CHEAP TRAVEL EUROPE
FORO ROMANO SECTION
Republic
During the Republican period the Comitium continued to be the central location for all judicial and political life in the city.[7] However, in order to create a larger gathering place, the Senate began expanding the open area between the Comitium and the Temple of Vesta by purchasing existing private homes and removing them for public use. Building projects of several consuls repaved and built onto both the Comitium and the adjacent central plaza that was becoming the Forum.[8]
The 5th century BC witnessed the construction of the earliest Forum temples with known dates of construction: the Temple of Saturn (497 BC) and the Temple of Castor and Pollux (484 BC).[9] The Temple of Concord was added in the following century, possibly by the soldier and statesman Marcus Furius Camillus. A long held tradition of speaking from the elevated speakers' Rostra — originally facing north towards the Senate House to the politicians and assembled elite — put the orator's back to the people assembled in the Forum. A tribune known as Caius Licinius (consul in 361 BC) was supposed to have been the first to turn away from the Roman elite towards the people in the Forum, an act symbolically repeated two centuries later by Gaius Gracchus.[10] This began the tradition of locus popularis, in which even young nobles were expected to speak to the people from the Rostra. Gracchus was thus credited with (or accused of) disturbing the mos maiorum ("custom of the fathers/ancestors") in ancient Rome. When Censor in 318 BC, Gaius Maenius provided buildings in the Forum neighborhood with balconies, which were called after him maeniana, in order that the spectators might better view the games put on within the temporary wooden arenas set up there.
The earliest basilicas (large, aisled halls) were introduced to the Forum in 184 BC by Marcus Portius Cato, which began the process of "monumentalizing" the site. The Basilica Fulvia (which underwent several rebuildings and names: Basilica Fulvia et Aemilia, Basilica Paulli, Basilica Aemilia) was dedicated on the north side of the Forum square in 179 BC. It was followed nine years later by the Basilica Sempronia on the south side. Many of the traditions from the Comitium such as the popular assemblies, funerals of the nobility and games were transferred to the Forum as it developed.[11] Especially notable among these was the move of the comitia tributa, then the focus of popular politics, in 145 BC. Particularly important and unprecedented political events took place in 133 BC when, in the midst of riots in and around the Forum, the Tribune Tiberius Gracchus was lynched there by a group of Senators.
In the 80s BC, during the dictatorship of Sulla, major work was done on the Forum including the raising of the plaza level by almost a meter and the laying of permanent marble paving stones.[12] (Remarkably, this level of the paving was maintained more or less intact for over a millennium: at least until the sack of Rome by Robert Guiscard and his Normans in 1084, when neglect finally allowed debris to begin to accumulate unabated.[13]) In 78 BC, the immense Tabularium (Records Hall) was built at the Capitoline Hill end of the Forum by order of the consuls for that year, M. Aemilius Lepidus and Q. Lutatius Catulus. In 63 BC, Cicero delivered his famous speech denouncing the companions of the conspirator Catiline at the Forum (in the Temple of Concord, whose spacious hall was sometimes used as a meeting place by the Senators). After the verdict, they were led to their deaths at the Tullianum, the nearby dungeon which was the only known state prison of the ancient Romans.[14]
Over time the Comitium was lost to the ever-growing Curia and to Julius Caesar's rearrangements before his assassination in 44 BC. That year two supremely dramatic events were witnessed by the Forum, perhaps the most famous ever to transpire there: Marc Antony's funeral oration for Caesar (immortalized in Shakespeare's famous play) was delivered from the partially completed speaker's platform known as the New Rostra and the public burning of Caesar's body occurred on a site directly across from the Rostra around which the Temple to the Deified Caesar was subsequently built by his great-nephew Octavius (Augustus).[15] Almost two years later, Marc Antony added to the notoriety of the Rostra by publicly displaying the severed head and right hand of his enemy Cicero there.
The close relationship between the Comitium and the Forum Romanum eventually faded from the writings of the ancients. The former is last mentioned in the reign of Septimus Severus.
