What Exactly Does Trump’s Triumphal Arch Commemorate?

In antiquity, monumental triumphal arches, generally built following a vote by the ancient Roman senate, symbolized the return of a victorious army and consecrated the memory of its passage as a permanent entrance into a city. Many were built in marble to replace a temporary wooden arch that served the victorious military procession, to become a path to be taken by daily users. The Arch of Constantine at the edge of the Roman Forum, for instance, finished in 315 AD, commemorates the victory of Constantine over Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

The Roman practice was revived from the late 17th to early 19th century in Europe as territorial boundaries were expanded and defined through warfare. Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, Napoleon I, and Tsar Alexander I defined entry into their capitals and commemorated significant victories by the construction of triumphal arches modeled on ancient Roman prototypes. In the decade after he crowned himself emperor, Napoleon had two triumphal arches built in Paris: the Arc du Carrousel, which featured bas-reliefs commemorating victories most recently in the German lands, and the Arc de Triomphe de L’Étoile, a monument of a size that far surpassed any ancient Roman prototypes. At 164 feet tall, the latter was not only scaled to the horizon at the crest of the Champs-Élysées, and visible from the emperor’s apartments, but also dominated the view westward from the Place de la Concorde. Having presided over great national events, like the funeral procession for Victor Hugo in 1885, it has often been the backdrop to commemorative military parades. It was during the parade there on Bastille Day 2017 that Donald Trump, during his first term as president, seems to have formed his obsession with tanks in the street and for towering triumphal arches.

Already in antiquity some triumphal arches were built with the aim of self-aggrandizement by one or another emperor, a type that historians more commonly refer to as memorial rather than triumphal arches. So, Trump’s proposed 250-foot-tall arch (a size no one has ever seen before) is not without precedent, even if he is not known, unlike many an authoritarian before him, to be versed in history, like, for instance, Napoleon III, who spent many evening hours reading ancient Roman military history.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, there was popular support for the building of arches, not to perpetuate memory of victory but rather of sacrifice. The most powerful expression given to the triumphal-arch tradition is the example at the British War Cemetery (1932) at Thiepval, France, conceived according to a radically abstract geometrical design by Sir Edwin Lutyens. This brilliantly original reinterpretation of the ancient type was created by intersecting two arches to form a complex arch that frames views in four directions. Devoid of any literal markers of revived classicism, it represented, almost exactly a century ago, the possibility that an ancient tradition could be continued to powerful artistic effect and to moving commemorative intent without recourse to literal imitation.

Precisely the opposite is the case of the current design for Washington, D.C. It seems to have been tweaked with various settings on a photocopier to try to keep up with Trump’s quest for dominance through sheer size. Crowned by two gilded eagles and a winged figure of uncertain significance, and situated perfectly to block the long-cherished open vista between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery, Trump’s arch fits best into the category of self-aggrandizement, although its height refers to America’s semi-quincentennial. Like so much that Trump does, it manages to create division and dissent rather than to build consensus. It was granted approval by the Commission of Fine Arts—now entirely composed of Trump appointees—in the same week that the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a $1.776 billion fund intended to compensate those said to have been unjustly treated by the last administration, including presumably those who stormed the U.S. Capitol. Given that their criminal records have recently been quietly removed from the DOJ website, future historians will have to look instead to the daily press to coordinate the construction of the arch with an event worthy of commemoration. Scanning the headlines of the first year and a half of Trump’s presidency, no military victory has been achieved, unless it’s the kidnapping of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. At this writing, the war in Iran is far from over and has wreaked havoc worldwide. A cynical chronicler of triumphal arches might suppose that this decidedly neo-Roman Imperial arch represents the triumph of a single person’s will over the American populace. It is clearly, even without any illustrative program to elucidate what it commemorates, a monument to, by, and for Trump, a former real-estate developer become president intent on remaking the Federal City in his image.

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