La Trophée des Alpes

Hey Emperor Augustus! You just defeated the Gauls, what are you going to do next? I'm going to build a trophy on the highest point of the road into Gaul. No matter which direction you traveled on the road, you were going to see this thing from a long way off. If you were sailing the sea anywhere along the coast, you couldn't miss it high on the cliffs.

Then the Middle ages came about and people wanted stones to build their houses. Hey look, a whole bunch of really nice Italian marble.

So little was left of the monument but by the turn of the 20th century that people were not even sure if this really was the trophy of Augustus. Then they found a piece of stone inside somebody's house that had the name of a tribe, Trumpilini. No, really. Pliny the Elder wrote down the inscription, making it possible to prove that it was Augustus' Trophy.

There's a great view of Monaco from the trophy. It was an important port in Augustus' day but the boats were not as fancy.Read more