Goethe, arriving in Assisi on the twenty-fifth of October 1786, did not want to see the basilica of Saint Francis: he steered clear, he said, of the Babylonian constructions, and went straight to Piazza del Comune to look at this temple. It was the first complete Roman architecture he had seen in Italy, and he described it as a perfect thing. It was built around 30 BC by two magistrates of Asisium, Gnaeus Cestius and Titus Caesius Priscus, who paid for it out of their own pockets; we call it the temple of Minerva because of a statue found here, but an inscription says it was dedicated to Hercules. In the Middle Ages it was a church, then a prison and a council chamber; in 1539 Pope Paul III had a church of the Madonna made inside, and from outside nobody notices.
What to see
The façade, which is everything: six fluted Corinthian columns on high square plinths that interrupt the staircase, a rare arrangement that served to raise the temple above the forum; above, the entablature with the frieze, where the holes in the stone are those of the bronze letters of the inscription, removed who knows when, and the pediment, small in relation to the rest. It is one of the best preserved Roman temples in existence, and it stands in the middle of a square where people drink coffee.
Inside, the surprise is that there is nothing Roman: the cella was demolished in the sixteenth century to make the church, and what you see is a white and gold Baroque of the seventeenth, with stucco and false columns. Near the altar, however, a stretch of the ancient wall with a blocked arch has been reopened, and below you see pieces of the Roman paving. Beside the temple, the tower of the People, tall and severe, which is both bell tower and civic tower, with the Bell of the Lauds that rings on great occasions.
Visiting
The temple is in Piazza del Comune, the exact centre of Assisi, five minutes from the basilica of Santa Chiara and ten from San Francesco; free entry with church hours. Ten minutes inside, but the façade should be looked at from the tables in the square, sitting down, as Goethe did.
Our editors' tip
Look for the holes in the frieze above the columns: they held the bronze letters with the names of the two magistrates who paid for the temple, and somebody prised them off to melt them down. That inscription has been gone for two thousand years, and you can still read its shadow. Then go in and see how narrow the space is: inside was the cella of a god, and it has become a church that barely fits.