III.

History of the Forum

The original Roman forum was between the Palatine and Capitoline (Monte Capitoline) hills and Quirinal Hill (Monte Quirinal). Before 500 bc the swampland was drained and established as a shop-lined marketplace. An area for town meetings was at the northwest corner. The beauty of the forum was considerably enhanced with the erection of the temples of Saturn, Castor and Pollux, and Concord. The first courthouse, the Basilica Porcia, was built in 184 bc, followed by those of Aemilia, Sempronia, and Opimia. The basilicas gave the forum a characteristic colonnaded appearance. In 54 bc, to alleviate the great congestion of the Forum Romanum Magnum, Julius Caesar began construction of a new, walled forum, in which the chief building was the Temple of Venus Genetrix. Near this new forum, about 20 bc, the Roman emperor Augustus built a still larger forum containing his temple to Mars Ultor. There followed the forums of Emperor Vespasian, surrounding a beautiful temple of peace; the forum begun by Emperor Domitian and completed by Emperor Marcus Cocceius Nerva, in which stood a temple sacred to Minerva; and, finally, the magnificent forum of Emperor Trajan, enclosing the Basilica Ulpia, Trajan's Column, and Trajan's Temple, added later by Emperor Hadrian. These five imperial forums communicated with the Forum Romanum Magnum in a continuous line that stretched to the north and east of it.

The Gothic invaders of Rome in the 5th century ad inflicted comparatively little damage on the imperial forums. Deterioration had become appreciable by the 9th century, and the old edifices were mostly destroyed in the great fire of 1084, during the invasion of Robert Guiscard, the Norman adventurer. Habitable buildings were turned into fortresses, and during the Renaissance stones from them were used elsewhere. Reduced to a desolate wasteland, the area was known as Campo Vaccino or Cow Plain. Restoration was begun in the 19th century.