was demolished; Aurelian is supposed to have torn down several buildings to construct a grand Temple of the Sun, which would fit. So how and when these reliefs ended up on the arch remains a mystery; but what wonderful reliefs they are.