The Roman Forum: The Marketplace of the Ancient World

Why is it significant?

Stand in the sunlit center of the Roman Forum and look across the sea of fallen Corinthian capitals, broken marble arches, and towering columns.

Key Facts

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Stand in the sunlit center of the Roman Forum and look across the sea of fallen Corinthian capitals, broken marble arches, and towering columns. Originally an uninhabitable marsh between the hills, it was drained in the sixth century BC by the construction of the Cloaca Maxima sewer, transforming this valley into the political and commercial nucleus of the Western world.

Look at the austere rectangular red-brick building to your right: this is the Curia Julia, the Roman Senate House commissioned by Julius Caesar and completed by Augustus in twenty-nine BC. Inside on the porphyry and serpentine marble floor, three hundred Roman senators deliberated treaties, declared wars, and governed provinces from Britain to Mesopotamia.

The Curia survived almost intact across two millennia because in the seventh century, Pope Honorius the First converted it into the Church of Sant'Adriano, protecting its walls and bronze doors from being quarried for medieval building stones.

Step toward the eight iconic granite columns of the Temple of Saturn.