ROME'S TEMPLE OF DEIFIED HADRIAN PUTS ON NIGHTLY LIGHT-AND-SOUND SHOW

THE Temple of Deified Hadrian is putting on a spectacular light show after sunset this summer for the benefit of tourists to Rome who flock to the sidewalk café at the Piazza di Pietra.

The Piazza is often called the living room of the Capitoline city, and it lives up to its name on evenings starting at 8:30 p.m., when a digital light show thrills spectators with a 12-minute multi-projection onto the Colonnade of the Temple of Hadrian tracing the history of the Emperor who deified his lover Antinous.

The play of light and sound promoted by the Chamber of Commerce and created by Paco Lanciano. The ancient structure now serves as the home of Rome's Stock Market.

The show debuted this week in the presence of Italy's Minister of Cultural Heritage Alberto Bonisoli, Rome's Mayor Virginia Raggi, the president of the Lazio Region, and the president of the Chamber of Commerce, Lorenzo Tagliavanti. 

Special guest Giancarlo Giannini recited a passage taken from the "Hadrian's Memoirs" by Marguerite Yourcenar.

The light-and-sound show will be repeated every evening about half an hour after sunset.

The Temple of Hadrian (Templum Divus Hadrianus, also Hadrianeum) was dedicated to the deified Emperor Hadrian on the Campus Martius in Rome by his adoptive son and successor Antoninus Pius in 145 AD. 

Long ago both ends of the temple, as well as the other side disappeared; all that remains are eleven fluted columns with Corinthian bases and capitals, as well as one side of the cella wall which was built into a nineteenth century palazzo that continues to house the Rome Borsa.

Overall, the temple was presumed to have been octastyle, elevated on a typical Roman high podium, peripteral in style and likely approached by stairs covering the eastern end with a deep pronaos of three bays. During Hadrian's reign, the peripteral style of temple came briefly back into fashion at Rome, and was also used in the Temple of Venus and Roma.