Capitolium

The Capitolium was the greatest temple of the Roman state, on the Capitoline Hill above the Forum, housing Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. Traditionally dedicated in 509 BC, the first year of the Republic, its foundations yielded a human head read as a promise that Rome would head a great empire.

The wooden temple burned in 83 BC, taking the Sibylline Books with it; the replacement, dedicated in 69 BC, reused columns Sulla had carried off from Athens. After murdering Caesar in 44 BC, Brutus and the conspirators barricaded themselves within it. Fire destroyed it again in 69 and 80 AD; Vespasian and then Domitian rebuilt it.

Theodosius I closed it in 392; the Vandals stripped its bronze tiles in 455. The last ruins were demolished in the sixteenth century when the Palazzo Caffarelli was raised over the podium.