The Meta Sudans was a tall, conical fountain located in the very centre of ancient Rome. Its name (‘sweating turnpost’) reflects its perpetual wetness and its resemblance to the conical turning-posts at the ends of Roman race­tracks. Built in tandem with the Flavian emperors’ magnificent amphitheatre and probably completed by 90 ce, the fountain’s relationship […]

Nancy Stieber Inscriptions In the last decades of the nineteenth century, three new annual rituals were added to the repertoire of public events in Amsterdam: a Catholic procession, a Socialist march, and a royal drive through the city. This essay explores the way that those annual events used urban nodes and trajectories as stages for […]

Christine Macy Introduction The World Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 holds a special place in the annals of American history. The first exposition held in the American West, its planning and exhibits represented not only a certain coming-of-age for the country, hosting an exposition that aimed to match that of Paris in size and […]

It is not only the burial day, but the very creation of the American Unknown Soldier in 1920 that requires a reconsideration of the view of the Soldier as an instrument used by the state for its own purposes; for everyone who mattered in that state and everyone among its important interlocutors had stood in […]

The accurate depiction of the spatial proximity of the two monuments on ancient coins, the descriptive name meta and the distinctive, conical form, ensured that, through the middle ages, Renaissance and beyond, the identity of the fountain as the Flavian Meta Sudans was never lost. The eighth-century Einsiedeln Itinerary refers to it by name, as […]