Temple of the Sun

Palladio's sketch

Andrea Palladio in the 16th century (he visited Rome three times in the 1540s) drew the remains of a large complex east of the via Lata, which the German historian Christian Hülsen attributed to the Temple of the Sun. This complex consisted of a rectangular site surrounded by colonnades, which was split into two parts.

A first courtyard (55m x 75m) had the short sides made up of two hemicycles and the walls were adorned with two orders of columns framing niches; the arched entrances were framed by giant columns for the courtyard's entire height. A small square room (15m x 15m) separated it from a second larger courtyard (130m x 90m), placed on the same axis, with three rectangular niches open on the long sides (the two lateral ones were wider, with two entrances each with columns and equipped with a small apse) and three other niches on the short side at the courtyard's end, the central niche was semicircular, while the lateral ones were rectangular, and all three possessing two-column entrances.

In the centre of this space was a tholos or circular building, some 25 metres across (from the lowest of the three steps), presumed to have been the temple. There are sixteen columns outside the cella, which is some 10 metres across, and has two entrances. Justinian I took eight porphyry columns from it, 6.88 m high, for Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. However, the identification of this complex as the Sun Temple is uncertain. The Arch of Portugal is believed to have been one of the entrances to the temple site.

If still in use by the late 4th-century, the temple would have been closed during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire.