Roman Forum: The Political Heart of Ancient Rome

The Roman Forum, or Forum Romanum, was the political, religious and commercial heart of ancient Rome for more than a thousand years. Lying in a valley between the Palatine and Capitoline Hills, it grew from a marshy burial ground into a square crowded with temples, law courts and the Senate house. Its ruins, excavated since the 19th century, are among the most visited archaeological sites in the world.

From marsh to meeting place

In the early Iron Age the valley was wet, low ground used for burials by the villages on the surrounding hills, from around the 10th to the 8th century BC. As those villages merged into a single community, the valley offered the obvious common space between them.

In the 7th century BC the ground was raised with tons of fill and drained, and the first beaten-earth and gravel pavements were laid, broadly between about 650 and 600 BC. Drainage channels that fed the stream through the valley later developed into the Cloaca Maxima, Rome’s great sewer. Roman legend credited these works to the kings, linking the Forum to the city’s earliest days after the founding of Rome.

Politics and law

The northwest corner held the Comitium, an open assembly area where citizens met in voting groups and magistrates addressed them. Next to it stood the Senate house, the Curia. The first, the Curia Hostilia, was attributed to the king Tullus Hostilius.

Speakers addressed crowds from the Rostra, a raised platform named after the bronze prows (rostra) of warships captured from Antium in 338 BC and fixed to its front. Laws and public notices were displayed nearby; tradition holds that the Twelve Tables, Rome’s first written laws, were set up in the Forum around 450 BC.

Near the Comitium lies the Lapis Niger, a black marble pavement found in 1899 that covers an archaic shrine. Beneath it is a stone inscribed in very early Latin, probably of the 6th century BC, which mentions a “rex”, or king. It is one of the oldest Latin inscriptions known.

Julius Caesar began a new Senate house, the Curia Julia, which Augustus completed in 29 BC. The well-preserved brick building visible today is a rebuilding by the emperor Diocletian after a fire in AD 283. It survived largely because it was turned into the church of Sant’Adriano in the 7th century.

Temples and sacred sites

Religion and politics were intertwined in the Forum. The Temple of Saturn, traditionally dedicated in 497 BC, housed the state treasury (the aerarium); eight columns of its later rebuilding still stand. The Temple of Castor and Pollux was vowed after the Battle of Lake Regillus and dedicated in 484 BC.

At the eastern end, the round Temple of Vesta held the sacred fire that symbolised the survival of the state, tended by the Vestal Virgins, whose large residence, the House of the Vestals, stood beside it. Nearby was the Regia, traditionally the residence of King Numa and later the office of the chief priest, the pontifex maximus.

Other temples included the Temple of Concord, associated with reconciliation between patricians and plebeians, and the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina (AD 141). The latter survives because it was converted into the church of San Lorenzo in Miranda.

The Forum under Caesar and the emperors

From the 2nd century BC large covered halls called basilicas were built along the sides of the square for courts and business. The first, the Basilica Porcia, dates from 184 BC, followed by the Basilica Aemilia in 179 BC and the Basilica Sempronia in 170 BC. Caesar replaced the Sempronia with the much larger Basilica Julia.

After Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC, a crowd cremated his body in the Forum. Augustus built the Temple of the Deified Julius on the spot, dedicated in 29 BC. He also set up the Golden Milestone, a marker from which distances along Rome’s roads were notionally measured.

Emperors added triumphal arches. The Arch of Titus, built after Titus’s death in AD 81, commemorates the capture of Jerusalem in AD 70. The Arch of Septimius Severus, dedicated in AD 203, celebrates victories over the Parthians. The vast Basilica of Maxentius, completed by Constantine after 312, was one of the last great buildings. The Sacred Way, the Via Sacra, ran through it all and was the route of triumphal processions.

Daily life in the square

The Forum was not only a stage for great events. On ordinary days it was crowded with traders, bankers, lawyers, litigants and onlookers. Shops (tabernae) lined the long sides of the square, and in the Republic moneychangers and bankers worked from them. Trials were held in the open air and later inside the basilicas, where the Centumviral Court heard inheritance cases in the Basilica Julia.

The square also served as a venue for spectacle. Before permanent amphitheatres existed, gladiatorial fights at funerals were staged in the Forum, and underground passages built under Caesar allowed performers and animals to appear suddenly. Grand funerals of leading families passed through it, with speeches in praise of the dead delivered from the Rostra.

Graffiti, gaming boards scratched into the steps of the Basilica Julia and the remains of honorary statue bases still record this busy everyday use.

Decline and burial

As the political centre shifted to the emperors’ palaces and later to Constantinople, the Forum lost importance. It was damaged in the sack of Rome in 410 and in later attacks. The last monument added was the Column of Phocas, rededicated in AD 608 to the Byzantine emperor Phocas.

In the Middle Ages several temples became churches, while others were quarried for building stone or burnt for lime. Floods and debris raised the ground level by several metres, and the area became a pasture called the Campo Vaccino, the “cow field”. Renaissance builders took marble from it for new churches and palaces.

Excavation and the modern site

Systematic excavation began in the early 19th century, notably under Carlo Fea from 1803 and during the period of French rule. After Rome became capital of Italy in 1871, digs expanded, and from 1898 the archaeologist Giacomo Boni uncovered the Lapis Niger, the early cemetery and much of the ancient pavement.

In the 1930s the regime of Benito Mussolini cut the broad Via dei Fori Imperiali past the Forum, destroying a medieval district. Since 1980 the Forum has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the historic centre of Rome, and today it belongs to the Colosseum Archaeological Park.

Timeline

• c. 1000–800 BC: The valley is used as a cemetery by hilltop villages.
• c. 650–600 BC: The area is drained, filled and first paved.
• 497 BC: Traditional dedication of the Temple of Saturn.
• 484 BC: Dedication of the Temple of Castor and Pollux.
• 338 BC: Ships’ prows from Antium decorate the Rostra.
• 184 BC: The Basilica Porcia, the first basilica, is built.
• 44 BC: Julius Caesar is cremated in the Forum.
• AD 203: The Arch of Septimius Severus is dedicated.
• AD 608: The Column of Phocas, the last monument, is rededicated.
• 1898: Giacomo Boni begins major excavations.

Why it matters

The Roman Forum was where the Roman Republic and Empire did their public business, and many words in modern politics and law, from “senate” to “basilica” and “forum” itself, trace back to it. Its layered ruins record a millennium of Roman history in a single valley.