The Day Rome Held Its Breath: Moving the Vatican Obelisk

The Vatican obelisk in St. Peter's Square was moved in 1586 by the engineer Domenico Fontana for Pope Sixtus V: 907 men, 75 horses and 40 capstans lowered, dragged and raised a 720,000-pound Egyptian obelisk without breaking it. Brought to Rome by Caligula on a giant ship packed with lentils, it is the only obelisk in Rome that never fell. This Renaissance engineering history documentary follows Fontana's own 1590 book: how he weighed the stone, why forty capstans could share the load, the silence order, and the legend of water on the ropes. Subscribe for more history and engineering breakdowns. Chapters: 0:00 Intro 1:33 The stone that never fell 4:01 A pope in a hurry 6:25 The lead needle 8:05 Weighing a mountain 10:40 Forty machines, one pull 13:43 April 30 16:24 Laying a giant down 18:37 The ball and the chisel 20:13 A road in the air 21:25 September 10 24:16 Water on the ropes 26:26 What was left Sources: Domenico Fontana, Della trasportatione dell'obelisco vaticano (Rome, 1590) Pliny the Elder, Natural History 16.201-202 (Caligula's obelisk ship) Suetonius, Claudius 20 (the ship sunk at Ostia under the lighthouse) #history #vatican #rome #engineering #documentary