The detail that stays with you is the floor: red, set with ivory-white tesserae, in a building the Samnites raised around the third century BC on a rise now called Colle Rimontato, outside the village of San Giovanni in Galdo.
The sanctuary's story runs against expectation. Built when inland Molise was Samnite country, the temple was not wiped out by the Social War of the first century BC: if anything, it was after that conflict that it became the settlement's main reference point. The area stayed inhabited until the third century AD, then it was left, and the medieval town of San Giovanni reappeared further down the valley, where it still stands. The temple itself was forgotten, and only the excavations of the last decade of the twentieth century brought it back.
What to see
What survives on the ground is above all a plan, and it reads clearly. This is a prostyle temple: a pronaos and a single row of columns around the sacred cella, all set on a raised podium with two entrances and a dentil moulding. The columns are round and fluted. The podium was probably reached by a wooden staircase, which is exactly why no trace of it remains. The plan is quadrangular, and so is the sacred enclosure that closes the site.
Our editors' tip
Do not come for standing columns, because there are none: here you look down, at the walking surface, the outline of the podium and its two ways in. In the low light of early morning or late afternoon the dentils and the tesserae stand out far better than at midday. It is worth raising your eyes towards the village below, too: the move from this hill to the valley floor is, in short, the story of the place.