The interior of the precinct walls are carved with bucrania, ox skulls, from which carved garlands hang. What remains of the altar is otherwise fragmentary, but it appears to have been largely functional with less emphasis on art and decoration. The sacrificial procession depicts animals being led to sacrifice by figures carved in a Republican style similar to the so-called " Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus", in sharp contrast with the style on the exterior of the precinct walls. Within the enclosing precinct walls, the altar itself was carved with images illustrating the lex aria, the law governing the ritual performed at the altar. The monument consists of a traditional open-air altar at its centre surrounded by precinct walls which are pierced on the eastern and western ends (so called today because of the modern layout) by openings and elaborately and finely sculpted entirely in Luna marble. It was reassembled in its current location, now the Museum of the Ara Pacis, in 1938, turned 90° counterclockwise from its original orientation so that the original western side now faces south. Originally located on the northern outskirts of Rome, a Roman mile from the boundary of the pomerium on the west side of the Via Flaminia, the Ara Pacis stood in the northeastern corner of the Campus Martius, the former flood plain of the Tiber River and gradually became buried under 4 metres (13 ft) of silt deposits. The monument was commissioned by the Roman Senate on July 4, 13 BC to honour the return of Augustus to Rome after three years in Hispania and Gaul and consecrated on January 30, 9 BC. The Ara Pacis Augustae ( Latin, "Altar of Augustan Peace" commonly shortened to Ara Pacis) is an altar in Rome dedicated to Pax, the Roman goddess of Peace.
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