KATIE MARIE

The Stairs of Mourning

A lot of people know the Spanish Steps in Rome.

But less well known are some other, more horrifying stairs.

The Gemonian Stairs were a flight of steps nicknamed the Stairs of Mourning, the stairs are infamous in Roman history as a place of execution.

The steps were situated in the central part of Rome, leading from the Arx of the Capitoline Hill down to the Roman Forum.

The condemned were usually strangled before their bodies were bound and desecrated.

Occasionally the corpses of the executed were transferred here for display from other places of execution in Rome.

Corpses were usually left to rot on the staircase for extended periods of time in full view of the Forum, scavenged by dogs or other carrion animals, until eventually being thrown into the river.

Death on the stairs was considered extremely dishonourable and dreadful, but Emperor Vitellius met his demise here. His last words were “Yet I was once your Emperor”.

On those same stairs, Decebalus’s head was thrown along with his right hand in AD 106.