Roman Religious Sites: Explore Temples, Sanctuaries and Early Churches

Explore more than 300 religious sites associated with the Roman world, including columned temples, terraced sanctuaries, small cult rooms and early Christian churches. The collection reaches across Europe, North Africa and the Near East. It includes ancient sacred buildings as well as later religious complexes that preserve Roman remains.

The examples below show several forms of worship through their buildings: a circular temple beside the Tiber, an Egyptian shrine with imperial names in hieroglyphs, and churches whose late Roman walls survive beneath medieval alterations. Their surviving chambers, colonnades, ramps and baptismal pools give the collection a wider scope than Roman temples alone.

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Circular temples and temples with separate shrines

The Temple of Hercules Victor in Rome has a circular shrine surrounded by Corinthian columns. Nineteen of the twenty column positions retain their columns, enclosing the small central chamber in a ring of marble. The building stands on a stepped base rather than the high, front-facing podium familiar from many rectangular Roman temples. Its upper brickwork and tiled roof belong to later alterations and repairs, including its conversion into a church.

At the Capitolium of Brixia, in modern Brescia, the arrangement is quite different. Three shrine rooms stand side by side behind the entrance colonnade, associated with Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. Original coloured stone floors survive in two of the rooms. The façade combines ancient stone with modern reconstruction, while beneath the imperial temple an earlier Republican sanctuary preserves painted columns, imitation marble panels and hanging curtains on its walls.

Ramps and terraces at Palestrina’s sanctuary

The Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at Palestrina occupies a succession of artificial terraces rising up the hillside. Paired ramps, stairways, vaulted passages and retaining walls organised the approach through the complex. The surviving architecture extends well beyond a single temple chamber: it includes the structures that supported the hillside and directed movement between levels.

The Terrace of the Hemicycles contained curved, porticoed recesses with coffered vaults and seating. One of its sacred spaces was associated with the sanctuary’s oracle, where inscribed lots were drawn to obtain divine responses. These identifiable settings connect the great terraces with specific religious practices, rather than treating the whole complex simply as an elevated viewpoint.

Egyptian shrines and small Mithraic rooms

Deir el-Shelwit, near Luxor, preserves a temple dedicated to Isis. A corridor surrounds the central shrine and gives access to side chapels and a stair to the roof. The interior reliefs include royal cartouches naming Roman rulers such as Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. The building therefore represents Egyptian sacred architecture under Roman rule, with the emperors recorded in the established language and imagery of Egyptian kingship.

The Mithraeum of Septeuil in France occupies a much smaller, partly sunken space. A central aisle lies between two broad benches used by the worshippers. In the later fourth century, an earlier spring sanctuary was remodelled for the cult of Mithras. Its excavated plan preserves the communal room; the recovered religious sculptures are held separately at the National Archaeology Museum in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Early Christian walls and baptismal buildings

At San Simpliciano in Milan, the original late Roman basilica walls survive to about twenty-two metres. Medieval builders replaced the timber roof with vaults and blocked large early windows to strengthen the masonry. The church’s present appearance brings those phases together: its Romanesque vaulting belongs to a later transformation of an unusually extensive early Christian shell.

The Baptistère Saint-Jean in Poitiers preserves an octagonal baptismal pool within a building repeatedly altered after late antiquity. Its early chronology remains debated, and the decorated upper walls and medieval paintings should be distinguished from the earliest fabric. Water entered through a lead pipe and drained through a terracotta outlet, connecting the baptismal installation with a surviving Roman water system.

Explore the collection

Use the map markers or grid entries to open individual site articles. Narrow the collection by country or building type, and use the popularity and rating filters to refine the results. The linked articles distinguish the ancient religious structures from later churches, additions and restoration work.

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