Caesar was the first Roman to be deified after his death, and consequently honored with a temple, after the mythical founder Romulus.
Caesar was killed in a session of the Senate held in the Curia Pompeia in the Campus Martius. His body was then transported to the Forum, near the Regia, which was the official seat of the maximum pontiff, a position held by the dictator. In this place, at the eastern end of the Piazza del Foro, an improvised funeral pyre was lit for the cremation and his funeral took place. Here an altar was erected, flanked by an ancient yellow marble column with the inscription Parenti Patriae ("to the father of the fatherland"), immediately eliminated by the consul Publius Cornelio Dolabella.
The construction of the temple was decreed by the Senate, at the initiative of the triumvirate in 42 BC, after the battle of Philippi in which they were defeated and killed the Assassination of Julius Caesar. A flamen maior priest had been attributed to the cult of Caesar already shortly after 44 BC and Marco Antonio was the first to hold this office.
The building was actually built by Ottaviano, the adopted son of Caesar, and dedicated on 18 August of 29 BC. For the works, the street that bounded the square on the eastern side was moved beyond the temple and a previous construction of which have been seen the foundations, in blocks of Grottaoscura tuff, attributable to the end of the republican age, of unknown identification. The dedication ceremony took place three days after the triumph that Octavian had celebrated for Actium's victory over the Egypt of Cleopatra and precious works of the booty won on that occasion were kept in the temple.
The building is depicted on the back of some coins from 37-34 BC: consequently it was considered that it had already been completed in those years, while the official dedication would have been delayed due to the civil war between Ottaviano and Marco Antonio. It is probably rather a symbolic representation of a building not yet realized, for propaganda purposes.
The temple was depicted again on coins even at the time of Hadrian, but it does not seem that at this time restoration work of some importance was carried out.
The oriental use of deifying post mortem was taken up by numerous emperors, as the temple of Vespasian and Titus or that of Antoninus and Faustina, still in the Forum, bear witness to today.
The remains of the building were released on the occasion of the overall unveiling of the Roman Forum in 1872. Other excavations were conducted in 1888, in 1898-1899 ( Giacomo Boni ) and again in 1950.
On the front side of the podium, which preserves in some places the crowning and the plinth in Luni marble, there is a semicircular exedra, covered in blocks of tuff of the Aniene and of peperino, within which there is a small circular cement element, identifiable as an altar: it is probably the reconstruction by Ottaviano, perhaps in the years 37-34 BC, of the altar erected after the death of Caesar in 44 BC and immediately eliminated. At the time of construction of the temple, the altar was realized with the opening of the exedra (uncovered semicircular space) on the front of the podium.
On the altar, now visible behind the partial reconstruction of the closing wall, flowers are regularly placed by visitors.
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