I hate to pipe in so late on this discussion, but...
There has been a lot of discussions around the 'legitimacy' of the Colonia Nova buildings — are they truly Roman, or 'Romanesque', or Renaissance?
Actually, they're more Roman than most people would think. The problem is that we have been subjected to almost a century of 'Holywood Roman' imagery — shiny white marble temples with elaborate classical ornamentation. This is a result of (mostly) a renewed interest in Roman architecture, history, and culture sprouted in the 19th century. In fact, researching how Victorians thought about the Romans is an active field of study. There is even a project in Second Life about it: http://secondlife.com/destination/syden ... tal-palace (you can read more about it here: http://sydenhamcrystalpalace.wordpress.com/). The Victorians were actually shocked about Roman way of life and their lack of prudeness — there are documented interviews from 1854 about how people reacted to the Crystal Palace exhibit.
Much of what was thought to be Roman architecture in the 19th century 'spilled over' to Hollywood. This is not to blame Holywood — they did what they could with the available material, which were mostly ruins in old marble stripped of all colour. But after decades of research, we found amazingly intact frescos depicting Roman urban architecture, mostly in Pompeii. We also lost our prejudice regarding Roman lifestyle and analysed it from the perspective of a detached observer. We know now that Roman cities looked far more 'modern' than we thought in the 19th century. Some vistas of a very colourful Rome in the 1st century BCE show a city that would be remarkably much more contemporary to modern building styles ('modern' referring to post-Renaissance buildings). In fact, it seems now that only after the Renaissance we started to build again in a way more 'closer' to what the Romans had done some 15 or 16 centuries before.
Rome — and most Roman cities — were mostly brick-and-mortar before the 1st century BCE. Allegedly, it was only under Augustus that marble started to replace bricks in the major landmarks ('I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.') But marble endures longer than bricks, thus that's still the image we have of ancient Roman cities, full of white marble everywhere. In fact, except for those major landmarks, the rest of the city was very likely a mix of bricks and concrete. In fact, even today, Romans left us with outstandingly modern elements of architecture made out of concrete, which was not only used in sewers and aqueducts but also on large public buildings with huge domes like the Pantheon. After the fire in Rome in 64 AD, Nero ordered most of the city to be built in brick-faced concrete — a solution which is rather very contemporary today.
As such, Roman cities would look nowhere near Hollywood depictions. From the perspective of a contemporary observer, they would actually look like a simulacrum of a Renaissance pastiche done in concrete! They would probably look horribly 'fake' because of that.
When designing Colonia Nova, the original team had a bit of trouble struggling with that. Should we opt for a Hollywood-style look, which was what other regions in SL had already done, or should we be bold enough to try to go for an historically accurate representation of a Roman city, which, however, would look very strange to those used to Hollywood representations? At the time of planning, a huge scientific project to recreate a 3D model of Rome in 320 CE was gaining prominence — parts of it were used by Google — the Rome Reborn project: http://romereborn.frischerconsulting.com/ While the detail of the texturing in that model is inferior to what we can achieve in SL, it shows a bit how Rome ought to look like.
Take a look at the picture above. The building at the left edge has balconies, and could be easily mistaken from anything designed and built in the 1960s or 1970s. Even the other buildings, although a bit more ornamented, look much more 17th century than 4th century! In fact, one of the plans of the Rome Reborn project was to try to sell the models to CGI companies working for Hollywood, and requiring a complete model of the city of Rome. But Hollywood has rejected them often, with the excuse that they don't want historically accurate imagery, they want to sell entertainment and an image of Rome to their spectators. A historically accurate Rome looks 'fake'!
Well, Colonia Nova is not 'historically accurate' to the last detail, but it drew inspiration from current research in Roman archaeology. A very important point stressed at that time is that the 'real' city of Colonia Nova, in 120 CE, had been in existence for almost a century, so the buildings would not look 'new'. They would be dirty with cracked stones, paint fading from the walls, and so forth. There would be a mix of buildings, some older, some newer, having been built over four generations. And as a result most buildings would look much more like buildings from the Renaissance or even from later periods than 'Hollywood white marble'. A contemporary historian and archaeologist might smile and even smirk at our meagre attempts, but at least they would see that we went for historical accuracy and not fantasy — even if, as a consequence, Colonia Nova looks much less 'Roman' than any other Roman region in SL. That was a risk we would take. But it would also allow us to be a little less strict in the areas around the inner city — because, very likely, wealthy Romans living in villas outside Colonia Nova would surely employ different styles, use more marble and less concrete and bricks, and add scattered temples and similar buildings which would look a bit 'out of place' compared to the insulae in the inner city. I think that, in general, we made a good job of capturing that.
