Things I missed the first time: Venus and Roma

It's massive, it's part of the Roman Forum, and it's right across from the Colosseum (from where I took this photo). It's the Temple of Venus and Roma, and we missed going in because it only opened to the public a week or so after we left Rome, following 26 years of restoration work. It was a double temple, dedicated the to the goddesses Venus Felix and Roma (the personification of the city of Rome). The statues of the two goddesses sat back to back in two cella - the space you can see here is the cella of Venus, who faced towards the Colosseum, while Roma faced the Forum.

From what I can gather, the top grassed level is how big the temple was, with a double row of columns all round. The columns further to the right (and there are more out of frame on the left, were a side portico, and part of the complex, but separate to the temple. You can see a man and truck on the right where the grass slopes down to the next level, which gives you some idea of the scale of the structure. Like I said - massive.

The statues of the goddesses, each seated in her cella, were apparently so large that they wouldn't have been able to stand up straight in the building if they chose to do so! In fact, a celebrated architect of the time, invited by the Emperor Hadrian (who designed the temple) to comment, said as much, and was banished and later executed for his honesty (apparently he and Hadrian had some history, and he wasn't impressed with other of Hadrian's designs - perhaps not a wise position when the person you are criticising has the power of life and death over you).

If it was all Hadrian's idea, he was a pretty clever bloke. Roma's relevance to the city is obvious - she is the city. But what is the significance of Venus? Well - Venus (known as Aphrodite by the Greeks), according to Greco-Roman mythology, was the mother of Aeneas (his father was the Trojan king Priam). After the fall of Troy, Aeneas and a small group of men made their way to Italy, where his descendants included Rhea Silvia, the mother of Romulus and Remus, the twins who were exposed to die, but who were rescued by a she-wolf and lived to found Rome. So Venus could be considered the mother of Rome.

Another clever aspect of housing these two goddesses together lies in their names: Venus is the Goddess of Love: amor in Latin. AMOR:ROMA, and they sit back to back :)

I'm hoping this area will still be open next time I'm in Rome - it would be amazing to stand in this grand space. And to think that until the 1980s the space was used as a carpark!