Friends, Romans, countrymen and tourists will now be able to walk through the Largo di Torre Argentina square near where Julius Caesar is believed to have been assassinated in 44 B.C.
A new lift and walkway allowing visitors to stroll through the square was opened Tuesday after restoration work funded by Italian fashion house Bulgari.
Because the Largo di Torre Argentina square sits below street level between the remains of four Roman temples, people previously could only look upon the square and the ruins from behind barriers.
The site was first uncovered in the 1920s.
While Roman residents will get in free, non-residents must pay a $5.50 entrance fee, according to Reuters.
A long hall under the modern street opposite the site has also been filled with marble decorations and sculptures, brought out of storage after decades spent in the city’s archaeological storage.
The site is one of the few in Rome dating back to the era of the Roman Republic.
“As one of the few well-preserved sites in Rome from the Republican era, it is one of the most important digs in the city. Now people can wander among the remains,” Claudio Presicce, archaeology superintendent for the city of Rome, told the Times of London.
Contemporary Romans are excited to get a glimpse at the now-opened square.
“We always wondered why it was closed. We’re in seventh heaven,” Sandro Lubatelli, who had often glimpsed the ruins from above with his wife Rossana Cipressi, told the New York Times.
Caesar was stabbed to death by a group of his patrician rivals in the Roman Senate called the “Liberatores,” who saw Caesar’s military successes and his five-year reign as a populist dictator as a threat to the Republic.
Famously among them was Caesar’s protege, Brutus.
The assassination took place in the Curia Pompeia meeting hall, which was then walled up by Caesar’s heir Octavian, who would go on to name himself the first Roman emperor, Augustus.
The hall’s eventual ruins, which were later attested to as a latrine by the historian Suetonius, are located near and around the square.
