Pyramid of Cestius an essential sight for many who undertook the Grand Tour in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was much admired by architects, becoming the primary model for pyramids built in the West during this period. Percy Bysshe Shelley described it as "one keen pyramid with wedge sublime" in "Adonaïs", his 1821 elegy for John Keats. In turn the English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy saw the pyramid during a visit to the nearby Protestant Cemetery in 1887 and was inspired to write a poem, "Rome: At the Pyramid of Cestius near the Graves of Shelley and Keats", in which he
Shelley Memorial Shelley Memorial The Shelley Memorial is a memorial to the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) at University College, Oxford, England, the college that he briefly attended and from which he was expelled for writing a pamphlet on "The Necessity of Atheism". Although Shelley was expelled from the college, he remains one of its most famous alumni and is now held in high honour there. In 2005, the college acquired some of Shelley's letters to further enhance its connection with the poet. The memorial consists of a white marble sculpture of a reclining nude and dead Shelley washed up on