“Happy is the home with at least one cat”* - Largo Argentina Cat Colony

by Tim Colbourne (columnist) | Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

* An Italian proverb.

Largo di Torre Argentina in Rome is the site of one of Rome’s most important archaeological sites as well as the home of its largest sanctuary for stray cats. Volunteer cat carer Tim Colbourne tells all about the square’s history and its feline inhabitants.

For those who have lived for a while in what the New York Times recently called “the land of cheery dysfunction”, the discovery that Rome’s finest collection of ancient temples outside the Forum is also home to the city’s largest colony of cats comes as no surprise. If four majestic temples like those of Largo di Torre Argentina were discovered in northern Europe, millions would surely be spent on a state-of-the-art visitor’s centre, audio-visual aids, and the relocation of the cats. But this is Rome, and the curious story of the Largo Argentina cats is entwined with Italian laws, customs and archaeology in ways which are not immediately obvious.

Rediscovering the temples of the ‘Sacred Area’
The complex of temples which make up the ‘area sacra’ (sacred area) at Largo Argentina account for four of the ten temples which, according to ancient sources, were located on the Campus Martius. The Campius Martius was the area outside the early city which began life as a military parade ground. Until 1926, little was known about what lay under the square. Archaeologists were only aware of two temples, one of which had been incorporated into the structure of the twelfth-century church of San Nicolas dei Cesarini, while five columns belonging to a second temple were visible in the cloisters adjacent to the church.
In 1926, plans were drawn up to widen the roads around Largo Argentina and to construct two apartment blocks on the site. Preliminary work revealed two further temples in the square, together with the head of a giant statue of a Roman goddess. The archaeological world realised that they had stumbled upon one of the most important religious sites in ancient Rome, and that here was an opportunity to preserve it for posterity. Construction work came to a halt, and the square was meticulously excavated in 1927 and 1928.

Il Duce decides the squares fate
A dispute ensued over the future of the church, which because of its date did not ‘fit’ with the vision of the square as a window on Republican Rome. Ultimately the decision lay in the hands of Mussolini, who saw an opportunity to identify himself with the ancient Romans (Mussolini saw himself as a ‘new Augustus’, re-founding Italian civilisation and extending its power). Orders were therefore given to demolish the church, together with other mediaeval structures among the ruins. The square was personally inaugurated by Mussolini at a grand opening on 21st April 1929, the birthday of the founding of Rome.

Temples of war and conquest
The four temples were all constructed by victorious returning generals, using funds won (or stolen, depending on your perspective) in military campaigns over a period of 200 years, stretching from 300 to 100 BC. For a successful general, the point of putting up a temple had as much to do with self-aggrandizement as it did with religion. Nevertheless, the appeasement of the gods, whether through the dedication of new temples, acts of worship (the burning of incense and pouring of libations of wine), or animal sacrifices, was considered essential for the protection of the state and its citizens.
Although the four buildings have now been identified to a reasonable degree of certainty, they are still denoted by the letters A, B, C and D rather than the names of the respective deities to which they were dedicated (A is at the northern end of the square opposite Feltrinelli, D at the southern edge). Taking the temples chronologically, the first to be built was temple C, in circa 290 BC. It was dedicated to an agrarian goddess called Feronia, whose cult originated in the Sabine hills to the north of Rome. Feronia was variously regarded as a goddess of water, fire, harvests, and slaves. The transfer of her cult to Rome appears to have coincided with the successful conquest of the Sabina by Manius Curius Dentatus in 290 BC. A common psychological tactic employed by the Roman armies following a military defeat was to remove the statues of local deities and to transport them to Rome, forcing the defeated tribe to look to Rome if they wanted the continuing protection of their gods.

Sea battles and sailors
Temple A , at the northern end of the square, was built by Gaius Lutatius Catullus, consul in 242 BC, to mark the victory over the Carthaginian empire in the First Punic War. The war had been fought to determine control of Sicily, Sardinia and the Mediterranean. Rome had never previously won a major sea battle, and it seems thus likely that the consul chose to dedicate the temple to the goddess Juturna, a goddess of water. Seven hundred years later, as the empire waned, the building was to be converted into a monastery, which in turn became the church of San Nicolas dei Cesarini. Its demolition in 1929 therefore ended 2,200 years of continual use as a place of worship.
Temple D has only been partially excavated, but has been identified with the temple of the Lares Permarini, the household gods said to protect sailors. Three of the four temples therefore have associations with water. Temple B, the only round temple in the square, was built by a descendant of the builder of temple A, and was dedicated to the goddess Fortuna, or good fortune. According to Cicero, temple B was one of the finest in Rome, lavishly decorated with gold and Greek statues.

The feline phenomenon
For thousands of tourists who tramp though Largo Argentina every day, it is the cats who live among these picturesque ruins that provide one of the unexpected delights of the ‘Centro Storico’. Sharp-eyed visitors may spot the staircase on the corner of Via Florida and Largo Arenula which leads down to the underground Torre Argentina cat sanctuary (www.romancats.com). Here a team of international volunteers organises medical treatment, sterilisations and adoptions for hundreds of cats which are abandoned in the square every year.
Without the ruins, there would be no cats here. The first to move into the square must have been street cats attracted to the area opened up by the excavations in the late 1920s. From a cat’s-eye perspective, it’s much safer to be seven metres below street level. Unfortunately, the presence of cats in the square was then seen as a green light by some to abandon their unwanted pets: none of the 300 cats currently at Torre Argentina can be described as feral – all are house cats who have been dumped among the ruins.

Establishing the cat sanctuary
The sanctuary was founded in 1993 by Silvia Viviani and Lia Dequel, two of Rome’s cat lovers who are often disparagingly referred to as ‘gattare’ (‘cat women’). By the beginning of the 1990s, many of the cats living in the ruins were dying from disease and malnutrition. Fourteen years later, the sanctuary provides care and professional medical assistance to 1,000 cats which pass through its doors every year.

This is very much an achievement in the face of adversity, given that the sanctuary is technically squatting in property owned by the City of Rome. After threats of eviction in the early days there is now an uneasy truce. In fact, Roman law accords special protection to cat colonies. Stray pets are considered the property of the state, and it is an offence to mistreat them, deny them food or to try and move them. Unfortunately, material support is harder to come by – the sanctuary receives no help from the city, or from the Italian government, instead relying entirely on donations from tourists and visitors to buy food and medicine.

Rome’s strays
The Torre Argentina cats represent the tip of a very large iceberg. Latest estimates suggest there are around 200,000 stray cats in Rome, the symptom not only of uncaring owners, but of the widespread opposition in Italy towards spaying and neutering. Sterilisation is a simple procedure which improves a cat’s quality of life as well as avoiding unwanted pregnancies – yet vets in Italy are generally reluctant to use it, particularly for young animals. The attitude, according to Lia, is deeply rooted in the Italian psyche: “Italians have a macho mentality, they don’t approve of castration. But cats are very prolific animals – we have to control their birth rates as we do our own. Cats don’t have condoms, so we need to sterilise.”
Beyond the day-to-day running of the shelter, therefore, the volunteers at Torre Argentina are engaged in a much bigger project to get the public to think more carefully about animal welfare. The presence of the cats among the ruins may be a curiosity for many of Rome’s visitors, but it is also a reminder of what needs to change in a country where pets are too often treated as disposable.

(First published in the September 2007 issue of The Roman Forum magazine.)