Area Sacra di Largo di Torre Argentina

Four Republican temples stand below the modern street level of a square, beside the tuff base of the hall where Julius Caesar was assassinated.

Why it matters

The municipal tourism authority calls this the most extensive Republican-era complex currently visible in the city, and the label is earned. Temples A, B, C and D, built at different dates between the fourth and second centuries BC, preserve in one place the whole arc of Republican temple building, from Rome's early conquests to its overseas empire. Behind temples B and C rises the great tuff podium of the Curia of Pompey, the meeting hall of Pompey's theatre complex: here, at a session of the Senate on the Ides of March in 44 BC, Caesar was stabbed to death. The archaeological area was rediscovered in the twentieth century.

What to notice

Temple C dates to the late fourth or early third century BC and may have been dedicated to Feronia. Temple A followed in the mid-third century and may have been dedicated to Juturna; the largest, Temple D, was built in the early second century for the Lares Permarini. Temple B is circular, the only round plan in the square, and was built after a fire in 111 BC. It is identified as the temple of Fortuna Huiusce Diei; marble fragments of its cult statue are displayed at the Centrale Montemartini. Temple A was later converted into the church of San Nicola, dedicated in 1132, whose apse and fresco traces survive; the Torre del Papito also remains from the medieval streetscape. Behind Temples B and C, the tuff blocks of the Curia's podium mark the place where ancient writers located Caesar's fall at the foot of Pompey's statue. Augustus declared the hall accursed and walled it shut.

Context and history

The sacred area stood in the flood-prone Campus Martius, its four temples facing a paved square rebuilt in travertine under Domitian after a fire of AD 80. From the fifth century the ground rose around the ruins: by the eighth and ninth centuries aristocratic houses pressed against the temples, a church occupied Temple A, and towers projected from the medieval streets until everything sank beneath later paving. The complex re-emerged only in 1926, when demolitions for the new avenues ordered under Mussolini's governatorato cut into the district; excavation continued into the 1970s, and the sunken area was formally inaugurated in 1929. Identification of the temples remains uncertain enough that archaeologists keep to the letters A to D, with each dedication a reasoned hypothesis rather than a certainty.