The exact location, layout and appearance of the temple has been identified from its depiction on fragments 15a-c and 16a of the Severan Marble Plan. The Temple of Peace was a key part of this memorialisation (for general discussion of Flavian building in the city of Rome, see Darwall-Smith, Emperors and Architecture Packer, “Plurima et Amplissima Opera,” p. 167-98). As part of a campaign to systematically ‘restore’ public land to the Roman people, Vespasian began a lengthy building project that sought to permanently erase the physical remains of Nero’s profligacy whilst also memorialising the presence and achievements of the new ruling dynasty. When he arrived, he found Rome physically and financially burdened by the memory of Nero and the uncertainty caused by the civil war large swathes of public land had been seized by Nero in order to create his vast ‘Golden House’ and its associated parklands, including the artificial lake that became the site of the Colosseum (for Nero’s building projects in Rome, see Philips, “Nero’s new city”, p. 300-307 Darwall-Smith, Emperors and Architecture, p. 17-33). Excavations in 2005 revealed the original pink and white marble floor of the temple complex.Īlthough acclaimed emperor on the 22 nd December 69 CE, Vespasian did not arrive in the capital city until October of the following year (Tacitus, Histories, IV.3). The marble plan also reveals that there were six rows on each side, made up of four linked rectangles, that may have served as garden beds for a monumental botanical garden or as water canals connected to fountains. An altar appears to have stood within the open square enclosure, in front of the entrance to the temple. The front of the temple was made up of six columns that stood within the surrounding colonnade, but made distinct from the other columns from their larger proportions, and which were topped by a triangular pediment. A cult statue of Pax stood in the centre of its back wall. The central, apsidal hall that opened into the back wall, almost as an exhedra, is identified as the ‘temple’ of Peace. The complex has largely disappeared, although its depiction in a surviving fragment of the Marble Plan ( forma urbis) makes it possible to reconstruct the basic appearance: the large, open square of the enclosure dominated the space, surrounded by a porticus adjoined by five rooms that opened onto the south-eastern colonnade. The back of the temple faced the Velian hill. Rectangular enclosure laid out along the same alignment as the Forum of Augustus, to which it faces but from which it was originally separated by the Argiletum.
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