Discover Largo di Torre Argentina

The Area Sacra di Largo Argentina is an archaeological area in the centre of Rome containing four temples of the Roman Republic, the remains of the Curia of Pompey, and the medieval Torre del Papito. It sits several metres below the modern street, in a rectangular excavation surrounded on all four sides by the traffic of Largo di Torre Argentina.

The temples are known as A, B, C and D. The Sovrintendenza Capitolina, which owns and runs the site, uses those letters deliberately: they are conventional labels adopted in assenza di una identificazione certa — in the absence of a certain identification. Proposed dedications exist for all four and are given here as proposals, because that is how the site authority gives them.

The area was found during demolition work in 1926 and formally inaugurated on 21 April 1929. It stayed a look-down site until 20 June 2023, when a walkway opened that allows visitors to move through the excavation at close range.

This is republican architecture, which looks different from the Rome most visitors picture. The imperial city is marble, scale and standing columns. What survives here is the layer underneath it: podia, the lower drums of columns, steps and paving, in tufa and travertine rather than imported marble.

The four temples do not share a plan, which is the most interesting thing about the group. Temple B is round — a tholos, with its columns on a circular podium — and sits immediately beside the rectangular podia of its neighbours. Temple C is the oldest and the lowest, built directly on the original surface of earth and gravel, so the later paving runs above its original level. The sequence is legible from the walkway in a way it never was from the railings: you can see that the floor of the sanctuary was raised twice, after two fires, and that the temples were left standing through both.

The medieval layer has not been stripped away either. The apse wall of San Nicola, the church built inside Temple A, still stands at the eastern side with its Romanesque decoration, which makes the site one of the clearer places in Rome to see a church sitting literally inside a temple.

Three building levels, two of them the result of fire. The sanctuary was not designed as a set; it accumulated across roughly two centuries and was then twice re-floored around the buildings that already stood in it.

The earliest surface was earth and gravel, and Temple C was built on it. After the fire of 111 BCE a pavement of tufa slabs was laid, probably in the aftermath. The fire under Domitian in 80 CE brought the most thorough rebuilding: the area was repaved in travertine and the porticoes around it were rebuilt. That travertine is the surface visitors walk beside today.

The consequence is that the temples sit at slightly different relations to the ground. Temple C is on the oldest level and the Domitianic paving runs higher than its original floor, which is why the site reads as a stack rather than a plan — each fire raised the ground and left the buildings where they were.

Can you go inside, or only look from the street? You can go inside. A walkway opened on 20 June 2023 and runs down into the excavation. A lot of published guidance predates it and still says otherwise.

Is this where Caesar was killed? The Sovrintendenza records the remains of the Curia of Pompey here. Wikipedia states that Caesar was assassinated in the Curia of Pompey and that the spot where he is believed to have died is in this square. The site authority itself does not make the claim in those words, which is why this page attributes it.

What are the temples called? A, B, C and D. The Sovrintendenza uses letters because there is no certain identification; the proposed dedications are Feronia, Fortuna huiusce diei, Juturna and the Lares Permarini, and all four are proposals.

Is it free? Free if you are resident in Rome and can show ID. EUR 7 otherwise, EUR 4 reduced.

Do I need to book? Not as an individual, but the Sovrintendenza asks for advance purchase and caps sales at five tickets at a time. Groups of 5 to 25 must reserve on 060608 and pre-buy at least five tickets.

How long does it take? About 45 minutes to walk the circuit and read the four temples in sequence.

What about the cats? The shelter has been in the ruins since 1993 and is not run by the Sovrintendenza, whose pages do not mention it.