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 centre of the city of Rome [1]. Citizens of the ancient city referred to this space, originally a marketplace, as the Forum Magnum [1]. For centuries, the Forum was the centre of day-to-day life in Rome: the site of triumphal processions and elections; the venue for public speeches [1]. By the Imperial period, the large public buildings that crowded around the central square had reduced the open area to a rectangle of about 130 by 50 meters [1]. In the early Iron Age an area of the future Forum, close to the site of Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, was used as a cemetery, possibly by the communities based on the Palatine and Capitoline hills [1]. Originally a low-lying, grassy wetland, the Forum was drained in the 7th century BC with the building of the first structures of Cloaca Maxima, a large covered sewer system that emptied into the Tiber [1].