Il Tempio dei divi Traiano e Plotina e i suoi disiecta membra: novità dalle indagini a Palazzo Valentini
In: Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma: 122, 2021
DOI: 10.48255/J.BCAR.CXXII.2021.10
The excavations of Città Metropolitana di Roma Capitale in the cellars on the S and W sides of Palazzo Valentini have revealed a series of structures belonging to a large building, whose brick stamps date from the early Hadrianic period. Massive foundation structures and a system of sloping and barrel vaults, linked on the N side to underground rooms covered by cross vaults, allow the authors to reconstruct the podium of a temple lying immediately to the north and in line with Trajan’s Forum. This building is presumably the Templum divi Traiani et divae Plotinae, which Hadrian dedicated to his adoptive parents. The remains suggest that it was a peripteral building with an octastyle front on the S side, rising from a high podium accessible through a staircase. Its most distinctive architectural elements are huge gray and red granite column shafts 50 feet high, white marble Corinthian capitals, cornices, a fragment of frieze with the figure of a griffin. In the adjacent area, presumably arranged on the level of the square of Trajan’s Forum, the temple was certainly surrounded by a temenos decorated by a protruding colonnade, open to the court of Trajan’s Column and probably to the outside.