The large temple to the north of the Regia which now houses the church of San Lorenzo in Miranda was the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina. You can still read the inscription, even though the bronze letters have been removed; it relates how the temple was dedicated, by the Emperor Antoninus Pius, to his beloved wife who died in 141 AD and how, 20 years later, it was also dedicated to the Emperor himself.

This is another example of the custom of deification after death which began with the Temple of Julius Caesar. Blocks of peperino stone were used for the temple walls and this archaic, almost obsolete material was intended to send a clear message to the people of Rome and to the world: Rome was reaffirming its role as the great city it had always been, well able to maintain control and power just as it did when it was a city built of tufa and peperino.
The flower beds you can see beside the temple indicate the sites in this section of the Forum where archaic tombs have been found. There was a burial ground here from when Rome was founded. 40 tombs have been found, some of which date back to the 10th century BC.