THE ASHLAR WALL FACING THE CLIVUS

The only surviving stretch of the outer wall of the Templum Pacis – originally facing the so-called Clivus ad Carinas and the Velia, and eventually the Basilica of Maxentius (which replaced the Horrea Piperataria) – is the southeast side of the original corner hall. This is one of the largest ashlar walls preserved in Rome and surely the most neglected, compared to the rear wall of the Forum of Augustus and the cella of the Temple of Divus Hadrianus. The wall is very well preserved thanks to the remarkable thickness of the concrete core faced with brickwork toward the hall's interior (cfr. Figs. 71 and 72; cfr. Figs. 79 and 85). No doubt this structure protected the blocks of travertine and tuff during the course of the fire of AD 192; only on top and at the extremities was it necessary to restore the original structure. The squared-stone masonry of both the Flavian and Severan phases is preserved from the foundation up to the course of blocks beneath the missing cornice, which on this side was at a level slightly higher than on the southeast portico's rear wall. The cornice was removed in 1586 when the monastery was being restored, and windows and doors were opened through the ashlar wall, as attested to by archival documents that I publish for the first time in Chapter 16.8. The cornice consisted of blocks of travertine, as in the surviving corner between the southeast and southwest porticoes, on top of the modern staircase of the monastery. Some sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drawings attest that a similar cornice characterized the corners of the great hall's façade toward the Via Sacra (cfr. Chapter 16), and further evidence is provided by a travertine block from the Clivus side bearing a Republican inscription (see Fig. 88), found in 1876 and now displayed in the Capitoline Museums.