Porticus Aemilia

It was built in 193 BC by the aediles Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Lucius Aemilius Paullus and rebuilt in 174 BC by the censors Quintus Fulvius Flaccus and Aulus Postumius Albinus. It was raised in opus incertum in tufa, 487 metres long and 60 metres wide, on 294 piers making seven ranks and fifty vaulted aisles each 8.30 metres wide, covering 25,000 square metres about 90 metres back from the river. Piranesi engraved the remains in 1756. The identification is disputed and the dispute is not settled: a reading published in 2006 by Cozza and Tucci takes the building for republican navalia, sheds for the war fleet, and excavations from 2010 by the Soprintendenza with the Royal Netherlands Institute and Municipio I produced evidence supporting neither that identification nor the identification with the Porticus Aemilia named in the literary sources.