The Pyramid of Cestius is an ancient pyramid near the Porta San Paolo and the Protestant Cemetery. Due to its incorporation into the city’s fortifications, it is today one of the best-preserved ancient buildings in Rome.

The pyramid was built about 18 BC – 12 BC as a tomb for Gaius Cestius, a magistrate and member of one of the four great religious corporations in Rome, the Septemviri Epulonum.

The Pyramid of Caius Cestius is the only surviving monument of a series of similar buildings existing in Rome in the 1st c. BCE, when funerary architecture was influenced by the fashion that had arisen in Rome after the conquest of Egypt in 31 BCE.

It is of brick-faced concrete covered with slabs of white marble standing on a travertine foundation, measuring 100 Roman feet (29.6 m) square at the base and standing 125 Roman feet (37 m) high.

In the interior is the burial chamber, a simple barrel-vaulted rectangular cavity measuring 5.95 metres long, 4.10 m wide and 4.80 m high.

The walls are frescoed according to a decorative scheme consisting of panels, wherein can be distinguished, on a light background, figures of nymphs alternating with lustral vases. At the top, on the corners of the vault, four winged Victories, each one bearing in her hands a crown and a ribbon; at the centre was originally to be a scene depicting the apotheosis of the incumbent of the sepulchre.