Abstract
This essay offers new insights into the civic value and the reception of the Arch of Trajan for Renaissance architecture in Ancona, a city almost completely overlooked by Renaissance historiography because of the destruction of most of its buildings. Built in 115 AD the Arch was meant to celebrate the Emperor’s victory in the Dacian wars, whose fleet departed from Ancona. Looking to sources to be found outside of the city it is possible to examine the legacy of the arch – a monument praised by Sebastiano Serlio and Andrea Palladio, among others -‐ in public and religious architecture, as well as its role in creating the identity of the city. Some motifs from the arch appear already in Giorgio da Sebenico’s late Gothic church portals of S. Agostino and S. Francesco alle Scale, as well as in the Loggia dei Mercanti (late 1450’s, early 1460’s), but its first important depiction is by Pinturicchio in the Piccolomini library in Siena. Here the arch is placed adjacent to Pius II’s, celebrating the (failed) departure of the fifth crusade from Ancona’s harbour in 1464 as a neo-Trajanic enterprise.
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