Forum, Augusteum and Archaeological Museum of Narona
(Museum building)
At the point where the Naronite Upper Town, enclosed by the space within the walls on the hill, and the Lower Town, which extended into the valley within the walls, met, the Forum was built at the end of the 1st century BC, along with the Augusteum Temple and numerous public buildings such as the curia – the town hall and the tabernacles. Of these, the most important and best preserved is the Augusteum , a temple dedicated to the Roman imperial cult and originally to the first Roman emperor Octavian Augustus and members of his family and successors. The temple had four columns on the facade, and the entrance to the closed space, i.e. the sanctuary, was from the portico. It has preserved a mosaic floor, pedestals for sculptures and dedicatory inscriptions. However, it is most significant for the discovery of the largest group of Roman imperial sculpture, dating from the late 1st century BC to the 2nd century, and consists of over seventeen marble sculptures of supernatural size. Among others, sculptures of the emperors Octavian Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius and Vespasian were found. It is believed that the temple was destroyed at the end of the 4th century after the Roman religion was replaced by Christianity, as evidenced by the decapitated sculptures of emperors and their families. After that, a cemetery was built on the ruins of the temple during the 6th century, and in the 19th century, the house and stables of the Plećaš family, after which the site is known in archaeological literature as the Plećaš Stables . After research that began in the early 1990s, due to the importance of the finds, in 2007, the modern building of the Narona Archaeological Museum was built , designed by architect Goran Rako, for which the author received many awards. As an in situ museum , i.e. a museum located on the site of an archaeological site, it is the most significant cultural monument of the Neretva Valley and one of the most famous tourist destinations in this region.
Forum, Augusteum and the Narona Archaeological Museum