Emperor Trajan Statue
An outdoor twentieth-century bronze sculpture showing the Roman Emperor Trajan, located in front of a section of the London Wall built by Romans, at Tower Hill in London, United Kingdom. Trajan is shown bareheaded wearing a tunic, with a scroll in his left hand while gesturing with his right hand raised.
It is a cast of a late 1st century statue found in Minturno, which is on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. The upper part of the head is the result of restoration; other casts are in Rome (at the via dei Fori Imperiali and Museum of Roman Civilization), Ancona and Benevento.
The statue is a gift to the city from P. B. “Tubby” Clayton, the vicar of All Hallows-by-the-Tower in 1980. It is said that it was recovered from a scrapyard in Southampton in the 1920s. There is no information presented at the site about the sculptor.
Emperor Marcus Ulpius Traianus was the 13th Emperor of the Roman Empire, he presided over the second-greatest military expansion in Roman history, after Augustus, leading the empire to attain its maximum territorial extent by the time of his death. He never himself visited Britain.
The original London Wall was commissioned during his reign and takes you back to the days of Londinium, also known as Roman London, which was the capital of Roman Britain during most of the period of Roman rule
A plaque at its base contains the inscription:
STATUE BELIEVED TO BE OF THE ROMAN EMPEROR TRAJAN/ A.D. 98–117/ IMPERATOR CAESAR NERVA TRAJANUS AUGUSTUS/ PRESENTED BY THE TOWER HILL IMPROVEMENT TRUST AT THE/ REQUEST OF THE REVEREND P. B. CLAYTON, CH, MC, DD, /FOUNDER PADRE OF TOC H.
