✅ Roccabruna is a large quadrangular masonry 'cube' that once had a small Temple on the upper floor, with sixteen Doric columns surrounding an octagonal cell covered by a dome. The temple had a large stair that today gives access to a panoramic terrace from which sometimes it is possible to see Saint Peter’s dome in Rome.

✅ When it was standing, the Temple was visible from all the surrounding countryside, and signaled the presence of the Emperor. A bit like the Trophy of the Alps in La Turbie (in France) built by Augustus, which could be seen from afar and recalled the conquest of Gaul by the Romans.

 

✅ When the small Temple on the upper floor was still standing, Roccabruna had two superimposed domes: a real architectural “acrobatics”, created in a simple and smart way. The walls of the lower floor are in fact over three meters thick, and therefore the weight of the columns and walls of the Temple rested on the solid masonry, outside of the blind dome of the lower floor.

✅ The domed hall on the lower floor had an opus sectile marble pavement with concentric rows of triangles, similar to a pavement now in the Archaeological Museum of Naples.

✅ Near the stair that went up to the Temple, a smaller and hidden stair descends into a corridor with a yellow mosaic floor and a single latrine. Nearby there was small “apartment”, probably used by the priest in charge of worship. It has a cubicle with a niche for a bed, and another mosaic pavement.