largo di Torre Argentina

Largo di Torre Argentina is a sunken square in the Rione Pigna where the ruins of four Republican-era temples lie four meters below street level. The complex was uncovered by accident when Mussolini ordered the neighborhood modernized from 1926; the four temples (A through D) rank among Rome's oldest, with the earliest dating to the 4th century BCE. Crucially, this is the exact spot where Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March 44 BCE, in the Curia of Pompey at the square's southern edge. Since the 1990s the ruins also house an official cat sanctuary tended by volunteers, with roughly 150 felines living among the columns. As of 2023 the site is finally walkable, with a new boardwalk descending to Caesar's death spot.