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
Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet of Castle Goring (21 June 1731 – 6 January 1815) was the grandfather of English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley was born in Newark, Essex County, Province of New Jersey (present-day United States) on 21 June 1731. He became rich and influential due to a combination of marriages to women from other influential families and his own family's wealth. In the 1790s, following the death of his second wife, he built a magnificent country house, Castle Goring, which he intended to be the family seat. He was created 1st