A temple built by Etruscans for Rome
The clearest answer stands on the Capitol. According to Roman tradition, Tarquinius Priscus, the first king of Etruscan origin, levelled a site on the hill for a temple of Jupiter, and Tarquinius Superbus finished it with workmen brought from all over Etruria. Its terracotta statues came from Veii, the great Etruscan centre of terracotta sculpture, from a sculptor called Vulca. The temple, shared by Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, was dedicated in 509 BCE, the first year of the Republic.
It was enormous for its time, about 53 by 63 metres, the largest temple of the Etruscan type ever built. Its foundations, in blocks of the tufa called cappellaccio, still lie under the Capitoline Museums, and one stretch of the podium wall survives to its full height. What stood on them was the work of Etruscan builders: a platform with steps at the front, three rows of columns across the façade and three cellae side by side under one roof.
The Tuscan plan, as a Roman saw it
Centuries later the Romans still treated this as a type of its own. Vitruvius, in his treatise on architecture, describes the “Tuscan” temple with exact proportions: a site six parts long and five wide, the front half for the columns, the back half for a central cella and two side rooms, with columns one-seventh as thick as they are tall and paired timber beams on top. He also gives the Tuscan column its own base and capital.
What made it different? The Tuscan temple had a front and a back: you climbed the steps facing it, crossed a deep porch and stood before the doors of the gods. Etruscan religion shaped Roman religion in many ways, temple design among them, which is where the story of the Roman temple begins.
Rebuilt on the same foundations
The Capitoline temple burned more than once. When it was rebuilt after a fire, the new temple rose on the same foundations and differed from the old one only in the costliness of its materials; after later fires it was rebuilt again, in marble. So for a long time the most important temple of Rome kept the footprint the Tarquins had laid out, like a house rebuilt again and again on the walls of the first one.
Streets, drains and gates
The Etruscans were among the first in the Mediterranean to lay out towns on a grid, and the Romans copied the practice. At Kainua, near Bologna, founded about 500 BCE, a main north-south street crossed three east-west streets, and a pebble marked with a cross, aligned with the cardinal points, was buried under the central crossroads. Drainage came with the same kings: the Cloaca Maxima, the tunnel that carried water away from the low ground of the Forum, is another work Roman tradition credits to the Tarquins.
What about the arch? Etruscan cities had gates with stone arches, such as the Porta all’Arco at Volterra, but how old those arches are is disputed, and so is how much Rome owed them. The question deserves its own article.
Where to see it
In Rome, the foundations of the temple of Jupiter are on view in the Palazzo dei Conservatori of the Musei Capitolini, and the roof statues from the temple at Portonaccio, made by Vulca’s workshop, are at the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia. The grid of Kainua can be walked at Marzabotto, next to the Museo Nazionale Etrusco Pompeo Aria, and the Porta all’Arco still opens in the walls of Volterra.
Sources
- Livy, History of Rome 1.38 and 1.56; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 4.61; Vitruvius, On Architecture 4.7.
- Musei Capitolini, “Foundations of the temple of Jove Capitoline”; Turismo Roma, “Temple of Capitoline Jupiter”.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Etruscan art”, “Etruscan religion”, “Veii”.
- Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia, record of the Apollo of Veii.
- Città metropolitana di Bologna, guide to Kainua; Visit Tuscany, “Porta all’Arco, Volterra”.
