Without claiming completeness, I present in this chapter those examples of paintings in temples found in the European provinces of the Roman Empire that have come to my attention. They have been arranged according to modern political borders.

In most cases, nothing but fragments of murals survives, but a few complexes allow the reconstruction of painting schemes and/or decorative programmes. In general, discussions of insignificant fragments have been left out. Many of the studies consulted are quite technical in nature in the sense of reconstructing the decorations on the basis of the fragments and through technical analyses of mortars and pigments and do not address the decorations in their religious context. In any case, it is often difficult to determine the religious meaning of the paintings because of the bad state of preservation of the remains of the buildings, especially when the buildings themselves no longer exist. Only rarely can the location of the paintings within the structures of the temple complex (e.g. shrine, podium or portico) be established. Occasionally we are lucky enough that the lowest parts of the walls have been preserved in situ and in these cases the remainder can be reconstructed by fitting together the many missing pieces.

From comparative studies of decoration in Roman temples in France, it follows that these paintings rarely contain references to the venerated gods or the cults practiced since they generally show marble imitations in the dado and series of panels, with or without architectural elements and candelabra, in the main zone and figural themes are extremely rare. This conclusion also holds true for the other provincial areas. The absence of figural scenes can be explained in various ways. First, the bad state of preservation of mural paintings across archaeological record accounts for the lack of figural scenes. Second, when decoration can be reconstructed, the presence of figures is rare in both public and private buildings, so that we may surmise a similar paucity of such elements in temples. The lack of good figure painters (pictores imaginarii) might be the most logical explanation for that, possibly because hiring such skilled craftsmen was more expensive than hiring pictores parietarii.

The temple complexes can be divided into two main groups: the indigenous ones, usually called Romano-Celtic or Romano-Gallic temples, and those constructed according to the models introduced from Italy.