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  • Day 5

    Largo Argentina

    May 10, 2019 in Italy ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    Stopped here - it is right in the middle of the city. Paused to think what it must have looked like and muse that this is where Caesar met his end.

    Today, Largo del Torre Argentina is largely known as the piazza where you frequently have to change buses, but set into its middle is an excavated zone sporting a trio of ancient temples, their columns poking up like broken teeth, their grassy foundations prowling with Rome's largest colony of stray cats, which legend holds are hosts for the ghosts of ancient Romans.

    The Largo Argentina ruins are all the more remarkable for the fact that they just sort of sit there, un-remarked upon—which is especially puzzling given that every 9th grader has read Julius Caesar, and here is the exact spot where he was killed! Against the eastern edge of the excavations you can see the jumbled remains of some brick walls. This was the exit to Pompey's Theater and Baths complex, which the Roman Senate was using in the 1st century BC to hold their meetings while the main Senate house in the Forum was being rebuilt. It was while exiting one of these meetings, on these very steps now covered in cats, that Brutus, Cassius, and the other conspirators fell upon Julius Caesar and stabbed him to death.

    Article:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largo_di_Torre_Ar…
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