Dome

General view, showing remains, looking east; Many of Julius Caesar's projects remained unfinished at his death. One such project was his Forum Julium, a rectangular enclosure surrounded on three sides by colonnades and dominated on the fourth by the Temple of Venus Genetrix, built to the north of the old forum on land that he had acquired c. 54 BC. The temple follows the established Roman pattern of combining an Italic plan with Hellenistic details, but its situation within a colonnaded enclosure seems to derive from such Hellenistic schemes as the Sanctuary of Athena (mainly 197-159 BC) at Pergamon. The Forum Julium established the pattern for the later Imperial Fora, such as the Forum Augustum, the Templum Pacis and the Forum of Nerva, as well as countless similar projects in the great provincial cities. The complex was also of importance because the Temple of Venus Genetrix was built of white Carrara marble, which was beginning to be exploited at this time and would eventually change the appearance of Rome under Augustus. It was extensively used by leading late Republican architects in shaping the Roman version of the Corinthian order with which Roman architecture is so closely identified. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordartonline.com/ (accessed 7/11/2008)