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Location: Piazza San Giovanni, Laterano, Rome, Italy Height: 32.18 meters Weight: 455 tons Red granite The largest remaining obelisk in the world. It was undoubtedly quarried in Aswan, perhaps from the quarry of the "Unfinished Obelisk". Around 1490 B.C., Tuthmosis III of the Eighteenth Dynasty erected the obelisk at Karnak. A column of inscription down the center of a shaft states, "(Tuthmosis III) erected a single obelisk as his monument for his father Amun-Re, Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands in the Upper Court of the Temple in the neighborhood of Karnak, …". Sometime prior to A.D.357, Constantius, a son of Constantine, ordered that the obelisk be taken to Rome. The obelisk was officially inaugurated in 357 at Circus Maximus, where it was erected next to the Popolo Obelisk erected by Augustus. The obelisk fell for reasons unknown at an unknown date. On August 3, 1588, the obelisk was reerected in place in the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano by order of Pope Sixtus V.
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