This first section is a brief explanation of my Italy blog posts, which were inspired by my 2-week trip to Italy in May, 2025. Feel free to skip this section if you’ve read it before.
Dear Reader, If you read my Italy posts in the order in which they’ve come out, it may seem as though we hopped back and forth all over the country, but I have decided not to write these posts sequentially. I want to write about the things that interest me most, as the spirit moves me. For some topics, I may even combine cities. I hope that by doing so, you’ll find it a lot more interesting than if I just give you a tedious day by day description of our itinerary, as if I were your Aunt Mabel forcing you to sit down and watch all her Super 8 films of the family road trip to Niagara Falls from 1966.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about how I’m approaching this travelogue-within-a-blog, please let me know in the comments below!
The Forum Romanum, or the Roman Forum, in (you guessed it) Rome, was perhaps the most important meeting place in the history of the world. This place, like no other, established norms of civilization that we still take for granted today. It was, in essence, where the civic sausage of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire was made.
It was the place where elections and speeches were held, where triumphal processions occurred, where business was transacted, and where legal affairs took place, including criminal trials. There were shrines and temples around it, and it was where the Vestal Virgins kept the sacred fire alight 24 hours a day, as a symbol of Rome’s continued existence. All the government buildings were there. Over the years, an increasing number of statues, monuments, shrines, and memorials filled every available space. Now it feels open, but then it must have felt claustrophobic.
To be in the Roman Forum was to find yourself in the very eye of the hurricane of power. There was no way you could not be aware of that, especially if you were coming from a rural village, and had most likely grown up living in a hut with a dirt floor, it must have felt like waking up on another planet. But to give in to your awe in this place would have been an invitation to be trampled underfoot.
That’s practically the case today as well, considering the crush of tourists during high season. Granted, now it’s a pedestrian-only area, so you don’t have to worry about quadrigas or wagons or soldiers ahorseback, but, just as with the ocean, it’s never wise to turn your back on a wave of oncoming school children (speaking from experience).
Now, I’m not going to lie. You do have to use quite a bit of imagination when exploring the Forum today. It’s definitely not what it once was. But this amazing YouTube video gives you an excellent idea of what it must have looked like. I only wish it had included the area I would have most liked to have seen, which is the Temple of Vesta and the House of the Vestals.
Lets start off with a map of the site today. One of the most annoying things about the maps you’ll find online is that most of them do not show you where all three of the modern entrances to the forum are. That’s not particularly helpful. So, just for you, Dear Reader, I chose my favorite online map, and I put stars at those entrances. You’re welcome.
Having done so, we’ll enter from the Southeast, the nearest entrance to the Colosseum, and also, conveniently, the nearest one to the Colosseo Metro stop. Here are just a few of the most interesting sites you’ll encounter if you take this route:
One of the first buildings you’ll likely see is the Basilica of Santa Francesca Romana. This church is built on the site of the former Temple of Venus and Rome. It didn’t occur to me to peek inside this church, as it was built in the 16th century, and my mind was more in forum mode, but from the pictures on the Wikipedia site, I now wish I had done so. But really, it’s hard not to be impressed by any basilica in Italy, so after a while you begin to take them for granted. It’s interesting that the church is white but its tower is brown. You can see the tower from all over the forum.
Two things most guides don’t mention are that A) the church sits high above the forum and it only took up the portico of the former temple, and B) the ruins of the temple, too, are up there, and according to the reviews I’ve since seen, those ruins are worth seeing, but you really need to go to them before you even go to the forum entrance, and they require almost as much walking as the entire forum does. So, sadly, we missed this spot entirely. If you go, please do not miss it.
The temple was most likely the largest and greatest building in Rome in its heyday. While the building was destroyed by an earthquake, and most of its opulent marble and grandeur was carried off and used in other buildings centuries ago, you can see one of the two gigantic stone apses that housed one of the two gods, along with the columns that lined the space, and appreciate that the building had a massive footprint on the Roman landscape. (You also get a great view of this from the top of the Colosseum, by the way.) The best photos are aerial, and you can see a great one on the Wikipedia link above.
Onward. There’s a lot more left of the Basilica of Maxentius, a.k.a the Basilica of Constantine, a.k.a the Basilica Nova. That’s what you would see next, if you continue to wander northwest after gazing upward at the façade of Basilica of Santa Francesca Romana, wishing, as I now do, that you had the time, energy, and back strength to go up there. But the three gargantuan vaults that present themselves before you now quickly make you lose track of any regrets.
The sheer magnitude of these vaults is hard to capture in a photograph. In fact, none of our photos really cut the mustard, so I grabbed the one below off the internet. It has a human being in it for context. (The photo beside it is of the back side of this same basilica, that we took from outside the forum.) But if you still prefer numbers, the arches are 82 feet tall. Seriously. Freestanding vaults, built in the year 312AD, surviving two major earthquakes, that the rest of the building couldn’t withstand. It’s hard to believe that they’re still there for us to stare at, slack-jawed. And if you zoom in, you can see that the vaults are coffered. They had to be, to reduce the weight. You also see that feature at the Pantheon. Brilliant, those Romans. Absolutely brilliant.
