Visiting the amazing Roman Forum:Experiencing the historical ruins & Archaeological excavations through a journey back in time to the fall of Roman Empire.

On 6/9/22(the second day of our Rome trip), We undertook a tour of the Roman Forum which is one of the most sought after sights of Rome.Neighbouring the spectacular architecture of the Colosseum,the Roman Forum boasts of many of the oldest & important structures located here including some ancient shrines & Churches.The Basilica of Maxentius was the largest building in the Forum.The Roman Forum fell into ruins soon after the fall of the Roman Empire .Here I am describing the history of the Forum(its inception ,its functions & the buildings it encompasses in its premises) as well as the brief history of Roman Empire for my interested readers.

ROMAN FORUM :

The Roman Forum, also known by its Latin name Forum Romanum, is a rectangular forum surrounded by the ruins of several important ancient government buildings at the center of the city of Rome. Citizens of the ancient city referred to this space, originally a marketplace, as the Forum Magnum, or simply the Forum. For centuries the Forum was the center of day-to-day life in Rome: the site of triumphal processions and elections; the venue for public speeches, criminal trials, and gladiatorial matches; and the nucleus of commercial affairs. Here statues and monuments commemorated the city’s great men. The teeming heart of ancient Rome, it has been called the most celebrated meeting place in the world, and in all history. Located in the small valley between the Palatine and Capitoline Hills, the Forum today is a sprawling ruin of architectural fragments and intermittent archaeological excavations attracting 4.5 million or more sightseers yearly. Many of the oldest and most important structures of the ancient city were located on or near the Forum. The Roman Kingdom’s earliest shrines and temples were located on the southeastern edge.

A forum (Latin forum “public place outdoors”, plural fora) was a public square in a Roman municipium, or any civitas, reserved primarily for the vending of goods; i.e., a marketplace, along with the buildings used for shops and the stoas used for open stalls. Many fora were constructed at remote locations along a road by the magistrate responsible for the road, in which case the forum was the only settlement at the site and had its own name, such as Forum Popili or Forum Livi. For centuries the Forum was the center of day-to-day life in Rome: the site of triumphal processions and elections; the venue for public speeches, criminal trials, and gladiatorial matches; and the nucleus of commercial affairs. Here statues and monuments commemorated the city’s great men.

According to tradition, the Forum was founded as a result of the conciliation of two rivals, Romulus (founder of Rome) who ruled the Palatine Hill, and his nemesis Titus Tatius, who controlled the Capitoline Hill.

THE FUNCTIONS OF THE FORUM:

In addition to its standard function as a marketplace, a forum was a gathering place of great social significance, and often the scene of diverse activities, including political discussions and debates, rendezvous, meetings, et cetera. In that case it supplemented the function of a Conciliabulum. Every muncipium had a forum. Fora were the first of any civitas synoecized whether Latin, Italic, Etruscan, Greek, Celtic or some other. The first forums were sited between independent villages in the period, known only through archaeology. After the rise of the Roman Republic, the most noted forum of the Roman world, the Roman Forum in Rome itself, served as a model of new construction. By the time of the late Republic expansions refurbishing of the forums of the city had inspired Pompey Magnusto create the Theatre of Pompeyi n 55 BC. The Theatre included a massive forum behind the theatre arcades known as the Porticus Pompei (Colonnades of Pompey). The structure was the forebearer to Julius Caesar’s first Imperial forum and the rest to follow. Fora were a regular part of every Roman province in the Republic and the Empire.All fora would have a Temple of Jupiter at the north end, and would also contain other temples, as well as the Basilica.At election times, candidates would use the steps of the temples in the forum to make their election speeches, and would expect their clients to come to support them.

LIST OF MONUMENTS OF ROMAN FORUM:

1 Existing (or reconstructed) ruins
1.1 Temples
1.2 Basilicas
1.3 Arches
1.4 Government buildings or official residences
1.5 Smaller monuments
1.6 Pools, springs
1.7 Roads, streets, staircases
2 Vanished (or almost vanished) structures
2.1 Associated with the old Comitium
2.2 Elsewhere in the Forum
3 Christian churches

This list of monuments of the Roman Forum(Forum Romanum) includes existing and former buildings, memorials and other built structures in the famous Roman public plaza during its 1,400 years of active use (8th century BC–ca 600 AD). It is divided into three categories: those ancient structures that can be seen today as ruins or reconstructions, ancient structures that have vanished or exist only as fragments, and churches of the later, Christian, era. Many of the Forum’s monuments were originally built in the periods of the Kingdom (753 BC–509 BC) and the Republic (509 BC–27 BC), although most were destroyed and rebuilt several times. The existing ruins generally date from the Imperial period (27 BC–476 AD).

ROMAN EMPIRE:
After Julius Caesar’s death and the end of the subsequent civil war, Augustus would finish his great-uncle’s work, giving the Forum its final form. This included the southeastern end of the plaza where he constructed the Temple of Caesar and the Arch of Augustus there (both in 29 BC). The Temple of Caesar was placed between Caesar’s funeral pyre and the Regia. The Temple’s location and reconstruction of adjacent structures resulted in greater organization akin to the Forum of Caesar. The Forum was also witness to the assassination of a Roman Emperor Galba in 69 AD.

