The Temple of Minerva in Assisi was built in the first century BC. Two of the city's magistrates, Gnaeus Caesius and Titus Caesius Priscus, financed its construction. It is traditionally attributed to Minerva because a female statue was found there, though a dedicatory stone to Hercules suggests the god may have been a male demigod.
The Roman facade is well preserved. Six Corinthian columns support the architrave and a small pediment, and the columns were originally covered in a strong plaster that may have been colored. In the Middle Ages the building served as a tribunal with an adjoining jail, as shown in a Giotto fresco in the Upper Basilica of St. Francis.
The cella was demolished when a church was built in the sixteenth century, and the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva has occupied the temple since 1539. Goethe visited in 1786 and called it the first ancient structure in good condition he had seen.
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