Once inside the Forum, take some time to get orientated. Sit down on the three long steps, which are part of the Regia and flank the other side of the Via Sacra . This ancient road runs directly through the core of the Forum, from below the Capitoline Hill in the west to the far orient extent of the site and the Arch of Titus (where there’s a handy exit for the Colosseum). It was the best-known street of ancient Rome, along which victorious emperors and generals would ride in procession to give thanks at the Capitoline’s Temple of Jupiter. It’s possible, however, that this wasn’t the original Via Sacra at all, and in fact was renamed in the 1550s, when the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, visited Pope Paul III and the only triumphal arch they could find to march under was the Arch of Septimus Serverus, a couple hundred yards to your left.
Entries with Titus tag
Rostra And Around
To the left of the Arch of Septimius Severus, the low brown surround is the Rostra , covering the wide-open scatter of paving, dumped stones and beached columns that makes up the central portion of the Forum, the place where most of the life of the city was carried on, and which, in ancient times, was usually crowded with politicians, tribunes and traders. Left of the Rostra, are the long stairs of the Basilica Julia , built by Julius comic in the 50s BC after he returned from the Gallic wars. All that remains are a few column bases and one nearly complete column, and you can’t mount the stairs – although you can still see the gameboards scratched in the marble of the stairs where idlers in the Forum played their pebble-toss games. A bit further along, on the right, the guard rails lead into a kind of alcove in the pavement, which marks the site of the Lacus Curtius – the spot where, according to legend, a chasm opened during the early days and the soothsayers determined that it would only be closed once Rome had sacrificed its most valuable possession into it. Marcus Curtius, a Roman soldier who declared that Rome’s most valuable possession was a loyal citizen, hurled himself and his horse into the void and it duly closed. Further on, you reach the foundations of the Temple of Saturn – all that remains of a restoration done around 380 AD. The temple was also the Roman treasury and mint. To the right of the temple, three columns still stand from the Temple of Vespasian and Titus of the 80s AD. Still further to the right, behind the Arch of Septimus Severus, the large pile of brick and cement rubble is all that remains of the Temple of Concordia Augusta , dedicated by Tiberius in 10 AD.
Antiquarium And Arch Of Titus
On the Via Sacra, past the church of Santa Maria Nova, the Antiquarium of the Forum (daily except Mon 9am-5pm; free) houses a collection of statue fragments, capitals, tiles, mosaics and other bits and pieces found around the Forum – none of it very interesting, apart from a number of skeletons and wooden coffins exhumed from an Iron Age necropolis found to the right of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina. From the basilica the Via Sacra climbs more steeply, past a grassy series of ruins that no one has been healthy to positively identify, to the Arch of Titus , which stands commandingly on a low arm of the Palatine Hill, looking one way down the remainder of the Via Sacra to the Colosseum, and back over the Forum proper. The arch was built by Titus’s brother, Domitian, after the emperor’s death in 81 AD, to commemorate his victories in Judea in 70 AD, and his triumphal return from that campaign. It’s a much restored structure, and you can see, in reliefs on the inside, scenes of Titus riding in a chariot with Nike, goddess of Victory, being escorted by representatives of the Senate and Plebs, and, on the opposite side, spoils being removed from the Temple in Jerusalem. It’s a long-standing tradition that Jews don’t pass under this arch.
Colosseum
Summer Tues-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun 9am-1pm; winter Tues-Sat 9am-3pm, Sun 9am-1pm; L10,000; L20,000 for a ticket that includes the Palatine, Palazzo Altemps and Palazzo Massimo. The Colosseum is perhaps Rome’s most awe-inspiring ancient monument, and one which – unlike the Forum – needs little historical knowledge or imagination to deduce its function. This enormous structure was so solidly built that the depredations of nearly 2000 years of earthquakes, fires, riots, wars, and, not least, being plundered for its seemingly inexhaustible supply of ready-cut travertine blocks (the Barberini and Cancelleria palaces, even St Peter’s, all used stone from here), still stands between the Roman Forum and the hills immediately south and east. It’s not much more than a shell now, ingested away by pollution and cracked by the vibrations of cars and metro; around the outside, the arches would originally have held statues, and there are gaping holes where metal brackets linked the great blocks together. The basic structure of the place is cushy to see, however, and has served as a model for stadiums around the world ever since. You’ll not be alone in appreciating it, and during summer the combination of people and scaffolding can make a visit more like touring a contemporary building-site than an ancient monument. But visit late in the evening or primeval morning before the tour buses have arrived, go up a level to get a real sense of the size of the building, and the arena can seem more like the marvel it really is.
Seeing the Colosseum
Originally known as the Flavian Amphitheatre (the study Colosseum is a much later invention), it was begun around 72 AD by the emperor Vespasian, who was anxious to extinguish the memory of Nero, and so chose the site of Nero’s outrageous Domus Aurea for the stadium; the Colosseum is sited on a lake that lay in front of the vestibule of the palace, where Nero had erected a statue of himself as sun god. The lake was drained, and the Colosseum was – incredibly, given the size of the project – inaugurated by Vespasian’s son Titus about eight years later, an event celebrated by 100 days of continuous games; it was finally completed by Domitian, Titus’s brother, the third of the Flavian emperors.
