Via Sacra & Arch of Titus: The Sacred Procession of Rome

Why is it significant?

Walk along the large, polygonal black basalt flagstones of the Via Sacra, the Sacred Way. For more than a thousand years, victorious Roman generals and emperors rode along this very stone road in gold-leaf chariots drawn by four white horses during their triumphal parades, surrounded by captured…

Key Facts

Open the walk

Walk along the large, polygonal black basalt flagstones of the Via Sacra, the Sacred Way. For more than a thousand years, victorious Roman generals and emperors rode along this very stone road in gold-leaf chariots drawn by four white horses during their triumphal parades, surrounded by captured plunder and chained prisoners, climbing toward the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline.

Stand under the single vaulted archway of the Arch of Titus, erected in eighty-one AD by Emperor Domitian to honor his late brother's capture of Jerusalem. Look up into the interior vault: there is a famous carved relief showing Roman soldiers carrying the sacred spoils plundered from King Solomon's Temple, including the silver trumpets and the solid gold seven-branched Menorah.

For nearly two millennia, Jewish citizens of Rome traditionally refused to walk beneath this arch of conquest. In nineteen forty-eight, upon the founding of the modern State of Israel, the Roman Jewish community gathered here and marched backwards through the arch to symbolize that the Jewish people had outlived the empire that conquered them.

Walk down into the sprawling valley of the Roman Forum.