Largo di Torre Argentina

Historic · Rione PignaRome,Italy

Four Republican temples sunk below a Rome traffic junction, one of them the oldest standing in the city, beside the hall where Caesar was stabbed.

Largo di Torre Argentina is a sunken block of ruins in the middle of a traffic junction, and it holds four temples of the Roman Republic standing side by side. They are called A, B, C and D, because nobody could name them. Temple C, at the back, was raised in the early third century BC and is the oldest temple building still standing in the city. Temple B is round, with six of its columns still up. The square was dug for a new development, and the plan was dropped once the temples appeared. At the eastern edge, behind the round temple, a low platform of brick and concrete is what is left of the hall where the senate was sitting on 15 March 44 BC, when Julius Caesar was stabbed. It is not in the Roman Forum, and there is nothing grand marking it: a patch of ground with cats asleep on the warm stone. Until 2023 you could only look down from the railings. A raised wooden walkway now runs down among them, and a cat shelter that has worked here since the 1990s occupies one corner.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The view from the railings is free and takes in the whole site — you can see all four temples from the pavement on any side, and going down mainly buys you the walk between them.
Photograph the round temple in the morning — the sun comes over the buildings on the east side first and lights the six standing columns while the rest of the pit is still in shadow.
Expect noise rather than quiet — this is one of the city's busiest bus and tram interchanges, and the ruins sit in the middle of it with traffic on all four sides.

Things to do

1
Walk the wooden walkway at the foot of the temples
The wooden walkway drops you to ancient ground level and runs behind the temples rather than in front of them. From down there the podiums stand above your head, the tufa blocks are close enough to touch, and the traffic noise arrives from somewhere above and behind you.
2
Stand on the spot where Caesar was killed
Go to the far side of the pit, behind the round temple, on the side facing the Teatro Argentina. Look there for the low platform of brick and concrete. That is the surviving floor of the hall where the senate was meeting on the morning Caesar was stabbed. There is no monument and no marker, only a plain foundation with weeds and cats on it.
3
Go into the cat shelter
The entrance is at street level in the corner of the site, down a short stair. Inside, volunteers keep the animals that cannot live outside — the old, the blind, the three-legged — in a room built into the wall of the excavation. It is free, it takes ten minutes, and they are glad of visitors.