Empire
After Julius Caesar's death, and the end of the subsequent Civil Wars, Augustus finished his great-uncle's work of giving the Forum its final form. This included defining the southeastern end of the plaza by constructing the Temple of Divus Iulius and the Arch of Augustus there (both in 29 BC). Augustus is said to have stated "I found Rome a city of brick, and left it a city of marble". What is true is that he continued the building projects of his predecessor and began many of his own directly in the Forum.
The Forum was witness to the assassination of a Roman Emperor in 69 AD: Galba had set out from the palace to meet rebels, but was so feeble that he had to be carried in a litter. He was immediately met by a troop of his rival Otho's cavalry near the Lacus Curtius in the Forum and killed there. During these early Imperial times much economic and judicial business transferred away from the Forum to larger and more extravagant structures to the north. After the building of Trajan's Forum (110 AD), these activities transferred to the Basilica Ulpia.
The Emperor Diocletian (r. 284-305) was the last of the great builders of Rome's city infrastructure and he did not omit the Forum from his program. By his day it had become highly cluttered with honorific memorials. He refurbished and reorganized it, building anew the Temple of Saturn, Temple of Vesta and the Curia.[16] (The last had recently burned and Diocletian's version is the one that can still be visited today.) The reign of Constantine the Great saw the division of the Empire into its Eastern and Western halves, as well as the construction of the Basilica of Maxentius (312 AD), the last significant expansion of the Forum complex. This restored much of the political focus to the Forum until the fall of the Western Roman Empire almost two centuries later.
Medieval
In the 6th century some of the old edifices within the Forum began to be transformed into Christian churches. On August 1, 608, the Column of Phocas, a Roman monumental column, was erected before the Rostra and dedicated or rededicated in honour of the Eastern Roman Emperor Phocas. This proved to be the last monumental addition made to the Forum. By the 8th century the whole space was surrounded by Christian churches taking the place of the abandoned and ruined temples.[17]
An anonymous 8th century traveler from Einsiedeln (now in Switzerland) reported that the Forum was already falling apart in his time. During the Middle Ages, though the memory of the Forum Romanum persisted, its monuments were for the most part buried under debris, and its location was designated the "Campo Vaccino" or "cattle field," located between the Capitoline Hill and the Colosseum.
After the 8th century the structures of the Forum were dismantled, re-arranged and used to build feudal towers and castles within the local area. In the 13th century these rearranged structures were torn down and the site became a dumping ground. This, along with the debris from the dismantled medieval buildings and ancient structures, helped contribute to the rising ground level.[18]
The return of Pope Urban V from Avignon in 1367 led to an increased interest in ancient monuments, partly for their moral lesson and partly as a quarry for new buildings being undertaken in Rome after a long lapse.
Excavation and preservation
Artists from the late 15th century drew the ruins in the Forum, antiquaries copied inscriptions in the 16th century, and a tentative excavation was begun in the late 18th century.
A cardinal took measures to drain it again and built the Alessandrine neighborhood over it. But the excavation by Carlo Fea, who began clearing the debris from the Arch of Septimius Severus in 1803, and archaeologists under the Napoleonic regime marked the beginning of clearing the Forum, which was only fully excavated in the early 20th century.
Remains from several centuries are shown together, due to the Roman practice of building over earlier ruins.
[edit] The site today
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Today, archeological excavations continue along with constant restoration and preservation. Long a major tourist destination in the city, the Forum is open for foot traffic along the ancient Roman streets which are restored to the late Imperial level. The Forum Museum (Antiquarium Forense) is found at the Colosseum end of a modern road, the Via dei Fori Imperiali. This little museum has a significant collection of sculpture and architectural fragments. There are also reconstructions of the Forum and the nearby Imperial Fora as well as a short video in several languages. It is entered from the Forum by the side of Santa Francesca Romana (No. 53 Piazza S. Maria Nova) and is open from 08:30 to one hour before sunset. Admission is free.
In 2008 heavy rains caused structural damage to the modern concrete covering holding the "Black Stone" marble together over the Vulcanal.
