La fontana, reproduced on coins from 80-81 AD, was in use until the 5th century AD when the fillings of the Valley began to block the drainage channels. The ruins were demolished in 1933 to create Via dei Trionfi.
Thanks to the coin depictions and drawings made at the time of the demolition, it is possible to reconstruct the original appearance: a marble-covered base cylinder, perhaps articulated in niches, an upper conical element decorated on the top with a flower or a sphere.
Today, only the foundations of the circular basin and of a concentric perimeter added in the 4th century are visible.
The Meta Sudans occupied a site of great urban significance, near one of the vertices of the sacred boundary of the Roman city, at the crossing of two streets connected to the triumphal route and at the meeting point of four regions of Augustan Rome.
In the same area, Augustus had already erected a smaller fountain, remembered by the sources and found during recent archaeological excavations.
The Flavians thus perpetuated the memory of a strongly symbolic monument.
