A giant bronze pine cone in Rome? Everything is possible in the Vatican Museums, thanks to its impressive art collection and the hundreds of artifacts that is possible to see here. During my tour here at the Vatican Museums of Rome I use to stop in front of this bronze artifact which, in some degree, became a symbol of the most famous books of the history! Let's see it.

This pine cone was made in the first century b.C., and it was a decorative fountain that, very probably, adorned the interiors of the Baths of Agrippa, the Augustus' the son-in-law. He, the great counselor, friend and general of the first emperor of Rome, built close to the Pantheon the baths devoting  them directly to the God Neptune (in fact near had built a basilica dedicated to the Lord of the Seas, as you can read here). Even Agrippa promoted the construction of an entire aqueduct to feed its thermal baths, which are considered as the first, real, public baths built in Rome. After all Agrippa wanted to, through his building operations and planning, make Augustus a spatron of the arts and a man with the ability to improve the lives of all Roman citizens. It was another way to emphasize the importance of Augustus for the economy and the roman society, torn apart previously by years of civil wars and fratricide. And the baths were a part, in full, of this political program.

And this bronze pine cone, with its massive and well-defined forms, makes justice to the magnificence of the Baths of Agrippa, which were to be surely extended and grands. But now the question is: why is this pine cone here at the Vatican Museums? Simply because it was in common use, especially in the course of the Middle Ages, to move decorative elements from roman monuments to christian or private buildings. For this reason the pine cone was moved to the centre of the large courtyard which stood in front of the St Peter Basilica. The ancient Rome became, over the centuries, a kind of large open air quarry. It was easier and cheaper to found materials (such as bronze, travertine, or marble), directly from the ancient roman buildings, often in ruins, rather than to recover them from the cave. Moreover to have a large ornament like this pine cone could represent, for its owner, power and prestige. In particular the bronze pine cone became a sort of reference point for the whole of Rome.

Thousands of pilgrims, who went to St. Peter Basilica on pilgrimage, used to see it every day, and among them there was one in particular, and Dante. He participated in the first Jubilee of history, in the year 1300, and he saw that the pine cone. He was so impressed that he included it in the famous Divine Comedy. In the canto XXXI in fact, shortly before meeting Lucifer, Dante imagines to see of the giants. And describing the face of one of them Dante wrote: "his face, I seem to be long and big as the pine cone at the St Peter Basilica in Rome". Those words today are carved in the base on which rests the pine cone! Do you see how an ancient Roman artifact, which stood inside a pagan building (for the Christian perspective) is able to be one of the main characters of the art collection at the Vatican Museums in Rome? Even a local tour guide like can be surprised!