Marble columns reconstructed for Rome's birthday

The Temple of Peace in the Roman Forum is to be restored in time for the city's annual birthday commemoration on 21 April, according to the capital's superintendent of cultural heritage, Claudio Parisi Presicce.

The plan is to reinstate the five missing marble columns of the Egyptian portico that once surrounded the temple, which was built by Emperor Vespasian around 75 AD but whose remains lie mostly underground.

Reconstruction work is set to begin in early March, in time to include the restored temple in a major illumination of the Imperial Fora on the night of 21 April.

One of the lesser known structures of the Roman Forum, the temple is situated on the right-hand side of Via dei Fori Imperiali, heading towards the Colosseum, near Largo Corrado Ricci.

The area was excavated in the 1930s before the modern Via dei Fori Imperiali built by Mussolini's fascist administration split the Imperial Fora in two: leaving the fora of Augustus, Nerva and Trajan on one side, and the Forum of Caesar and the Roman Forum on the other.

Photo ANSA