Although the emperor’s wreath is omnipresent in Roman art, little attention has been paid to it in classical scholarship, a gap filled by the present work. With recourse to archaeological and written sources, form, function and meaning of the wreaths in (primarily) imperial portraits are, for the first time, analysed and interpreted systematically. The main subject are laurel and oak wreaths. Their employment in cult, triumphs and the military domain is studied, as well as the development of a particular oak wreath, the so-called corona civica , into the imperial wreath par excellence.