Of course, when dealing with the covenants, we might have failed in one of our purposes. In Neufreistadt, it was clear that we didn't want to go for a 'medieval role-playing region' but actually depict a 'real' contemporary city, which would have mostly well-preserved medieval buildings but add post-modern architecture blending in with the medieval architecture. Thus the bridge, MoCA, etc. Thus the shops, the esplanade with modern chairs, etc. For Colonia Nova, we forgot to add that to the overall description, and so it was assumed that everything inside Colonia Nova would have to be historically accurate. Thus, Guillaume's complaints are well-grounded — I personally still struggle with the concept of placing SL vendors which look 'Roman' without wasting prims in my tiny shop, a task which has eluded me for years 
Sadly, the discussion then degenerated into religious issues...
I also have to respectfully disagree with JerryDon. In Rome, although there were periods with a 'state religion' (definitely after Constantine!), religion was a fashion among the upper classes, and the more exotic, the better. Mixing semitic and Egyptian cults, and throwing a bit of animism and some old Roman traditional religion with everything was typical of many periods. I remember reading some Roman letters during the 1st century CE where Romans criticised Christianism, not because it was a 'new' religion — they had thousands of them — but because early Christians tended to be intolerant and claim their religion to be the only valid one, excluding every other, while Romans were all for syncretism and mixing and matching what they liked. Christian martyrdom was a historical anomaly — if Christians of those days were more tolerant and open-minded about others' beliefs, they might not have been driven to the underground (and, of course, History would have been very different!).
In other areas of the world, specially those outside the sphere of influence of the Religions of the Book, religious tolerance was more the norm and not the exception. India, in particular, is still a 'religious melting pot', where people every day come up with a new religion, gather a few followers, and start practicing what they preach — no matter how crazy it sounds, they will be tolerated. It's even quite extraordinary how completely absurd and contradictory beliefs in India are openly tolerated and even revered by others. They have millenia of traditions regarding religious tolerance. Even though most of us Westerners would say that 'most people in India are Hindus', Hinduism is not even close a 'unified' religion. There are uncountable Hindu sects, and new ones are added every day; few Hindus practice today anything older than a century or two. And, yes, they contradict each other easily — there is a long-standing tradition of debate in Indian culture — and, as such, it might confuse us how two Hindus can believe in completely opposite things and still call themselves Hindu!
This is pretty much to say that it is just Western tradition that is — after Constantine — used to the notion of a 'state religion', centrally controlled, and which might have several sects or variants, but there are 'authorities' who say what is a religion and what is not. To be honest, the same applies to the other Religions of the Book as well, although, as you all know, theological differences in Islam have been the cause of long-standing fratricide wars... In other regions, other cultures, other traditions — as well in the traditions of the late Roman Republic and the Roman Empire — making up your own religion, drawing from different sources and inspirations, was the more popular view. Modern notions of what 'religion' is and how freedom of religion applies most certainly take the more embracing and inclusive view: Guillaume is quite welcome to practice whatever he wishes, so long, of course, that he doesn't use religion as a pretext to violate other people's rights. But the right to define what his own religion is and how he practices it should be inviolate.
In my case, as a Buddhist, I should explain that Buddhism inherited the tradition of religious tolerance, but with two twists. One is that Buddhism flourished in a period where the art of religious and metaphysical debate was at its peak. In particular, it was assumed that when two philosophers discussed their religion or philosophy in a public debate, the losing side would be forced to adopt the winner's views. Buddhism thus prospered because it had to create firm foundations of logic and reason in order to survive in a public debate; were it not so, then the 'competing' religions of the day would have easily wiped it out. The result is that not many 'original' religions invented in India survived to our days — most of them were wiped out through debate, as they failed to sustain their logical argumentation. Buddhists created vast universities where the art of debate, logic, reasoning, and writing were perfected in order to win public debates with the competitors; at some point they were so good at it that a large part of India became Buddhist — not by conquest or imposition, but through logical debate!