Oh, but it gets even better. These 3 were just the vaults that spanned one of the side aisles! Yep. When the building was intact, there were three identical vaults directly across from these, and in between was the nave, and of course, it was even taller than the side aisles. It rose to 115 feet, but since it was held up by 3 groin vaults, in places it was actually 128 feet tall. So, basically, look at that photo again, and add about half again as much height to that building. That would have been the ceiling over that person’s head.
Is your brain melting yet? Mine is. Yes, the nave needed help to stay up. So it had 8 massive pillars. See that thing to the right of the woman, surrounded by the metal fencing? That is the base of one of the pillars. Those columns were 48 feet high without their bases and capitols, and 18 feet in circumference (more than 5 ½ feet in diameter). Now imagine this edifice being erected without any motorized equipment whatsoever. Who needs gods. Humans are pretty amazing when they choose to be.
Before Christianity, basilicas were not churches. They were, in essence, halls of justice. The hall itself was as big as a football field, and was covered with colorful inlaid marble. This one had a gilded bronze ceiling, and opposite to the entrance was a large apse that housed a statue of the Emperor Constantine sitting on a throne, as he was the one who completed the building. Just a finger on this statue was as big as a man. You can still see remnants of the statue in the Capitoline Museum, which I blogged about here.
Roman basilicas did usually have statues of gods in their side niches, and their building designs, being familiar to the people, became the model for Christian churches. They still are, to this very day, which is why they are still called basilicas. Christianity has deep roots in paganism, whether it cares to admit it or not.
The next building you’ll see in the forum is the Temple of Romulus, with its dark green doors. The temple was built by the Emperor Maxentius in 307 AD and is believed to have been in honor of his son who died very young. The building is most likely still standing as it was converted to a church, and that is fortunate, because these are the original bronze doors, and what’s truly impressive about them is that the lock still works and they’ve been swinging on the same ancient hinges for 17 centuries. They just don’t make things like they used to, do they?
Beside that is the pretty Temple of Antoninus and Faustina with its 10 columns. They used to have gilded capitols and the pillars supported a bronze roof. Again, this temple was preserved due to its conversion into a church, although much of its marble was plundered to build other churches. In 141 AD, the Emperor Antoninus Pius built the temple to honor his deified wife Faustina, making her the first empress to have a permanent building in the forum, and when Antoninus died 20 years later, the Senate deified him as well, and added his name and statue to the temple.
Across from the two temples mentioned above is the Atrium Vestae, the area that most fascinates me in the forum, and it deserves a blog post entirely of its own, so that will be my next, and last, post about our trip to Italy, so stay tuned.
Next, you’ll approach the central piazza of the forum, and you’ll see what looks a bit like a modern eyesore, but it’s really a metal roof protecting a wall, and if you go behind that wall, you’ll see the mound where Julius Caesar’s body was burned after his assassination. He was much beloved by the people, and they weren’t going to let the senate get away with stabbing him to death and then quietly sweeping him under the carpet, so to speak. The pyre burned for days, as the people kept throwing tables and chairs and anything that would burn upon it to keep it going. Later, a temple was built, and the remaining mound, to this day, often has fresh flowers placed upon it, just as it did during our visit. He was, after all, the first Roman to become a god.
Next is the shockingly ugly, mostly windowless building called the Curia Julia. It was built in 44 BC, and the Romans knew how to make things more opulent at the time, so shame on them. It does have some gorgeous bronze doors (though the current ones are replicas). It’s one of the most important buildings in Rome, as it is where the Senate met. There were anywhere from 100 to 900 senators at any given time, and this building was a place of lively debate and speeches. It is where policies were set and laws were enacted. We were unable to go inside or even get close to the doors due to ongoing restorations.
The construction hellscape in front of it in our photograph is also unfortunate, because it is the Rostrum, where speakers spoke to the people, and where, most notably, Cicero’s head and hands were nailed after he dared to oppose Mark Antony.
After this, it’s really hard to miss the absolutely gorgeous Arch of Septimius Severus. It was built in 203 AD to commemorate his battles in Mesopotamia, and depicts elements of the battles as well as soldiers marching captured barbarians to Rome for a victory parade.
Next is the remains of the Temple of Saturn. It’s that row of seven columns that you see to the left in the photo below. The temple was said to have housed a giant statue of Saturn that was made of wood, which, as you can imagine, did not stand the test of time. But even more interestingly, the pediment of that statue is where all the gold booty of Rome was always housed. It was basically the Roman treasury, and as such it’s surprising that it wasn’t constantly robbed.
