PAVEMENT IN OPUS SECTILE, C1 CE. TEMPLUM PACIS, CULT HALL The discovery of the near-intact pavement of the cult hall of the Temple of Peace in 2005-2007 was an astonishing revelation. Vespasian's construction of this site of gardens and fountains with a sacred purpose was also a way of giving back to the people the magnificent Greek statues appropriated by Nero to decorate his private house, the Domus Aurea, restoring their public and sacred nature. In the main hall, a large podium visible at lower left raised up the statue of Pax, which has completely disappeared. The pavement, a grid pattern of pavonazzetto containing a background of giallo antico and rotae of alternating pavonazzetto with a border of porphyry and grey granite, only began to be despoiled in 526 with the conversion of a hall of the complex into the church of SS. Cosma e Damiano: one of the missing granite rotae from this pavement can still be seen in the lower church. In the C6 at least ten burials were made in the garden part of the Templum. The surviving cult hall, stripped of its cult statue of Pax set up by Vespasian to mark the end of the turmoil of the Year of the Four Emperors, may have been turned into the medical school set up in the Templum that is mentioned by Procopius in his De Bello Gothico. In any case spoliation of the Templum Pacis only began seriously in the C9, lasting until the C13.

#MosaicMonday brings us not #mosaic but #opussectile from the cult hall of the Templum Pacis, built by #Vespasian as a place of contemplation off the busy #ForumTransitorium. The #pavement was restored under the #Severans. In late antiquity the hall was still used, perhaps as a medical school.