Temple of Peace (Templum Pacis) (75 AD)
The large piece of land from the present church of St. Cosmas and Damian to the forum of Nerva only became known as the “forum” in late antique times. Before that, it was known as the Temple of Peace, as this space was occupied by a huge temple. Unfortunately, the Mussolinian Via dei Fori Imperiali cut it in two. Perhaps cars now drive over the very spot where the treasures of the Temple of Solomon were once kept.
Emperor Vespasian conceived the Temple of Peace in 71 AD and dedicated it in 75 AD, shortly after quelling riots in the troubled province of Judea. Since Roman temples were not designed for religious service (ceremonies of this kind were usually held in the open air), they took on many other functions.
The Temple of Peace, for example, served as a library, art museum, and bank. The temple housed the spoils and booty from the Temple of Jerusalem (including the famous seven-handled candlestick, the menorah) and numerous works of art brought by Nero from Greece and Asia to decorate the Golden House (Domus Aurea).
In addition, the richest people of Rome deposited gold and silver objects in the temple. The bank was not the most reliable place to store money – at the end of the reign of Emperor Commodus (about 191), the entire neighborhood around the temple burned down, leaving the Roman rich without their savings.
During the Severus dynasty (late 2nd – early 3rd century AD), a wall was added to the temple, on which the so-called Capitoline Plan of the city was placed. It was a huge topographical map on a scale of 1:240, created, according to our concepts, upside down – north at the bottom, south at the top.
The first fragments of it began to be found in the mid-16th century, and more than a thousand have been found so far. Unfortunately, that’s only 10 percent of the map. The Capitoline Marble Plan is known in scholarly literature by many names, of which the most famous is the New Latin, Forma Urbis Romae (image of the city of Rome).
It is shortened into the not-so-successful word fur – for the ancient Romans it was an insulting word for “thief”. The fragments of the Capitoline Plan are kept in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, part of the Capitoline Museums.
It is not known from which side the main approach to the temple was located. In the 4th century the temple was destroyed for the construction of the Church of St. Cosmas and Damian.
Forum of Nerva (Foro di Nerva) (97 AD)
An even less enviable fate fell to the Forum of Nerva. Firstly, like the Temple of Peace, it was largely under the asphalt of the Via dei Fori Imperiali. Secondly, it was at once not a full-fledged forum – its construction extended and decorated the unsightly but ancient street Argilet, so that it turned out not a square, but something like a passageway with dimensions of 120 by 45 meters.
The forum was called with equal frequency both by the name of Emperor Nerva and simply “Passage Forum” (Forum Transitorium). Thirdly, the name of Emperor Nerva it got by accident – Nerva only dedicated it (in the beginning of 97 AD), and it was built under Domitian, the last emperor of the Flavian dynasty.
A piece of the wall of this half-forum is still standing today. The wall is deliberately made in the same style as the Forum of Augustus, only the stones are larger. A long colonnade of about twenty columns once ran along it all along the southeast side of the forum. It framed the entrance to the Temple of Peace. Now two columns with a piece of frieze remain.
They stand in a prominent position where Via Cavour forms a T-junction with Via dei Fori Imperiali. The frieze depicts women engaged in everyday domestic tasks, and even higher up is a relief depicting the goddess Minerva.
In the Forum of Nerva, like all the others, stood a temple. Emperor Domitian was a devout admirer of the goddess Minerva and had the temple built in her honor, of course. Shortly before Domitian was successfully assassinated, Minerva is said to have appeared to him in a dream and sadly told him that she could no longer protect him because Jupiter had disarmed her.
The temple stood for a very long time, until 1606 and Renaissance artists managed to sketch it. Then Pope Paul V dismantled it for building materials for the monumental Acqua Paola fountain, which marked the reopening of the aqueduct laid by Emperor Trajan.
In the Forum of Nerva stood a statue of the four-faced Janus. Emperor Alexander Sever installed there statues of those emperors to whom the Senate posthumously granted divine status. A large part of the forum has not yet been excavated, so some surprising discoveries cannot be ruled out.
