Eleven Columns in a Wall

In the year 145 the emperor Antoninus Pius dedicated a temple here to his deified predecessor Hadrian, and eleven Corinthian columns of fifteen metres still stand from it, embedded in the side wall of a later building. The rest of that temple has become the wall around them, and the feet of the columns sit a few metres below street level.

What makes this so Roman is what happened next. In the seventeenth century, Carlo Fontana built a papal customs house over it, simply absorbing the columns into the new facade as load-bearing elements. After that it became the stock exchange, and today the Chamber of Commerce sits behind it. The same structure has been in service for almost nineteen centuries, each time for something different.

The difference in height tells its own story. The street you're standing on lies metres above the original level, because Rome has slowly crept upward through rubble, floods and new construction. If you look down along the columns, you'll see the ancient ground level, where the steps of the temple once began.

The little square outside is small and quiet, and almost everyone passing through is on their way to somewhere else.

From here we make our way north out of the square along Via de' Burrò, coming out on the square with the tall column.