Casal Rotondo is the largest tomb on the Appian Way, to the southeast of Rome, Italy.
The name comes from the fact that the tomb is round and because a farmhouse (casale) was built on the top in the Middle Ages, when it belonged to the Savelli family and was one of a system of watchtowers along the Appian Way.
It is a large circular building with a diameter of 35 m, decorated with a frieze and, originally, had a cone-shaped roof.
Near the mausoleum, the archaeologist Luigi Canina (1795-1856) built a brick wall containing architectural fragments.
[2] Canina deduced from a small piece of inscription with the name "Cotta" that the monument had been built by M. Aurelius Cotta Messallinus for his father, Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, but this inscription and other architectural fragments are now assumed to have come from a smaller monument at the site, and they may have nothing to do with Messalla Corvinus.