Almost the whole of the southern slope of the Velia towards the Coliseum is occupied by the ruin of a vast foundation which extends under the church and convent of S. Francesca Romana. The substructions, of which the inner core only, consisting of rubble-work, is left, were originally cased with travertine blocks. They form an enormous quadrilateral terrace, round which a portico of granite columns ran. Upon this was raised a basement some four or five feet higher, and a building with two apses back to back, similar to the tribunes of a basilica. These are ornamented with large square coffers and niches for statues. It has been generally inferred from the statements of Dion Cassius and Spartianus that this building was the Temple of Venus and Rome built by Hadrian and dedicated by the Antonines, but burnt down in the time of Constantine and restored by him.[32] Pope Honorius I. stripped the bronze tiles from the roof, and they were placed on the Basilica of S. Peter, whence they were taken by the Saracens in A.D. 846. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, limekilns were set up near the arch of Titus by the Romans and the marbles of this spot were burnt into lime.[33] The two tribunes which stand back to back and the buildings near them have not the appearance of a temple, but rather of a legal court or basilica. For this reason, and also because a large portico of this shape is represented in the marble plan of the city, the fragments of which are now in the Capitoline Museum, as having belonged to the Porticus Liviæ, Mr. Parker, in his ‘Archæology of Rome,’ has maintained that this was the Porticus Liviæ, built by Augustus and afterwards used by Hadrian for the Temple of the Sun and Moon. Jordan has also shown that the Porticus Liviæ was near this spot, but he places it farther to the north-east, behind the Basilica of Constantino.[34] Since Dion Cassius speaks of the Temple of Venus and Rome as having been close to the Coliseum and also near the Sacra Via, and Spartianus says that it stood in the vestibule of the Domus Aurea of Nero, we are almost compelled to assign this position to that temple.[35] [Sidenote: Domus Transitoria.] Nero’s enormous extension of the Palatine buildings must have occupied a great part of the Velia, reaching across it from the Palatine to the Esquiline. But his great Domus Aurea and its surrounding porticoes and halls, which were called Domus Transitoria, and occupied not only the slope of the Velia but also the site of the Coliseum, were destroyed by the Flavian emperors who succeeded him, and we can only point to one fragment, of the Domus Transitoria which stands near the corner of the Basilica of Constantine at the side of the path which leads between that ruin and the buildings of S. Francesca Romana. [Sidenote: Basilica of Constantine.]