P.’s book adds to the already large bibliography on the triumph: it engages with and can be profitably read in dialogue with many other recent publications on the triumphal route, triumphal monuments, and the triumph's role in Roman history and culture. The subtitle is an accurate description: in her investigation of buildings along the triumphal route or otherwise connected to the triumph, P. puts memory studies at the forefront. The built environment and Roman (metropolitan) identity are also key themes throughout. She introduces the idea of prospective memory to good effect: as well as memorialising past triumphs, triumphal architecture served to ‘remind Romans of what future triumphs should be like’ (p. 47). Her most distinctive contribution to current research, however, is her emphasis on spectatorship, and particularly the architecture of viewing areas as influencing both the experience of watching a triumph and how triumphs were remembered.

The introduction contains a sensible overview of the triumph (pp. 6–11), with plenty of acknowledgement of how little we know about its origins, its route, the makeup of the procession or the process of getting one. There follow a number of theoretical sections. P.’s defence of the concept of ‘collective memory’ (pp. 11–13) is particularly lucid. ‘Identity’ is treated more selectively: P. draws on insights from studies of Roman identity and ‘Romanisation’ in the provinces to consider the relationship Romans living in the capital might have had to their identity as Romans (pp. 18–22). For the triumph, a distinctively metropolitan ritual intimately concerned with the relationship between the city and its empire, this could be a fruitful approach, but P. only has space for a brief discussion.

The first chapter is devoted to the triumphal route itself. After a history of scholarship on the topic P. lays out her own position, which broadly follows that of D. Favro (‘The Street Triumphant: the Urban Impact of Roman Triumphal Parades’, in Z. Çelik et al. [edd.], Streets: Critical Perspectives on Public Space [1994], pp. 151–64; ‘Moving Events: Curating the Memory of the Roman Triumph’, in K. Galinsky [ed.], Memoria Romana [2014], pp. 85–101): there was no single, fixed route, but a series of ‘nodes’, places with strong triumphal connotations, which could be linked in various ways. The nodes themselves changed over time, and any given parade might emphasise some and skip others entirely. This solution seems highly likely, and P. makes additional arguments in its favour by considering how ritual can encompass both continuity and flexibility. But nodes play a new role here: P. emphasises not the moving procession that joined nodes (and the memories embedded within them) into larger narratives, but the experience and memories of the spectators who watched from a fixed position. For this reason, she glosses over the Porta Triumphalis, arguing that it was not a primary vantage point. Instead, she highlights the architecture of viewing areas. Her method produces good results, and could also help us understand what it would have been like to take part in the procession itself. Presumably those marching or riding would have noticed the moment they passed through the Porta Triumphalis, wherever it was; but another important feature of their experience must have been the repeated pattern of entering a theatre, piazza or stadium filled with light and cheering crowds before exiting into another dark, quiet street (cf. A. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘The Streets of Rome as a Representation of Imperial Power’, in L. de Blois et al. [edd.], The Representation and Perception of Roman Imperial Power [2003], p. 191 [cited by P. on p. 45]).

The book's remaining three chapters cover three moments in the evolution of the triumph's architectural apparatus: the deluge of monuments connected to triumphs during the period of the Punic Wars, the reign of Trajan (and in particular his monumentalisation of the Circus Maximus) and the reign of Septimius Severus. The analysis of the three periods is generally strong, but the overall effect is perplexing: why were these three periods selected and not others? Each demonstrates something different about the triumph and its architecture. For the third and second centuries bce, we see the development of ‘nodes’ crowded with competing temples. In her examination of Trajan's Circus Maximus, P. brings out convincingly the importance of the collective experience of watching a triumph and the contribution that monumentalised spectator buildings made to Roman identity. Septimius Severus, who may never have celebrated a triumph, prompts reflections on how triumphal architecture could manipulate memory, even creating ‘false memories’ of non-existent triumphs. Each approach finds resonances in the other two case studies, and the result has thematic coherence. But the overall impression is still disjointed. We do get something like a full history of buildings along the triumphal route in the form of flashbacks inserted within the individual chapters, but it seems almost impossible that the larger questions P. sets herself can be answered without more extensive consideration of other moments and periods. What of the building projects of Pompey, dwarfing all those before him? The radical changes both to the triumph and to the city under Augustus? The Colosseum? All of these are treated in flashback, but they deserve their own chapters.

Within the chronological limits she imposes, P. adopts a broad approach to what should be considered a triumphal monument. There are also a few surprising exclusions: e.g. the Temple of Venus and Rome is deemed triumphal while the temple of Antoninus and Faustina is not, without convincing explanation (pp. 141–2). In this respect, the thematic coherence suffers. Chapter 2 on the Punic Wars assimilates almost all monuments of the era as ‘triumphal’ (similarly, P. treats almost all temples as manubial, and skips over the controversy about what manubiae actually were in an endnote, which does not distinguish between the various sides of the debate [p. 203 n. 1]; for the argument that most votive victory temples were not in fact manubial, see E. Orlin, Temples, Religion, and Politics in the Roman Republic [1997]). For example, though P. notes that early arches were not tied to triumphs, she asserts that ‘they established the arch as a potent form of victory commemoration and linked these victories with the triumph by virtue of their locations along the route’ (p. 62). Note 15 (p. 204) registers her disagreement with A. Hrychuk Kontokosta, JRA 26 (2013), 7–35, on republican arches; but imperial arches too are honorific rather than triumphal, for which see esp. F.S. Kleiner, The Arch of Nero in Rome (1985). Moreover, P.'s appeal to the route raises a chicken-and-egg paradox: did generals and others build their monuments at these spots because they were on the triumphal route, or did the triumphal route pass through these nodes because they were Rome's most frequented and monumentalised spaces, on non-triumph as well as triumph days? Even the sections on the Circus Maximus are arguably hindered by too strict a focus on the triumph: the textual and visual evidence she cites for the overwhelming experience a full Circus must have offered mostly relates to venationes, gladiatorial games and chariot races. P. has diminished the impact of some of her conclusions about monuments, memory and identity by tying them too closely to the single circumstance of the triumph. There are clear connections between these buildings, the triumph and (for example) the Roman culture of victory, but they need to be more subtly drawn. P.’s methodology, particularly her use of memory studies, would be well suited to exploring them, but her focus on the triumph skews her analysis.