Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus

• 1. Introduction

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  The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus stood at the top of the Capitoline Hill in Ancient Rome, and for nearly a thousand years it was the most important religious structure in the Roman world. It was built, burned, and rebuilt four separate times. It hosted generals returning from conquest, sheltered sacred prophetic texts called the Sibylline Books, and witnessed the chaos of civil war. Julius Caesar's assassins took refuge inside its walls. Domitian covered its roof in thousands of talents of gold. And in the early 6th century, a writer named Cassiodorus still called it one of the wonders of the world. How did a temple first dedicated in 509 BC endure for so long? What did it look like, and what did it mean to the people who prayed inside it? And what finally brought it down?

• 2. Foundations of a Kingdom

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  King Lucius Tarquinius Priscus vowed to build the temple while fighting the Sabines, and it was he who began the enormous earth-moving work needed to level the Capitoline Hill. Modern coring at the site has confirmed just how extensive that preparation was. Much of the Cappellaccio tufa forming the foundation was likely quarried directly from the ground as workers dug and levelled the site.

  Before construction could begin in earnest, existing shrines had to be removed. When augurs performed the rites asking permission to clear them, two gods refused to leave: Terminus, the god of boundaries, and Juventas. Their shrines were folded into the new structure instead. The refusal of Terminus was read as a favorable omen, a sign that Rome's boundaries would hold. A second portent came from the dig itself: workers found a human head buried in the foundations. Augurs brought in from Etruria interpreted it as a sign that Rome was destined to be the head of a great empire.

  Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the last King of Rome, completed the foundations and most of the superstructure, though he never saw the temple dedicated. According to Livy, that honor fell to Marcus Horatius Pulvillus, one of the two consuls elected for the first year of the new Roman Republic. The consuls drew lots to decide who would perform the dedication; the duty fell to Horatius. Livy places this dedication on the 13th of September in 509 BC, though Dionysius of Halicarnassus argues the consecration happened two years later, in 507 BC. Horatius held the consulship in both years, which is why the dispute has never been fully settled.

  In 495 BC, the Latins sent a crown of gold to the temple as a mark of gratitude to Rome for releasing 6,000 Latin prisoners.

• 3. The Etruscan Blueprint

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  Etruscan specialists were brought in to build parts of this temple, including the making and painting of terracotta antefixes and other decorative elements. The result was a building that set the template for sacred architecture across Italy for centuries.

  The temple was organized around a triad of gods. Juno Regina occupied the left cella, Minerva the right, and Jupiter Optimus Maximus the center. On top of the roof, serving as an acroterion, stood a terracotta sculpture of Jupiter driving a quadriga, a chariot pulled by four horses. Both that sculpture and the cult statue inside the main cella were attributed to Vulca of Veii, an Etruscan artisan. The cult statue showed Jupiter standing, holding a thunderbolt, dressed in a tunica palmata decorated with palm leaves and a toga picta dyed purple with gold-thread designs. That costume later became the standard dress for Roman generals celebrating a triumph.

  The original temple decoration was discovered in 2014, and the findings gave archaeologists the first clear picture of what the building looked like in its earliest phase. Wooden roof elements and lintels were lined with terracotta revetment plaques of exceptional size, richly decorated with painted reliefs. This decorative system, called the Second Phase model, had its first full expression precisely here, and the temple immediately established a new model for sacred architecture that was adopted across temples in Italy up to the 2nd century BC.

  The original decoration was partially replaced in the early 4th century BC, and again at the end of the 3rd century into the early 2nd century BC. The removed material was not thrown away; it was dumped into the layers of earth forming the Area Capitolina, the square in front of the temple, during the mid-2nd century BC. That decision preserved it for modern archaeologists.

• 4. Fire, Plunder, and Greek Columns

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  The temple's first building burned in 83 BC, during the civil wars under Sulla's dictatorship. Lost in the fire along with the structure were the Sibylline Books, ancient prophetic texts stored inside the temple and guarded by a council of fifteen, the quindecimviri, to be consulted only in state emergencies.

  Sulla set about recovering materials for the reconstruction even before the fire was out. While looting Athens in 86 BC, he seized enormous unfinished columns from the Temple of Zeus and shipped them back to Rome. Whether entire columns were used in the rebuilt temple remains uncertain; the columns from the Temple of Zeus were extraordinarily long and may have been too large. Scholars suggest that either only the capitals were reused, or that the columns came from an older Peisistratid temple on the same site. Sulla hoped to live to see the rebuilt temple dedicated, but he did not. The honor of dedicating the second building went to Quintus Lutatius Catulus Capitolinus, in 69 BC.

