Temple of Clitumnus

It was only toward the last quarter of the 20th century that archaeologists[citation needed] saw that the "temple" at the Clitunno had been constructed mainly of spolia, that is, materials taken from many different ancient Roman structures in the neighbourhood.

Not long afterward, this building was expanded at the back (at the east end) by an apse, and at the front (to the west) by an elaborate system of three entry porticoes with columnar screens in the "Roman Corinthian" style.

If magnates from the Longobard duchy of Spoleto built the Tempietto, their use of the Byzantine icons reveals their close study of, and readiness to manipulate an important, visual, Euro-Mediterranean, high culture for their own ends.

In the 1950s the site was again much changed by the construction of the highway running directly behind the building (Route 3; the Via Flaminia): a huge section of the hill rising up behind the Tempietto was cut away for the road.

Icons of this kind were painted in Rome during the early Middle Ages, for example, in Santa Maria Antiqua, the famous sixth- through ninth-century sanctuary on the Roman Forum.

The builders also made parts themselves when none could be found ready-made for reuse, among which are the tympanum reliefs (for the four pediments), each of which displayed a central leaf-covered Christian cross-monogram surrounded by rich acanthus vine scrolls.

The Tempietto's builders also cut the Christian Latin inscriptions in ancient Roman block capitals that one sees in the friezes of the porticoes' gables: The large box made of marble slabs embedded in the Tempietto's rear apse wall, original to the phase-two construction, may have functioned as a tabernacle to house the consecrated eucharist, or it could have been used as a saint's tomb or memoria (reliquary).

Not long ago, Valentino Pace suggested that the box in question stands at the focus of the Tempietto's sculptural and fresco decoration, and that it could well have featured a cross relic.