{"id":4327,"date":"2016-10-26T16:07:13","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T16:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visionpubl.com\/en\/?p=4327"},"modified":"2016-10-26T16:31:53","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T16:31:53","slug":"roman-forum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visionpubl.com\/en\/cities\/rome\/roman-forum\/","title":{"rendered":"Roman Forum"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Forum Romanum<\/strong> was the commercial, religious, political<\/strong> and legal<\/strong> center<\/strong> of Ancient Rome<\/strong>, at any rate throughout the Republic, and remained a sacred and monumental area throughout antiquity.<\/p>\n

Its origins<\/strong> are related the coalescing into a city of the primitive villages<\/strong> which had grown up on the higher parts of the surrounding hills.<\/p>\n

The valley of the Forum, lying between the Palatine<\/strong>, the Capitol<\/strong> and the first slopes of the Viminal<\/strong> and the Quirinal<\/strong>, must itself have been affected, albeit marginally, by the presence of some modest nuclei of huts and by an extensive burial ground, dating back to the late bronze age and the early iron age.<\/p>\n

Around about the end of the 7th <\/sup>Century BC, the Cloaca<\/em> Maxima<\/em> drained away <\/strong>its stagnant waters and it could thus be formally laid out and receive its first ‘paving’.<\/p>\n


\nPhoto credits: Francisco Anzola<\/a><\/p>\n

From that time onwards, the part of the valley lying at the foot of the Capitol was set aside for political functions<\/strong> (with the construction of the Curia<\/strong>, for the meetings of the Senate, and the Comitium<\/strong>, for the assemblies of the people), while the remainder, much larger, came to play the part of the ‘square’ (the Forum in the proper sense of the term), where shops and market stalls intermingled with the city’s oldest sanctuaries, of Vesta, Saturn, Janus and Castor and Pollux. <\/strong><\/p>\n

A small sanctuary consisting of an altar, an honorary column and a tufa block with an inscription dating back to the 6th<\/sup> Century BC was interpreted as being the grave of the legendary founder, Romulus,<\/strong> and protected with big slabs of black stone (lapis niger<\/em>).<\/p>\n\t\t

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The Via Sacra<\/strong> crossed the whole length of the square, whence it ascended to the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The construction of the<\/strong> first basilicas<\/strong> during the 2nd <\/sup>Century BC (the Porcia, the oldest, the Opimia, the Sempronia, and most importantly the Basilica Aemilia) further emphasized the Forum’s character as a political and administrative center<\/strong>, and it gradually assumed its definitive appearance.<\/p>\n

The stages in this process were:<\/p>\n