The temple was the third of four temples in Rome built by the emperor
Augustus, after the
Temple of Caesar and the
Temple of Apollo Palatinus (dedicated in 29 and 28 BCE respectively) and before the
Temple of Mars Ultor, dedicated in 2 BCE. Augustus vowed its dedication in 26 BCE to celebrate his escape from being struck by lightning while on
a military campaign in Spain against the
Cantabri. It was consecrated on 1 September 22 BCE. According to the French archaeologist
Pierre Gros, construction likely began in the middle of 24 BCE, after Augustus's return to Rome from Spain.During the
Secular Games, a religious and artistic festival revived by Augustus in 17 BCE and celebrated periodically thereafter, the temple was used as one of four centres from which the fifteen priests known as the would issue purifying agents () – torches,
sulphur and
bitumen – to the Roman people. According to Augustus's biographer
Suetonius, it was among Augustus's most important architectural works, alongside the
Forum of Augustus, the Temple of Mars Ultor, and the Temple of Apollo Palatinus. Augustus himself visited the temple frequently. It was considered to be comparatively small. Unusually for Roman temples, its walls were constructed entirely of solid blocks of marble. According to a depiction of the temple on a coin of Augustus, minted around 19 BCE, its
portico was
hexastyle (that is, constructed with six columns across its front) and built in the
Corinthian order. According to the Roman polymath
Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century CE, the temple contained a bronze cult statue of
Zeus (the Greek counterpart of Jupiter) made by the fourth-century BCE Athenian sculptor
Leochares, while statues of the deities
Castor and Pollux by the fifth-century
Corinthian sculptor
Euphranor were situated in front of the temple. The inclusion of statues by noted Greek artists, especially of the fourth and fifth centuries BCE and the archaic period, was almost universal in the temples built or restored by Augustus in Rome, and has been described by the modern archaeologist
Susan Walker as a means of turning Rome into a "moral museum". According to an anecdote related by Suetonius, Augustus dreamed that Jupiter had castigated him for building the temple, as it had reduced the number of visitors to the older and grander
Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on the same hill: in response, Augustus declared the Temple of Jupiter Tonans to be merely a gatekeeper to that of Jupiter Capitolinus, and hung bells (), which were often hung on the doors of houses, on its
pediment. Gros has suggested that this story may have been concocted to explain an older, forgotten belief, by which the bells were intended to serve an
apotropaic (protective) function against lightning.The temple is not known to have featured among the extensive reconstructions undertaken by the emperor
Domitian () following the
Great Fire of Rome in 64 CE. A relief on the early second-century CE
Tomb of the Haterii shows a hexastyle temple which might be that of Jupiter Tonans. It is generally held that this relief shows public monuments worked on by the tomb's founder, Quintus Haterius, a (building contractor). It was mentioned in a
panegyric by the fourth-century CE poet
Claudian. It is not clear whether other references to the temple in Latin poetry, such as by the first-century CE poet
Statius, likely refer to this structure or to the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. In 1555, the Italian architect
Pirro Ligorio misidentified the partial remains of the
Temple of Vespasian and Titus in the
Roman Forum as belonging to the Temple of Jupiter Tonans, and these ruins were mislabelled as such in an engraving by the eighteenth-century Italian artist
Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Excavations begun in 1811–1812 by the papal architect eventually confirmed the correct identification of the ruins, though it was not until 1844 that the archaeologist
Luigi Canina labelled them as such. A concrete foundation between the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and the
Temple of Saturn has been conjectured as part of the Temple of Jupiter Tonans, but otherwise no remains of the temple are known to have survived. ==Location on the Capitoline Hill==