On the other hand, there is not a 'single' source of Buddhism teachings. While Siddhārtha's teachings were propagated over several centuries, the actual title of 'Buddha' refers to the first enlightened/awakened being of our era. Many others — millions, in fact — followed Siddhārtha's teachings and attained the same state of awakeness as he did, by employing the same techniques and methods. But they had different kinds of students than Siddhārtha. As such, they had to teach them differently. Siddhārtha himself is claimed to have taught 84,000 different methods — further awakened beings have added millions more. However, no matter what the exact technique is, all of them pay a special reverence to the first teacher, Siddhārtha Gautama, because he also left a method to validate what are Buddhist teachings and what are not (it's like a mathematical proof: apply four simple rules to validate your method, and if it fails to deal with any of those rules, then it's not Buddhism). Through debate and logical argumentation, many methods and techniques were 'weeded out' over the centuries, and not all teachers had students to pass their methods along, so many lineages of teachings have 'died out'. Often they were recorded, but, without having a teacher to explain how they worked, they have been abandoned. This goes on to this very day; one of my own teachers received some techniques from an enlightened master as recently as 2007, which he felt that they would be appropriate to teach us. While these are formally very similar to many techniques recorded in the past 2600 years, there are subtle differences. They can be easily validated as being 'Buddhist' but they might be very strange for someone who had different teachers. Thus, when Buddhist practitioners meet, the first thing they usually tell each other is what teachers they had. If they agree to do a practice together, usually they trace back their own lineages a few generations or even centuries until they can find a common practice that both are familiar with. Thus it's technically possible for all Buddhists to have at least some common practices — while each, individually, will have completely different methods (some of which might be completely alien and even 'heretic'!). A typical example is that almost all Buddhists do special practices on the anniversary of Siddhārtha Gautama birth and/or day he reached enlightenment, but, because not all historical calendars are accurate, that practice might be on different days! The New Year is also an annual festival for Buddhists, but each tradition starts the new year on a different date as well — that's why the Chinese New Year is not on the same day as the Tibetan New Year, or the Birmanese New Year, or the Thai New Year, etc. (Japanese, being more pragmatic, even if they are Buddhists, celebrate the new year on January 1st ).
Buddhist festivals also don't make sense without understanding what they're supposed to be for. In fact, all of them are just pretexts to do a bit more practice than usual. Because of that, it's not uncommon for Buddhists to have them every week. You can see the equivalence in the Religions of the Book: all of them have at least one holy day — be it Friday, Saturday, or Sunday — per week, when believers are supposed not to go to work and practice their religion together. Buddhists are not different in that regard, except in the purpose of their practice.
My whole point here is not to get too long-winded about the many festivals that Buddhists are supposed to be following, but more to focus on the 'outward appearances' of those festivals. Buddhists are strictly forbidden to proselytize — they actually take an oath not to do so! — and, at least in Mahayana Buddhism, they vow to respect and tolerate everybody else's religious practice. There is a reason for that, but it would take a lot of time to explain it (and yes, it's very logical). The point is that 'outward appearances' matter little to Buddhists, rather the contrary — in a Buddhist country, festivals might be held commonly in public, because everybody else will also be Buddhist. In countries where Buddhism is not widespread, Buddhists are supposed to remember all those festivals and practice it in the privacy of their own homes, taking pains not to disturb other people's faiths. For instance, in my own tradition, the books and implements at home are not publicly shown. They are supposed to remain hidden. If I get visitors from my own tradition, then they have an understanding of what it's all about, and it makes sense to display them. If the visitors are actually interested in Buddhism, I'll explain it to the best of my abilities, and if their interest is genuine, I might even be willing to explain the purpose of the images, books, and other implements we use in our practice. Without that explanation, none of those things are useful to anyone else except to a practitioner, and they are not 'toys' to be used as decorative elements or something like that. Even in the modern world, Buddhist groups struggle with printing handouts with images of the Buddha, because people will invariably throw them away and step on them, thus voiding their purpose — which is to establish a connection and potentially raising some interest in learning a bit more about it. I remember one of my teachers scolding a very eager student who wished to do a huge marketing campaign to announce practices on the temple and retreats that the group was organizing. The teacher said that this went completely against the Buddha's teachings. People who have a genuine interest in Buddhism tend to find good qualified teachers who explain things properly; there is no need for mass-marketing. On the other hand, that doesn't mean that Buddhists should be completely secretive and hide under their beds fearing to meet anyone — that's completely stupid. Instead, Buddhists are supposed to be active in their communities and lead by example. When people get curious about how well-balanced they appear, how they can be so patient, tolerant, and never worry too much about the hugest catastrophes, then, yes, they might reveal that all this is a result of their practice, and offer to teach some simple methods. That's how it works.