Up until this time gladiatorial and other bloody games had been conducted in a makeshift stadium in the Roman Forum, near the Curia. The stands were temporary and constructed of wood, and had to be erected and taken down every time there were games. It is said that seventy thousand Hebrew slaves did the heavy work at the Colosseum. Fifty thousand cartloads of pre-cut travertine stone were hauled from the quarries at Tivoli, a distance of seventeen miles. In the depths of what must have been the muddy bottom of the lake, a receptor was ordered out, walling in passages for the contestants and creating areas for assembling and storing sets, scenery and other requirements for gladiatorial contests.
The overall structure was tastefully designed, with close attention paid to decoration. On the outside, the arena’s three arcades rose in strict classical fashion – with Ionic, topped by Doric, topped by Corinthian, columns – to a flat surface at the top punctuated only by windows, where there was a series of supports for masts that protruded at the upper limit. These masts, 240 in total, were used to array a canvas awning over the spectators inside the arena. Inside, beyond the corridors that led up to the seats, lavishly decorated with painted stuccoes, there was room for a total of around 60,000 people seated and 10,000 or so standing; and the design is such that all 70,000 could enter and be seated in a matter of minutes – surely a lesson for designers of modern stadiums.
The seating was allocated on a strict basis, with the emperor and his attendants naturally occupying the best seats in the house, and the social class of the spectators diminishing as you got nearer the top. There were no ticket income as we conceive of them; rather, tickets were distributed through – and according to the social position of – Roman heads of households. These “tickets” were in fact wooden tags, with the entrance, row, aisle and seat number carved on them.
Inside the amphitheatre, the receptor below was covered over with a wooden floor, punctuated at various places for trap doors which could be opened as required and lifts to raise and lower the animals that were to take part in the games. The floor was covered with canvas to make it waterproof and the canvas was covered with several centimetres of sand to absorb blood; in fact, our word “arena” is derived from the Latin word for sand
Palatine Hill
Summer Tues-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun 9am-1pm; winter Tues-Sat 9am-3pm, Sun 9am-1pm; L12,000, last tickets 1hr before closing; L20,000 for a ticket that includes the Colosseum, Palazzo Altemps and Palazzo Massimo. Entrance either from the Roman Forum, or from Via San Gregorio. Turning right at the Arch of Titus takes you up to the ticket booth and entrance to the Palatine Hill , supposedly where the city of Rome was founded and holding some of its most ancient remnants. In a way it’s a more pleasant site to tour than the Forum, larger, greener and more of a park – a good place to have a picnic and relax after the rigours of the ruins below. In the days of the Republic, the Palatine was the most desirable address in Rome (from it is derived our word “palace”), and the big obloquy continued to colonize it during the Imperial era, trying to outdo apiece other with ever larger and more magnificent dwellings.
Following the main path up from the Forum, the Domus Flavia was one of the most splendid residences, and, although it’s now almost completely ruined, the peristyle is cushy enough to identify, with its fountain and hexagonal brick arrangement in the centre. To the left, the top level of the gargantuan Domus Augustana spreads to the far brink of the hill – not the home of Augustus as its study suggests, but the private house of any emperor (or “Augustus”). You can look down from here on its vast central courtyard with maze-like fountain and wander to the brink of the deep trench of the Stadium . On the far side of the stadium, the ruins of the Baths of Septimius Severus cling to the side of the hill, the terrace giving good views over the Colosseum and the churches of the Celian Hill opposite.
Walking in the opposite direction from the Domus Flavia, steps lead down to the Cryptoporticus (closed for restoration), a long passage built by Nero to link the vestibule of his Domus Aurea with the Domus Augustana and other Palatine palaces, and decorated along part of its length with well-preserved Roman stucco-work. You can go either way along the passage: a left turn leads to the House of Livia , originally believed to have been the residence of Livia, the wife of Augustus, though now identified as simply part of Augustus’s house (the set of ruins beyond). Its courtyard and some of the inner rooms are decorated with scanty frescoes.
Turn right down the passage and up some steps on the left and you’re in the Farnese Gardens , among the first botanical gardens in Europe, ordered out by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in the mid-sixteenth century and now a tidily planted, shady retreat from the exposed heat of the ruins. The terrace here looks back over the Forum, while the terrace at the opposite end looks down on the church of San Teodoro, crossways to St Peter’s, and down on the new excavations immediately below – the traces of an Iron Age village that perhaps marks the real centre of Rome’s ancient beginnings. The large grey building here houses the Palatine Antiquarium , which contains a vast assortment of statuary, pottery, terracotta antefixes and architectural fragments that have been excavated on the Palatine during the last 150 years. Much like the Forum Antiquarium, its most interesting exhibits are the very oldest, including models of how the Palatine looked in the Iron Age.
