The largest known block of ancient marble in Rome. This was once part of the entablature of the Temple of the Sun. It broke into pieces when the temple was demolished for its building materials in 1630 (and the block plummeted 70 feet to the ground). The second picture shows its original placement.
It makes me sick to know that many temples were still standing and looking original until the 1500s or 1600s, but were torn down or looted for materials to build churches. Not that I mind the churches, just wish they could have left the Roman stuff alone.
That has been happening all over history up until recently. Many churches were built on even older churches, which were built on even older and smaller churches, which replaced the former pagan place of worship.
Centres of medieval cities like Paris or Brno were rebuilt replaced in 18th and 19th century, old barns modified and rebuilt as houses even in later half of 20th century in Czechia. Only recently we started to value historic buildings, since we are now rich enough to worry about such things.
Basilica di San Clemente in Rome is my personal favourite example of that; a 16th century basilica on top of an early 300’s church, which is itself on top of a 1st century Mithraeum.
Unfortunately the destruction of Ancient Rome continued all the way thru 1930’s with Mussolini. I didn’t know were bell towers in front of Pantheon that were demolished in 1883
It makes me sick to know that many temples were still standing and looking original until the 1500s or 1600s, but were torn down or looted for materials to build churches. Not that I mind the churches, just wish they could have left the Roman stuff alone.