The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Trajan Pro vs Cinzel
Two all-capitals serifs cut from the same stone: the inscription at the base of Trajan's Column in Rome. Trajan Pro is Carol Twombly's 1989 Adobe Originals interpretation, drawn from a full-size rubbing of the first-century carving and now a fixture of film posters and book jackets, while Cinzel is Natanael Gama's 2012 open-source take on the same Roman capitals, built on classical proportions but with a deliberately contemporary feel.
Trajan Pro is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Cinzel, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Trajan Pro →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- Trajan Pro is a commercial Adobe font, available through an Adobe Fonts subscription or as a perpetual license from Fontspring at $169 for the six-style family, whereas Cinzel is free under the SIL Open Font License on Google Fonts.
- Trajan Pro 3 spans six weights from Extralight to Black and adds Greek and Cyrillic, while Cinzel ships as a single variable font with a weight axis from 400 to 900 and Latin coverage only.
- Trajan sticks close to the carved original and reads as a faithful incised revival, while Cinzel sharpens and modernises the forms and pairs with a companion display face, Cinzel Decorative, for flourished titling.
- Neither family has a true lowercase: Trajan Pro places small caps in the lowercase slots, and Cinzel is likewise an all-capitals design, so both are built for titles and short display settings rather than running text.
Trajan Pro
Reach for Trajan Pro when the brief calls for the authentic classical authority of the original, the full weight range from Extralight to Black, or Greek and Cyrillic coverage, and the licensing fee fits the budget.
Cinzel
Reach for Cinzel when you need that Roman-inscription gravitas on the web or in print at no cost, with a single variable file that scales smoothly from regular to black for headings, posters, and logotypes.