The Mid-Republican Temple A at Largo Argentina in Rome: Colour, Form, and Culture

The initial construction phase of Temple A at the area sacra of Largo Argentina dates to the second half of the 3rd cent. B.C., marking it as a rare example of Mid‑Republican architecture in Rome. The building’s appearance has largely remained elusive, with only a fraction of its columnar elevation surviving as decontextualized architectural members in storage rooms. This paper brings together the results of architectural field research conducted from 2018 to 2022 with scientific colour analysis to offer a preliminary reconstruction of the temple’s plan and façade, including a colour reconstruction of a columnar capital. We discovered that the original colouring underwent a fundamental remake during the 2nd cent. B.C. The initial red/blue‑on‑white scheme, which probably still followed an Etrusco‑Italic tradition of colouring, was replaced with the latest Hellenistic colour fashion of yellow – standing for gold – on white. This modernized colour scheme reduced the emphasis on colour in favour of the architectural form and its intrinsic effects of light and shadow. From a wider cultural perspective, the shift to a yellow‑on‑white scheme represents a testament to the phenomenon of ‹Hellenization› in Late Republican Rome, foreshadowing both the aurea templa of the Augustan period and some fundamental elements of Imperial architectural aesthetics.