Forum Holitorium

The Forum Holitorium was the vegetables, herbs and oil forum venalium of early ancient Rome, by the Tiber at the foot of the Capitoline and Palatine hills. Once, the site of an early temple of Venus, the centre of buying and selling was transferred, in 388, to the Campus Martius (Forum Holitorium), leaving the old Roman Forum to the business of the State.

Temples

Four Republican temples once stood in the market:

• the temple of Pietas (duty, built by Acilius Glabrius, consul in 191 BC) It had two squares with one being dedicated to Diana, and was destroyed to make way for the Theatre of Marcellus.
• the temple of Juno Sospita (Juno the savior}
• the temple of Janus
• the temple of Spes (hope).

Under the present church of San Nicola in Carcere are the ruins of three temples, standing side by side with the same orientation and facing the forum Holitorium. Besides some of marble of the later restorations, the architectural fragments are republican period work in travertine, tuff and peperino (previously decorated in stucco):

• The central and largest of these temples is Ionic, and is probably that of Spes
• The northernmost temple is next in size and also Ionic, and is generally assumed to be the temple of Janus which is mentioned in the written sources, and is usually dated to about 90 BC. It is hexastyle, peripteral except at the back, and six of its columns, 0.70 metre in diameter, are still standing, built into the wall of the church.
• The southernmost temple is the smallest and Doric, and probably that of Juno Sospita.

These ruins are incorporated and lie beneath the church (possibly after being incorporated into a prison, called carcere, which means prison). Remains of other temples lie under and around the Church of Sant'Omobono.