SITES IN PULA
The foundations of the octagonal mausoleum were excavated in 1941 and remain on show at the original location facing the Twin Gates, two meters below the present ground surface. Individual elements of the monument were found during the dismantling of late antiquity period and medieval city walls in 1907 and 1932. Sixteen posts formed an eleven-metre diameter enclosing perimeter around the circular stepped podium. The mausoleum's podium is circular in shape and consists of three steps. The lowest step has a diameter of 10.66 m, and the uppermost, a circle that tightly encloses the octagonal body, has a diameter of 9.46 m. The lower part of the octagonal structure has eight rectangular engaged angle columns and a wall built in the opus isodomum technique, bordered at the bottom by smooth mouldings. The cornice at the top of the podium and the entire central and upper parts of the structure are lost.
The corners of the mausoleum were reinforced above the lower engaged columns with five-metre-high Corinthian engaged columns. Above them was a triple-banded architrave and a frieze with motifs of guardians of the afterlife—sphinxes, griffins, and Priapus—and a cornice with a cyma, consoles covered with acanthus leaves, ovules, and anthemia. From the bottom of the first circular step to the upper edge of the cornice, the mausoleum was approximately 9.2 m high. The mausoleum architecture above the cornice is uncertain. One possibility is a roof railing, i.e., an attic, decorated with a frieze of acanthus tendrils.
The architectural solution would have also dictated the roof type: if the roof covered the entire octagonal structure, as envisaged by the initial proposed reconstruction, it would have had to be in the form of a low octagonal pyramid of lead plates. If there was a superstructure above the octagonal body in the form of a small temple, it would have been topped with a conical or pyramidal roof of stone slabs. Judging from its size, the structure contained an inner burial chamber 4.7 m high, although this has not been definitively confirmed by the archaeological evidence. The mausoleum was built in the first quarter of the 1st century CE by one of Pula's leading families.
