The Roman Forum
The Roman Forum is the most important archaeological area in the city, the ideal place to understand that having a “historical sense” means, as the great writer T.S. Eliot says, feeling that the people of the past are our contemporaries. The Forum was the centre of the public life of the ancient city; it developed after the reclaiming of the marshy valley that extended from the Palatine and Capitoline hills in the 7th century BC and the last monument – the commemorative column of the emperor Phocas – was erected there in the 7th century AC, exactly 1200 years later.

This was where the political, religious and commercial activities of ancient Rome took place. We must use our imagination to recreate it as it must have been at the time, full of buildings and people from all over the empire who, just like us today, wanted to see the symbol of the incredible adventure that had led a community of shepherds to become owners of the world.

The Romans charged their buildings with an important function of propagandistic communication, aiming at producing in the viewer a sense of admiration mixed with fear. We find basilicas for business meetings and for the administration of justice, the Curia, seat of the Senate, temples, triumphal arches, monuments and statues.

The area was crossed by the Via Sacra which was used for religious processions and triumphal parades. With the passing of time and the increase in the population, the area was extended with the addition of Imperial Forums that also contributed in stressing the greatness of the empire.

Later, as decline set in, the Forum was abandoned and used as a source of building material. When the first archaeological excavations began in the late 18th century, its monuments, by then mostly underground, had been invaded by cattle and flocks and used as pasture land.

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