The so-called Temple of Vesta is a small circular Roman temple (so a tholos) in Tivoli, Italy, dating to the early 1st century BC. Its ruins are dramatically sited on the acropolis of the Etruscan and Roman city,[1] overlooking the falls of the Aniene and a picturesque narrow gully.
Drawing of a 19th-century "Tivoli order" capital, reconstructing those of the temple
The temple's capitals have been much admired and imitated and their variation of the Corinthian order sometimes called the "Tivoli order". They have two rows of acanthus leaves, and its abacus is decorated with oversize fleurons in the form of hibiscus flowers (probably intended to be Hibiscus syriacus) with pronounced spiral pistils. The column flutes have flat tops. The frieze exhibits fruit swags suspended between bucrania. Above each swag is a rosette. The cornice does not have modillions.
It is not known for certain to whom the temple was dedicated, whether to Hercules, the protecting god of Tibur, or to Albunea, the Tiburtine Sibyl, or to Tiburnus, the eponymous hero of the city, or to Vesta herself, whose more familiar circular peripteral Temple of Vesta is to be seen in the Roman Forum. A rectangular temple stands nearby, equally difficult to attribute, often called the Temple of the Sibyl.[2]
The name of the builder or restorer of the Temple of Vesta is Lucius Gellius, memorialized in the inscription on the architrave. The peripteral temple in a variant of the Corinthian order surrounds its circular cella, which is raised on a high[3] brick podium clad in blocks of travertine: the cella has a door and two windows. The ambulacrum that surrounds the cella had eighteen Corinthian columns (ten remain standing).
The comparatively good condition of the temple is owing to its Christianization as a church, "Santa Maria della Rotonda".[4] The Christian accretions had already disappeared in the 16th century.
The rich order was admired and often copied
Careful measured drawings of the 'Temple of Vesta" were published by Antoine Desgodetz (1682)[5] who gave elevation and plan as well as carefully rendered details of the carved capitals and the frieze. in the following century both Giuseppe Vasi and Giovanni Battista Piranesi made etchings and engravings of the "Temple of Vesta".
Imitations
One of the capitalsSoane's 1805 design for the Bank of England, painted by Joseph Gandy
The "Temple of Vesta" has provided a model for numerous structures. These range from orthodox replicas in landscaped gardens to variants using only some aspects of its detailing.
Perhaps the earliest example in England is the Temple of Venus at Garendon Hall, Leicestershire which dates from the 1730s.[6] The English architect Sir John Soane visited the temple and made drawings which he used as comparative examples in his lectures.[7] His 1805 design for a corner of the Bank of England in London became known as 'Tivoli Corner'.[8] Other examples in England include General Pitt River's 1890 Temple of Vesta at Rushmore House (now Sandroyd School) in Wiltshire;[9]William Kent's "Temple of Ancient Virtue" at Stowe; and Sir William Chambers' "Temple of Solitude" at Kew.
In Northern Ireland, the Mussenden Temple at Downhill was built by Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, in the style of the temple. In 1777, he attempted to buy the Temple of Vesta and bring it back to Downhill, but Pope Pius VI would not accede to the proposal.[10]
In northern California, a version of the temple was set as a landscape feature in the English tradition. The "Sunol Water Temple" was designed in 1910 by California architect Willis Polk for the Spring Valley Water Company to mark the spot in California's Sunol Valley where the waters came together to supply San Francisco.[11]
The Corinthian order is the last developed and most ornate of the three principal classical orders of Ancient Greek architecture and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric order which was the earliest, followed by the Ionic order. In Ancient Greek architecture, the Corinthian order follows the Ionic in almost all respects other than the capitals of the columns, though this changed in Roman architecture.
Ancient Greek architecture came from the Greek-speaking people whose culture flourished on the Greek mainland, the Peloponnese, the Aegean Islands, and in colonies in Anatolia and Italy for a period from about 900 BC until the 1st century AD, with the earliest remaining architectural works dating from around 600 BC.
The Doric order was one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of columns. Originating in the western Doric region of Greece, it is the earliest and, in its essence, the simplest of the orders, though still with complex details in the entablature above.
The Ionic order is one of the three canonic orders of classical architecture, the other two being the Doric and the Corinthian. There are two lesser orders: the Tuscan, and the rich variant of Corinthian called the composite order. Of the three classical canonic orders, the Corinthian order has the narrowest columns, followed by the Ionic order, with the Doric order having the widest columns.
Tivoli is a town and comune in Lazio, central Italy, 30 kilometres north-east of Rome, at the falls of the Aniene river where it issues from the Sabine hills. The city offers a wide view over the Roman Campagna.
The sibyls were prophetesses or oracles in Ancient Greece. The sibyls prophesied at holy sites. A sibyl at Delphi has been dated to as early as the eleventh century BC by Pausanias when he described local traditions in his writings from the second century AD. At first, there appears to have been only a single sibyl. By the fourth century BC, there appear to have been at least three more, Phrygian, Erythraean, and Hellespontine. By the first century BC, there were at least ten sibyls, located in Greece, Italy, the Levant, and Asia Minor.
