Column of Arcadius

The Column of Arcadius was a late Roman triumphal column erected in the early 5th century AD within the Forum of Arcadius in Constantinople — a monument conceived in explicit rivalry with the columns of Trajan and Theodosius in Rome. Its marble shaft carried a continuous spiral frieze of battle reliefs celebrating the emperor's campaigns, and an internal spiral staircase gave access to a colossal bronze statue at the summit, which toppled in the earthquake of 740 and was never recovered. Today only the massive masonry base survives, wedged among residential buildings in Istanbul's Cerrahpaşa district. The column's reliefs are known almost entirely through drawings made by Western travellers in the 15th and 16th centuries before the shaft finally collapsed, making those sketches the sole visual record of an otherwise lost imperial monument.