So I'm pretty sure that Buddhists won't really stampede the streets of the CDS demanding that, in the name of freedom of religion, they're allowed to hold their festivals. Specially because it would be highly unlikely that all CDS Buddhists might agree on which festivals are important to hold publicly, or, if they can agree on the date, they might not agree to what is important to do on that date Instead, they're supposed to hold their festivals in privacy and not disturb anyone else. If someone is curious enough to learn a bit more about what they're doing, then, sure, the doors should be open, and there should be a willingness to explain what it's all about. But just yelling around, dancing and chanting or whatever one's tradition uses to celebrate the festival, without providing an explanation of the purpose of that festival, makes little sense and is fundamentally worthless. In fact, it might even prevent potentially interested people from learning more — they might find things so alien and strange that they reject Buddhism completely as a 'wild' idea without purpose or logic, and that is precisely the opposite of what's supposed to be.
Now, of course, different religions hold the completely opposite view, and, as such, we have to accommodate all of them. Thus, public displays of one's religion — 'public' meaning: festivals and celebrations held in Government-held land — should require Chancellor's permission and a set date and place for the event. This is exactly the same as for anything else — we also held rallies and protest marches in the CDS, using the same rules. The reasoning behind this is that many different people might wish to hold festivals on the same date, and the Chancellor has to make sure everybody has a fair chance to do that, without interfering with others. For instance, the Winter Solstice is almost universally used by all religions as a special celebration day. It's fundamental for Wiccans and animists; it became Christmas for Christians; it's Saturnalia for the Romans; esoteric Buddhists do special practices during the solstice as well, and so do Taoists. As such, if all those groups wish to invade the streets of the CDS and do their festivals, some order is required. And this is the role of the Chancellor: to make sure that all citizens get fair access to public spaces to hold their festivals and ceremonies and prayer sessions or whatever their religion mandates, but also making sure that none conflict with each other when doing so. Needless to say, a-religious citizens (I hesitate to call them 'atheists', because Buddhists, Taoists, and Jainists, as well as some higher esoteric Hindu traditions are all atheists) have the same rights to hold debates, conferences, and public events in the CDS — there is no discrimination against those who do not wish to follow any spiritual tradition, religion, philosophy, or way of life: they have the right to express themselves freely and publicly as well.
Taking that into account, in my view — but I'm not a Chancellor! — public display of one's religion/tradition/philosophy should be limited to special dates and events with Chancellor permission, and given free and equal access to public spaces by request. Inside the privacy of one's homes — or special buildings like churches, temples, spiritual centres, etc. — of course people are free to decorate them freely and hold whatever events (private or public) they wish. But I would draw the line in allowing an excessive amount of public display of imagery and symbols on the exteriors and façades of public buildings. For example, Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists freely use the swastika as a good-luck symbol. Because the swastika has terrible connotations in the West, and is even forbidden to be displayed in certain countries (Germany comes to mind), getting into a fight over the 'right' to decorate the exterior of their homes with swastikas just because someone is Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist, would be out of bounds — for respect to other traditions which have very negative associations with that symbol. Doing it otherwise would be a deliberate provocation, hiding behind the right to 'freedom of religion', and be very rude and inconsiderate towards others. Obviously, those religious groups who use the swastika freely, when living iRL in societies that abhor that symbol, will simply replace it by something else (fortunately, all religions have plenty of good-luck symbols to do so). We ought to do the same in our community. Similarly, esoteric Buddhism and Hinduism use very strange imagery with profound significance which is completely abhorrent to members of the Religions of the Book. Those should not be displayed publicly. But, by contrast, adoration of an image of a crucified man bleeding from every pore, displaying an expression of profound suffering, would be abhorrent to very pious Buddhists and Jains, to which devotion of such imagery of suffering of others would be deemed barbaric and bordering on insanity. While we who live in mostly Christian countries can't even understand why those religions would be shocked with such imagery, we must at least respect that different images have completely different meanings, depending on the tradition, and, while fundamental ideas might be the same (e.g. universal love and compassion to fellow beings), the form might be completely different and often mutually offensive.
I'm not really proposing 'legislation' at this stage, but just pointing out my own views on the subject. Because it's a very sensitive point — different countries and even different communities in the same country see the issue differently — we cannot simply rely on 'common sense'. We have to be a bit stricter than that. On the other hand, we have certainly to provide that freedom of expressing one's religious beliefs is not constrained. For me, this means that everything done in private is acceptable. When doing anything in public — and that might include public display of imagery on one's parcel — this falls within the scope of the Covenants, and of the general laws regulating public use of spaces. In particular, holding a public religious event in public space should always be allowed, but requires permission from the Executive, mostly to avoid conflicting dates/locations with other public events. And this, of course, is not restricted to 'religious' events, but is open to any other kind of events which fall under the scope of freedom of expression (i.e. public rallies, protest marches, or any form of support of certain views, ideas, ideologies, policies, philosophies, groups, etc.).