The Temple of Portunus is a Roman temple located in Rome, Italy. It was built beside the Forum Boarium, the Roman cattle market associated with Hercules, which was adjacent to Rome's oldest river port and the oldest stone bridge across the Tiber River, the Pons Aemilius. It was probably dedicated to the gateway god Portunus although the precise dedication remains unclear as there were several other temples in the area besides his. It was misidentified as the Temple of Fortuna Virilis from the Renaissance and remains better known by this name. The temple is one of the best preserved of all Roman temples.
Ancient Roman temples were among the most important buildings in Roman culture, and some of the richest buildings in Roman architecture, though only a few survive in any sort of complete state. Today they remain "the most obvious symbol of Roman architecture". Their construction and maintenance was a major part of ancient Roman religion, and all towns of any importance had at least one main temple, as well as smaller shrines. The main room (cella) housed the cult image of the deity to whom the temple was dedicated, and often a table for supplementary offerings or libations and a small altar for incense. Behind the cella was a room or rooms used by temple attendants for storage of equipment and offerings. The ordinary worshiper rarely entered the cella, and most public ceremonies were performed outside where the sacrificial altar was located, on the portico, with a crowd gathered in the temple precinct.
Greek temples were structures built to house deity statues within Greek sanctuaries in ancient Greek religion. The temple interiors did not serve as meeting places, since the sacrifices and rituals dedicated to the respective ouranic deity took place outside them, within the wider precinct of the sanctuary, which might be large. Temples were frequently used to store votive offerings. They are the most important and most widespread building type in Greek architecture. In the Hellenistic kingdoms of Southwest Asia and of North Africa, buildings erected to fulfill the functions of a temple often continued to follow the local traditions. Even where a Greek influence is visible, such structures are not normally considered as Greek temples. This applies, for example, to the Graeco-Parthian and Bactrian temples, or to the Ptolemaic examples, which follow Egyptian tradition. Most Greek temples were oriented astronomically.
The Forum Boarium was the cattle market or forum venalium of ancient Rome. It was located on a level piece of land near the Tiber between the Capitoline, the Palatine and Aventine hills. As the site of the original docks of Rome and adjacent to the Pons Aemilius, the earliest stone bridge across the Tiber, the Forum Boarium experienced intense commercial activity.
The Temple of Caesar or Temple of Divus Iulius, also known as Temple of the Deified Julius Caesar, delubrum, heroon or Temple of the Comet Star, is an ancient structure in the Roman Forum of Rome, Italy, located near the Regia and the Temple of Vesta.
The Temple of Vesta, or the aedes, is an ancient edifice in Rome, Italy. The temple is located in the Roman Forum near the Regia and the House of the Vestal Virgins. The Temple of Vesta housed Vesta's holy fire, which was a symbol of Rome's safety and prosperity. The temple has a circular footprint, making it a tholos.
The Temple of Hercules Victor or Hercules Olivarius is a Roman temple in Piazza Bocca della Verità, the former Forum Boarium cattle market of ancient Rome. It is a tholos, a round temple of Greek 'peripteral' design completely surrounded by a colonnade. This layout caused it to be mistaken for a temple of Vesta until it was correctly identified by Napoleon's Prefect of Rome, Camille de Tournon.
Bucranium was a form of carved decoration commonly used in Classical architecture. The name is generally considered to originate with the practice of displaying garlanded, sacrificial oxen, whose heads were displayed on the walls of temples, a practice dating back to the sophisticated Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in eastern Anatolia, where cattle skulls were overlaid with white plaster.
The Temple of Hadrian is an ancient Roman structure on the Campus Martius in Rome, Italy, dedicated to the deified emperor Hadrian by his adoptive son and successor Antoninus Pius in 145 CE This temple was previously known as the Basilica of Neptune but has since been properly attributed as the Temple of Hadrian completed under Antoninus Pius. With one cella wall and eleven columns from the external colonnade surviving, the remains of the temple have been incorporated into a later building in the Piazza di Pietra, whereby its facade, alongside the architrave which was reconstructed later on, was incorporated into a 17th-century papal palace by Carlo Fontana, now occupied by Rome's Chamber of commerce. While only part of the structure remains, excavations and scholarship have provided us with information regarding its construction techniques and stylistic influences, helping us recreate the building dynamics and significance of the Temple of Hadrian in Imperial Rome.
The Valle dei Templi, or Valley of the Temples, is an archaeological site in Agrigento, Sicily. It is one of the most outstanding examples of ancient Greek art and architecture of Magna Graecia, and is one of the main attractions of Sicily. The term "valley" is a misnomer, the site being located on a ridge outside the town of Agrigento.
A tholos, from Ancient Greek θόλος, meaning "conical roof", or dome), in Latin tholus, is an architectural feature that was widely used in the classical world. It is a round structure, usually built upon a couple of steps, with a ring of columns supporting a domed roof. It differs from a monopteros, a circular colonnade supporting a roof but without any walls, which therefore does not have a cella. Both these types are sometimes called a rotunda.
The Sanctuary of Hercules Victor in Tivoli (Italy) was one of the major complexes of the Roman Republican era built on the wave of the Hellenistic cultural influence after the final Roman conquest of Greece. It was built just outside the ancient city of Tibur and is the largest of Italic sanctuaries dedicated to Hercules, and the second in the whole Mediterranean after that of Cádiz in Spain. It was built between about 120 and 82 BC and was a masterpiece of Roman engineering with many innovations. Further building was done in the Augustan period especially in the theatre area. Augustus administered justice here on numerous occasions, under the arcades of the sanctuary.
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