Temple of Vesta
You’re in front of the Tempio di Vesta, the ancient aedes (Aedes Vestae) tucked into the Roman Forum near the Regia and the House of the Vestal Virgins. This circular, tholos-style temple was built to house Vesta’s holy fire—flames Romans linked directly to Rome’s safety and prosperity. The story starts with Numa Pompilius, Rome’s second king, who was said to establish the worship of Vesta along with the original Regia and the House of the Vestal Virgins. At first there were just two Vestals, but by the end of the Republic that number had grown to six. These Vestal Virgins were drawn traditionally from aristocratic families between ages 6 and 10, and they served a 30-year tenure under the authority of the pontifex maximus. What you see today is ruinous, but it still hints at the scale: surviving evidence points to twenty Corinthian columns on a podium fifteen meters in diameter. …
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