When you go to Rome you can buy a ticket and with it visit three attractions: the Roman Colosseum, the Forum and the Palatine Hill. You buy it where there are fewer people, yes. It currently costs 12 euros. I visited the Forum after the Colosseum and it is really wonderful to walk there.
The Roman Forum is located between the Colosseum, the Palatine Hill and the Capitoline Hill. It was center of politics, commerce and culture in ancient Rome and although there are only ruins one can imagine what it must have been like. A marvel. But what's in this space full of ruinyes? Remains of buildings, monuments, columns and simple crumbling stones, but everything has its history since the forum dates from the XNUMXth century BC.
The oldest ruins of the Forum are in the far north, closer to the Capitoline Hill. This is where you see the marbles that were once part of the Basilica Aemilia, although in Roman times the building was dedicated to something else, of course there is a platform called face which is where the orators stood, built in the XNUMXth century BC, and also the site where Roman senators met.
Around 78 BC the Temple of Saturn and the Tabularium were built, which are entered through the Capitoline Museums today, and you can see the Julia Basilica built by Julius Caesar. Afterwards it is difficult to distinguish if one does not know much since the place has been built, destroyed and looted over time. The barbarians who attacked Rome made the first ravages but later, in the Middle Ages, it became a quarry of other constructions and then it was disarmed.
Do not walk without rhyme or reason through the Roman Forum, here I leave you a must-see list:
- Via Sacra: there are many old buildings next to it.
- Arch of Constantine: in the Colosseum square.
- Temple of Venus: the largest in the city built by Hadrian, on a hill near the entrance to the Forum but you can only see it, not enter.
- Basilica of Maxentius: there is very little left but it was once huge. The works were finished by Constantine.
- Arch of Titus - Commemorates Titus' victory over Jerusalem and was restored in 1821.
- Vespa Temple: a small shrine that has been partly restored. There are also the ruins of the temple priestess with ponds and statues.
- Castor and Polux Temple: the temple is from the XNUMXth century BC although the ruins that are seen today are later.
- Temple of Julius Caesar:
- Basilica Julia: you will see pedestals, stairs, rocks. Not much more.
- Curia
- Rostra: Marco Aurelio spoke from here after assassinating Julius Caesar.
- Aemiia Basilica
- Temple of Saturn
- Arch of Septimus Severus
- Phocas column.