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The Forum was the religious, civic, and commercial centre of ancient Rome. After the time of Julius Caesar, though it became more imposing, it was only one (albeit the most distinguished) of several complexes serving the same functions. Essentially, it was a small closed valley ringed by the Seven Hills. There were two meeting places, formal open spaces, in the northwest corner—the political Comitium and the social Forum (the name later applied to the entire valley)—with shops down both sides. At the other end of the valley was the precinct of the high priest of Roman religion and that of the Vestals, the keepers of the sacred flame. Between these two were the temples of the gods. Various emperors opened up the ends of the valley, and there was more building, but the poles of activity did not alter.

Fires, earthquakes, and invasions repeatedly leveled the buildings, and new ones were erected on their remains until the valley was covered by many layers of debris, earth, and ashes. Medieval Romans called it Campo Vaccino (“Cow Field”) and the abutting Capitoline Hill Monte Caprino (“Goat Hill”). Excavation began late in the 19th century, and most of the accumulation has been dug away, down to the level at which Julius Caesar knew it. Stratigraphic excavations supported the traditional dating of the construction of the Cloaca Maxima, a sewer cutting diagonally across the valley floor, to the 6th century bce.

Janus and Saturn, both of whom have temples in the Forum valley, were among the gods of early Rome, and the Temple of Vesta, even in its last marble version (191 ce), retained the circular shape of a primitive clay-and-wattle hut. The forge of Vulcan, the Volcanal, had very early beginnings. The Regia, traditionally described as the residence of Numa Pompilius, the priest-king, became the administrative building for the pontifex maximus, who took on the ancient monarchy’s priestly duties. The Temple of Castor and Pollux (the Dioscuri) was built at the establishment of the republic.

The oldest formally consecrated monument was the open space of the social Forum. A roughly trapezoidal stretch of ground, it was bare save for three plants essential to Mediterranean agriculture: the grape, the fig, and the olive. Centuries later, when the basilicas were built behind the bordering shops, they served as a protective palisade for the Forum and a covered extension of its open space. At the wide end of the Forum and to one side was the Comitium, in which the popular assembly met. Nearby lay the orators’ platform, the Rostra, decorated in 338 bce with the iron rams (rostra) taken as trophies from the warships of Antium (now Anzio, Italy).

At the other end of the Comitium stood the Curia, where the Senate met. When it was destroyed by fire, along with the Basilica Porcia (184 bce, the first of the basilicas), Julius Caesar built a new and greatly enlarged one that encroached on the open space of the Comitium. For the assembly, he built a meeting hall in the Campus Martius, outside the valley altogether. He built a new and much bigger Rostra across the wide end of the Forum. He supplanted the Basilica Sempronia (170 bce) on the western side of the Forum with his own Basilica Julia (54 bce), installing new shops in place of the old Tabernae Veteres (“Old Shops”). On the other side of the Forum already stood the shop-fronted Basilica Aemilia (179 bce).

Caesar also carried his building program onto the flat ground just north of the valley between the Quirinal and Esquiline hills, making his own forum of shops and temple, alongside which Augustus, Trajan, Nerva, and Vespasian later constructed their forums. Pompey’s theatre in the bed of the Tiber (55 bce) was followed by the Theatre of Marcellus (13 bce). The great baths, Agrippa’s grand concourse in the Campus Martius, the circuses, and the Colosseum all drew the populace away to other centres of activity. The political attraction of the Forum, already vitiated in Caesar’s day, continued to decline.

Nevertheless, the halls and temples of the Forum were assiduously rebuilt, ever grander, and more were added. Caesar, after his death, was made a god, and his temple was erected between the Forum proper and the Regia. Eventually, the sacred open space was defiled with honorary columns and an equestrian statue of Domitian. The last thing to be erected in the Forum was a column, raised by Phocas, a Byzantine usurper (608), to honour himself. Septimius Severus placed his arch over the Via Sacra. Other temples were rammed into empty places, and the whole became a forest of towering columns, gleaming walls, and ornate statuary. The dazzling marble mountain of the Palatine flowed down into the Forum as well, and the opposite rim glittered with the splendours of the imperial forums.

Today the Forum is a confusing boneyard of history. Although later buildings perpetuated the name and roughly the position of the first halls and temples, their ruins do not necessarily stand where earlier buildings stood, and many details of the earlier Forum are still the subject of scholarly speculation. Of the thousands of remaining columns, not many more than 50 stand erect, and amid the ruins are Christian churches, thickets of trees and bushes, and hundreds upon hundreds of free-living cats.