The very last thing known to have been erected in the Forum Romanum was the Column of Phocas. It was a gift from Byzantium to Rome, back when the Empire was split into East and West. It was dedicated to the Eastern Roman Emperor Phocas in 608 AD. I seem to have forgotten to take a photo specifically of this column, but you can see it here, in this photo of the back side of the Arch of Septimius Severus, directly to its right.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one final spot in the Roman Forum that seems to be largely overlooked in the forum maps and guidebooks and tours and YouTube videos. It’s not far from the Column of Phocas. You can read about it in Atlas Obscura, and you can find it if you look up Lacus Curtius in Google Maps. It’s not much to see these days, but it is rather intriguing, because it was here long before the forum ever existed. It was once a deep chasm so ancient and surrounded by superstition that no one is sure what is true anymore.
Here are a few of the stories that have been passed down to us:
- It was foretold that Rome would fall unless the one thing it held most dear was sacrificed. Then this chasm opened up. One man determined that the thing Rome held most dear was its soldiers, and so, dressed in full battle armor, he rode his horse into this chasm, deep into the underworld, and was never seen again. And Rome was saved.
- Mettius Curtius, a Sabine horseman, fell into the pit while fighting Romulus during the battle that followed the famous Rape of the Sabine Women.
- The pit was created by a lightning strike in the 5th century, and the Roman Consul Gaius Curtius Philon consecrated the site.
- The less exciting story, partially backed up by geological evidence, is that the forum area was once very swampy, and was eventually drained and paved, except for a small pool. That pool was eventually sealed off by this ancient manhole cover.
- Personally, I prefer some combination of the underworld/lightning strike story, but I’m a bit of a ROMANtic.
The Roman Forum, for centuries, was one of the most significant places on the planet, and the birthplace of essential elements of our lives today. Huge chunks of our vocabulary, laws, architecture, artistic theories, science… all these things were started or furthered by the people that walked in this forum. Our world would be significantly different if these two acres of land never served the purpose they came to serve.
Having said that, it’s hard to imagine that it was allowed to fall apart so completely. By the middle ages, it had been plundered, pillaged, and allowed to decay, and fill up with debris to the point where all you could see was the very tip of the Column of Phocas sticking up above the ground. The area was designated as a place where cattle were allowed to graze and defecate, and people had entirely forgotten what it had once been. If that is not a stark reminder that the very best things that society creates need to be nurtured and protected, then nothing is.
The forum today may be a mere shadow of what it once was, devoid of color, most buildings pillaged or in ruins, but at several points during our visit I still had to stop and let things sink in. These very paving stones had once been trod upon by Julius Caesar, Augustus, Mark Antony, Cicero, Virgil, Cato, Claudius, Agrippina, Seneca, Livia Drusilla, Marcus Aurelius, all the Vestal Virgins, and all kings, republican leaders and emperors that I haven’t already mentioned. And now here I stood. Little ol’ me. The very thought made my feet tingle.
And if my feet were tingling, my lungs were tingling even more. There’s a book that I’m currently listening to in audio form entitled Caesar’s Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us by Sam Kean. It says that each one of us inhales some of the molecules of Caesar’s last breath over the course of each day, so I bet the odds are even higher right there in the forum.
According to the author, it’s basic math. At standard room temperature and pressure, you’re breathing in roughly 25 sextillion molecules every time you take a breath. That’s 500 times more molecules than there are people alive today. When Caesar exhaled his last breath, due to air currents and circulation, those molecules spread across the entire world in about 2 years, and they’ve sort of been bouncing around, along with those of every other person’s, famous or not, in and out of all of us, ever since.
That kind of makes you think, doesn’t it? We are all living, breathing history. We are also all each other. How can we keep making ourselves enemies when, on a molecular level, we’re taking each other in every single day? Those were the kinds of thoughts I was having while walking through the forum. Perspective.
Tips for your visit to the Roman Forum:
The best (actually only) way to get your tickets to the forum is to book your ticket to the Colosseum online, and be sure to get the “full experience ticket”. This will reserve your fixed time to visit the Colosseum, and then give you access, on the second day, to go through the Forum Romanum and Palatine Hill at your leisure.
Bring comfortable shoes, and even better: shoes/boots with good ankle support. The ground is very uneven in the forum and you’ll be climbing stairs to get up to Palatine Hill. If you are already unsteady on your feet, you may also want to take a cane or a collapsable hiking stick. Sadly, Historic Italy is not particularly wheelchair friendly.
Shade is limited. Bring water. There are usually ample opportunities to refill your water bottles at one of Rome’s many water fountains. The water in Italy is wonderfully drinkable. You’d be a fool to waste money buying bottled water in Italy.
One of the things I highly recommend if you have the opportunity to visit the Forum Romanum is that you have Rick Steves’ Audio Europe App on your phone. It’s free. Go to the “Italy (Venice,Florence, Rome)” section, and download “Rome—The Roman Forum” in advance. It includes a handy map, as well as updates, and a transcript of the audio if you prefer reading.
Also, if you have a favorite guidebook, photograph the pages that you’ll need that day. Less weight to carry. But always have an extra chargeable battery for your phone.
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