Tropaeum Traiani

The Tropaeum Traiani or Trajan's Trophy lies 1.4 km northeast of the Roman city of Civitas Tropaensium (near the modern Adamclisi, Romania).

It is a cylindrical building, with steps at the base, of diameter 40 m. Around the side were 54 metopes, showing Romans fighting Decebalus's allies, of which 48 are in the local museum and 1 is in Istanbul.

The cone-shaped roof was made of stone slabs and the trophy itself was placed on top of two superposed prisms, framed by two sitting women and a standing man with his hands held behind.

[2] Compared to Trajan's Column in Rome, erected to celebrate the same victories and a "product of Roman metropolitan art", the sculpted metopes have been described as in "barbarian provincial taste", carved by "sculptors of provincial training, reveal[ing] a lack of experience in figurative representation, in organic structure and a naive idiom that remains detached from the classical current".

[6] The mention of the cohort II Batavorum and probably of the Legio XV Apollinaris, as well as the formula missici (instead of veterans) usual for the first century BC indicates that the war must be dated to the era of Domitian and probably in the year 86, the campaign led by M. Cornelius Nigrinus.

[8] The monument was researched between 1882–1895,[9] George Murnu in 1909, Vasile Parvan in 1911, Paul Nicorescu studied the site between 1935–1945, Gheorghe Stefan and Ioan Barnea in 1945.