The marble foot

On the corner of this street stands a marble foot in a sandal, almost a metre and a half long, mounted on a plinth against the facade. It belonged to a statue of a deity some eight metres tall, and of that statue nothing else remains.

The rest of the building that foot belonged to lay right here, beneath where you're standing. This block held the Iseum Campense, a vast sanctuary for the Egyptian gods Isis and Serapis, built in the first century BC when Egypt had only just become Roman property. Romans flocked to that foreign cult in droves, much to the annoyance of the authorities, who banned it again and again and let it back each time.

Over the centuries the foot was moved a few times, and the street beside it is now named after it. In the sixteenth century this was also one of the spots where Romans left their mocking verses, just like at the talking statues elsewhere in the city, which have a walk of their own.

We follow Via di Pie' di Marmo to the end, turn left and keep going until we reach a small square with a row of enormous columns set into a facade.