#roman temples

[trailofleaves]

Amid the ruins of a Roman Temple, Hardin, Lebanon, May 2025

[thetelesterion]

Some Minecraft builds from the Roman section of a polytheist server I'm in :) (built by me)

[asdaricus]

Roman Ruins AI Art by Midjourney, most in the style of Hubert Robert or David Roberts

[jg-sims-build]

After waiting for a bit to fix my computer and receive all the necessary hardware, I have finally returned to building. For now, I’m in a Roman mood so Latium is going to be my hyperfixation.

The first four buildings are the temples, which received some much needed minor changes. I switched to a new roof type that had a white, bordered pattern. This will help distinguish the pediment and make it pop. The white border also means I can color the pediments.

The temples represent four different facade styles. The Temple of Caesar has but one large medallion in the center. The Temple of Castor and Pollux has a plain, design-less pediment. The Temple of Saturn has a painted pediment consisting of three medallions (one large, two small), and the Temple of Concord has an entabulature built from statues, a la the Parthenon.

The last two pictures are a city block in progress, one of several I hope to dot the Latium city center with. They’re insulae, Roman apartment buildings. Now, this represents the upper limit to the size of the insulae shell buildings, but it’ll give you a rough idea of what they’re supposed to look like in general. The insulae have stores at the bottom (whether functional or decorative is to be determined).

The upper floors are where the residential LN apartment unit will be located. Most of the insulae I would build will be cheap housing, while at least one will be a rabbit hole for the diner and another will be an actual house for a household that’s basically several dysfunctional sitcom tenants.

[lenoreeulalie]

Temple of Apollo,Side.

Healing,light and poetry.

[lostprofile]

CONVERSIONS II: The Temple of the Divine Antoninus Pius and Faustina

Following her death in A.D. 140, the empress Faustina the Elder was deified by the Senate and a temple erected in her honor in the Roman Forum. When the emperor Antoninus Pius died in A.D. 161, he, too, was deified and the temple rededicated to the divine couple. The pedestal of the porphyry column placed near the temple by their adoptive sons, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, depicts their joint apotheosis on the back of a winged Victory.

The building itself is a straight-forward Roman temple, with a deep porch with freestanding monolithic columns, a tall podium, and a façade orientation. As early as the seventh century the cella was used as a church, dedicated to St Lawrence. By the 11thc, the chruch is referred to a San Lorenzo in Miranda, the latter designation usually indicating the name of the donor of the land on which the church was built. The church was awarded to the Collegio degli Speziali, or herbalist guild, in the 15th century and it remains in their custody today.

The projectng chapels of the  church were demolished in an attempt to restore the temple for Charles V’s state visit in 1536. Orazio Torriani re-organized the interior into its present configuration with the confines of the cella in 1602. As the placement of the western entrance shows, at that time the ground line was some 16 feet higher than in antiquity. The entire podium and the lower parts were of the columns were completely buried until 20thc. excavations of the Forum revealed them and the original entrance to the temple. The broken segmented pediment of the later 17th-century baroque façade is a common feature of second century Roman architecture.

The imperial cult was particularly repugnant to Christians, making the destruction of its temples an urgent priority. Despite the large, clearly-legible dedicatory inscription, the temple of the Deified Antoninus Pius and Faustina is the single surviving example of the genre and it owes thst survival entirely to the fact that it was converted very early on into a church.

[italianartsociety]

By Jean Marie Carey

On 22 October 362, a mysterious fire broke out in the temple of Apollo in Antioch, consuming the roof of the building and the statue of the god, copied from Phidias' statue of Zeus at Olympia. According to John Chrysostom, when Emperor Julian consulted the oracle of Apollo at the temple in Daphne for an explanation of this event, he learned it was because the temple had become the burial site of the new saint, Babylas. Julian had the sarcophagus of the martyr exhumed and taken back to his original place of burial. Suspecting angry Christians were responsible for the fire, Julian ordered the cathedral of Antioch closed. The remains of Babylas were reinterred in a church dedicated to him on the other side of the River Orontes.

Though part of the story may be apocryphal, the legend contains some important historical markers, including the tensions between late pagans and early Christians in the Imperial Roman outposts even as Rome itself destabilized. This is also the first known account of a saint’s remains being relocated, which will become a popular practice in the middle ages. The fire also destroyed one of the last temples of Apollo still in full ceremonial use. Because Apollo was a popular deity worshipped across the geography of the Empire, many of his temples, in various conditions, still exist across the Mediterranean.

Reference: "Antioch." In The Oxford Classical Dictionary: Oxford University Press, 2012. http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199545568.001.0001/acref-9780199545568-e-500.

Roman marble head of Apollo with fragment of his hand, 1st or 2nd century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nr: 1980.303.2.

Temple of Apollo at Sosianus, Rome, c. 43-179 BCE. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Temple of Apollo Palatinus, Rome, 36-28 BCE. Photos: Wikimedia Commons.

Temple of Apollo, Campi Flegrei, Lago d'Averno, Italy, ca. 100. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Columns of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece. A 7th century BCE temple was burned in 548 BCE. and replaced by a larger structure ca..525 BCE, which was in turn destroyed in 373 BCE.

Temple of Apollo (Monopteros) in the Englischer Garten, Munich. Built over ruins in 1832. Photo: Julius Sechundsviersig.

The Antioch Chalice, first half of 6th century, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Nr. 1970.705.2. 

Further Reading: Andrea U. De Giorgi. Ancient Antioch: From the Seleucid Era to the Islamic Conquest. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 

John W. Stamper. The Architecture of Roman Temples: The Republic to the Middle Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 

[nikkor35world]