Covering more than 3.5 hectares, Trajan’s Warehouses are the Roman Empire’s largest storage complex, with an extremely innovative plan organized around a central axis partially monumentalized by a double row of travertine columns in ashlar style, known as “Strada Colonnata”. The complex is formed by four distinct constructions: the first is the building’s maritime façade, running behind the imposing colonnade of the Portico of Claudius. The other three are arranged perpendicularly to it. The warehouses’ cells, 400 in number in the initial design, had a storage volume of about 400 m3 each.
Reconstruction of Trajan’s warehouses
(J.-C. Golvin)
Historical photo of the central block of Trajan’s warehouses
Mosaic depicting the Mensores in Ostia Antica
Photogrammetry of Trajan’s warehouses in correspondence with Via Colonnata
(École française de Rome)
Collapses inside the building
Mosaic with scene of grain measurement
(Piazzale delle Corporazioni, Ostia antica)
Mosaic depicting a bushel for grain measurement
(Piazzale delle Corporazioni, Ostia Antica)
The quay’s travertine stairways restored in the 1990s