  The second temple was built on the same foundations and plan as the first, but with more expensive materials. Literary sources indicate it was not fully completed until the late 60s BC. Around 65 AD the three new cult statues were finished. The chryselephantine statue of Jupiter was sculpted by Apollonius of Athens. It showed Jupiter seated, holding a thunderbolt and scepter, and possibly an image of the goddess Roma as well. Replicas made for other temples of Jupiter in Roman colonies mean its appearance is reasonably well understood today.

  The second building's end came on the 19th of December in 69 AD, during the Year of the Four Emperors, when forces loyal to Vespasian fought their way onto the Capitoline Hill. Brutus and the other assassins of Julius Caesar had locked themselves inside an earlier version of this structure after the killing, and now once again war came to the temple's doorstep.

• 5. Vespasian, Titus, Domitian

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  Vespasian rebuilt quickly. The third temple rose on the same foundations but reached higher than its predecessors, featuring a Corinthian order and an elaborate sculptural program: a quadriga on the gable and figures of Victory driving bigae on either side at the base of the roof. It was dedicated in 75 AD.

  It lasted only five years. The third temple burned during the reign of Titus in 80 AD.

  Domitian began rebuilding immediately, again on the same foundations, and this time with the most lavish superstructure yet. Plutarch records that Domitian used at least twelve thousand talents of gold for the gilding of the bronze roof tiles alone. The pediment carried elaborate sculpture described in part by a Renaissance drawing of a damaged relief now in the Louvre Museum. That drawing shows a quadriga beside a biga at the highest point of the pediment, with statues of Mars and Venus at the corners of the cornice. In the center of the pediment Jupiter sat flanked by Juno and Minerva, all three enthroned. Below them an eagle spread its wings. On either side, a biga driven by the sun god and a biga driven by the moon framed the divine trio.

  Domitian's building was completed in 82 AD. He had personal reasons to feel attached to this site: during the fighting that destroyed the second temple, Domitian had hidden in the dog handler's living quarters within the precinct of the Area Capitolina to escape the forces of Vitellius.

• 6. The Long Decline

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  Domitian's temple stood more or less intact for over three hundred years. In the 4th century, the writer Ammianus Marcellinus described it as "the Capitolium, with which revered Rome elevates herself to eternity, the whole world beholds nothing more magnificent."

  In 392 Emperor Theodosius I ordered all pagan temples closed. The damage accumulated gradually after that. Stilicho, according to Zosimus, removed the gold that adorned the doors. In 455, during the Vandal sack of Rome, Procopius states that half the gilded bronze roof tiles were stripped away. In 571, Narses removed statues and ornaments. Yet the structure persisted. In 1447, the humanist Poggio Bracciolini visited Rome and found the ruins still well preserved.

  The final destruction came in the 16th century, when Giovanni Pietro Caffarelli built a palace on the site, the Palazzo Caffarelli.

  Today, portions of the podium and foundations survive. They can be seen behind the Palazzo dei Conservatori, in an exhibition area built in the Caffarelli Garden, within the Musei Capitolini, and along the via del Tempio di Giove. Because each successive temple was built on the same foundations, some of what survives may partly date back to the very first building of 509 BC. In the late 16th century, the sculptor Flaminio Vacca used a capital from the temple to carve the second Medici lion, one of the most recognizable pieces from this site to survive in recognizable form.

• 7. The Sacred Precinct

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  Surrounding the temple on the southern part of the Capitoline Hill was the Area Capitolina, an enclosed precinct with irregular retaining walls that followed the natural contours of the hill. It was enlarged in 388 BC to about 3,000 square meters.

  The main entrance, where the Clivus Capitolinus road ended, was on the center of the southeast side. A secondary entrance called the Porta Pandana also existed; both gates were closed at night. Guards during the Imperial period were dogs kept by a temple attendant. The famous sacred geese of Juno, credited with raising the alarm during the Gallic siege of Rome, were also kept within this precinct.

  Beneath the ground level of the precinct lay underground chambers called favissae, which held damaged building materials, old votive offerings, and dedicated objects unfit for display. It was religiously prohibited to disturb them. Above ground, the precinct held numerous shrines, altars, statues, and victory trophies accumulated over centuries. Some plebeian and tribal assemblies met here.

  In late antiquity the precinct became a market for luxury goods, a function it retained into the medieval period. In a letter from 468, Sidonius Apollinaris describes a shopper inside the precinct negotiating the price of gems, silk, and fine fabrics, a detail that shows how thoroughly the old religious center had been repurposed even before the temple itself fell.