The history of the Roman Empire covers the history of ancient Rome from the fall of the Roman Republic in 27 BC until the abdication of Romulus Augustulus in AD 476 in the West, and the Fall of Constantinople in the East in AD 1453. Ancient Rome became a territorial empire while still a republic, but was then ruled by Roman emperors beginning with Augustus (r. 27 BC – AD 14), becoming the Roman Empire following the death of the last republican dictator, the first emperor’s adoptive father Julius Caesar.Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Roman Republic in the 6th century BC, though it did not expand outside the Italian Peninsula until the 3rd century BC.Civil war engulfed the Roman state in the mid 1st century BC, first between Julius Caesar and Pompey, and finally between Octavian and Mark Antony. Antony was defeated at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC, the Senate made Octavian imperator (“commander”) thus beginning the Principate, the first epoch of Roman imperial history usually dated from 27 BC to AD 284; they later awarded him the name Augustus, “the venerated”.
The success of Augustus in establishing principles of dynastic succession was limited by his outliving a number of talented potential heirs; the Julio-Claudian dynasty lasted for four more emperors—Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero—before it yielded in AD 69 to the strife-torn Year of the Four Emperors, from which Vespasian emerged as victor. Vespasian became the founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, to be followed by the Nerva–Antonine dynasty which produced the “Five Good Emperors”: Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and the philosophically inclined Marcus Aurelius.
In 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the Empire. Despite this gesture of universality, the Severan dynasty was tumultuous—an emperor’s reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution. In the reign of Philip the Arab (r. 244–249), Rome celebrated the thousandth anniversary of her founding by Romulus and Remus with the Saecular Games. Diocletian (r. 284–305) restored stability to the empire .Diocletian’s reign also brought the Empire’s most concerted effort against the perceived threat of Christianity, the “Great Persecution”. The state of absolute monarchy that began with Diocletian endured until the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453. Order was eventually restored by the victories of Constantine, who became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and who founded Constantinople as a new capital for the empire after defeating his co-emperor Licinius. The reign of Julian, who under the influence of his adviser Mardonius attempted to restore Classical Roman and Hellenistic religion, only briefly interrupted the succession of Christian emperors of the Constantinian dynasty. Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both the Eastern empire and the whole Western empire, died in AD 395 after making Christianity the official religion of the Empire.
The Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate in the early 5th century as the Germanic migrations and invasions of the Migration Period overwhelmed the capacity of the Empire to assimilate the immigrants and fight off the invaders. Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer.By placing himself under the rule of the eastern emperor Zeno, rather than naming himself or a puppet ruler as emperor, as other Germanic chiefs, had done, Odoacer ended the separate Roman government of the Western empire. The Eastern empire exercised diminishing control over the west over the course of the next century. The empire in the east—known today as the Byzantine Empire, but referred to in its time as the “Roman Empire” or by various other names—ended in 1453 with the death of Constantine XI and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks.

Arch of Septimius Severus:
The white marble Arch of Septimius Severus was added at the northwest end of the Forum close to the foot of the Capitoline Hill and adjacent to the old, vanishing Comitium. It was dedicated in 203 AD to commemorate the Parthian victories of Emperor Septimius Severus and his two sons against Pescennius Niger, and is one of the most visible landmarks there today. The arch closed the Forum’s central area. Besides the Arch of Augustus, which was also constructed following a Roman victory against the Parthians, it is the only triumphal arch in the Forum. 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. The reign of Constantine the Great saw the completion of 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.

The Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine ( Basilica di Massenzio), sometimes known as the Basilica Nova—meaning “new Basilica”—or Basilica of Maxentius, is an ancient building in the Roman Forum, Rome, Italy. It was the largest building in the Forum, and the last Roman basilica built in the city.

The Basilica Julia (Basilica Giulia) was a structure that once stood in the Roman Forum. It was a large, ornate, public building used for meetings and other official business during the Roman Empire. Its ruins have been excavated. What is left from its classical period are mostly foundations, floors, a small back corner wall with a few arches that are part of both the original building and later Imperial reconstructions and a single column from its first building phase.It was built on the site of the earlier Basilica Sempronia (170 BC) along the south side of the Forum, opposite the Basilica Aemilia. It was initially dedicated in 46 BC by Julius Caesar with building costs paid from the spoils of the Gallic war, and was completed by Augustus, who named the building after his adoptive father. The ruins which have been excavated date to a reconstruction of the Basilica by the Emperor Diocletian, after a fire in 283 AD destroyed the earlier structure.

The Roman Forum fell into complete disrepair after the fall of the Roman Empire. It was eventually used as a grassland, known in the Middle Ages as the ‘Campo Vaccino,’ translating to the Cow Field. This resulted in a large majority of the stone and marble to be extensively plundered.

The Roman Forum was reconstructed many times during its existence. This allowed for various forms of architecture from different eras to merge together. Influence from each period can be seen in the design and construction of the buildings.

We have all heard the phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” The popular saying, attributed to a medieval French proverb, conveys that it takes time to build beautiful things. This time frame can’t really be quantified. Of course, you can say that Rome is still being built, that it has experienced cycles of construction and demolition since its founding in 753 BCE

THE ROMAN FORUM – MORE THAN A MILLENIUM :

The center of civic life in ancient Rome, the Forum developed gradually over more than a millennium, with construction beginning in the late 8th century BC and continuing through the early 7th century AD.

One of the earliest monuments in the Roman Forum that still exists today is the Temple of Castor and Pollux, which dates from 494 BC (Roman Republic).One of the most sought-after sights in Rome, the Forum remains at the top of the list for most visitors. Now standing as ruins of temples, monuments, and other structures, the Forum still welcomes crowds.

My dear readers may kindly point out any incorrect information in my above writeup needing any corrections! I am truly indebted to Wikipedia & for the invaluable information on the subject !Happy Reading !