Sanctuaries
The main and most ancient sanctuary of Vulcan in Rome was the Volcanal, located in the area Volcani, an open-air space at the foot of the Capitolium, in the northwestern corner of the Roman Forum, with an ara dedicated to the god and a perennial fire. It was one of the most ancient Roman shrines. According to Roman tradititon the sanctuary had been dedicated by Romulus. He had placed on the site a bronze quadriga dedicated to the god, a war pray of the Fidenates. According to Plutarch though the war in question was that against Cameria, that occurred sixteen years after the foundation of Rome. There Romulus would have also dedicated to Vulcan a statue of himself and an inscription in Greek listing his successes. Plutarch states that Romulus was represented crowned by Victory. Moreover he would have planted a sacred lotus tree in the sanctuary that was still living at the time of Pliny the Elder and was said to be as old as the city.
The Volcanal was perhaps used as a cremation site as suggested by the early use of the Forum as a burial site.
The area Volcani was probably a locus substructus. It was five meters higher than the Comitium and from it the kings and the magistrates of the beginnings of the republic addressed the people before the building of the rostra.
On the Volcanal there was also a statue of Horatius Cocles that had been moved here from the Comitium, locus inferior, after it had been struck by lightning. Aulus Gellius tells that some haruspices were summoned to expiate the prodigium, and they had it moved to a lower site where sunlight never reached out of their hatred for the Romans. The fraud though was uncovered and the haruspices were executed. Later it was found that the statue should be placed on a higher site, thence it was placed in the area Volcani.
In 304 BC a temple to Concordia was built in the area Volcani: it was dedicated by aedilis curulis Cnaeus Flavius.
According to Samuel Ball Platner in the course of time the Volcanal should have been more and more encroached upon by the surrounding buildings until it was totally covered over. Nonetheless cult was still alive in the first half of the imperial era, as is testified by the finding of a dedica of Augustus's dating from 9 BC.
At the beginning of 20th century behind the Arch of Septimius Severus were found some ancient tufaceous foundations that probably belonged to the Volcanal and traces of a rocky platform, 3.95 meters long and 2.80 meters wide, that had been covered with concrete and painted in red. Its upper surface is dug by several narrow channels and in front of there are the remains of a draining channel made of tufaceous slabs. The hypothesis was made that this was Vulcan's ara itself. The rock shows signs of damages and repairs. On the surface there are some hollows, either round or square, that bear resemblance to graves and were interpreted as such in the past, particularly by Von Duhn. After the discovery of cremation tombs in the Forum the last scholar maintained that the Volcanal was originally the site were corpses were cremated.
Another temple was erected to he god before 215 BC in the Campus Martius, near the Circus Flaminius, where games in his honour were held during the festival of the Volcanalia.
Read more about this topic: Vulcan (mythology)