Roman Forum

The Arch of Titus stands at the eastern end of the Roman Forum, where the Via Sacra climbs toward the ridge between the Palatine and Velia hills. Its single marble passage may look modest beside some of Rome's later arches, but the scenes carved inside record one of the most consequential Roman victories of the first century AD.

Titus ruled as emperor from AD 79 to 81. Before taking the throne, he had commanded Roman forces against the Jewish revolt in Judaea. His army captured Jerusalem in AD 70 after a long siege and destroyed the Second Temple, the center of Jewish religious life. The campaign brought widespread killing and enslavement, and Roman soldiers carried valuable objects from the Temple back to Rome.

In AD 71, Titus and his father Vespasian celebrated a triumph, the grand procession that Rome awarded to a victorious commander. Prisoners and captured treasures were paraded through the city before sacrifices were offered to Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. A triumph could make a military victory feel like an achievement shared by the whole Roman state, even as it celebrated the power of the man who had led it.

The arch itself was built after Titus died in AD 81, probably on the orders of his brother and successor Domitian. The inscription calls Titus divus, meaning that he had been officially declared divine. That single word tells us the monument was erected after his death.

Walk beneath the arch and look at the two large reliefs on its inner walls. On one side, Roman soldiers carry treasures taken from Jerusalem, including the unmistakable seven-branched menorah, a ceremonial table and trumpets. Opposite them, Titus rides in a chariot drawn by four horses while a winged Victory places a crown over his head. Other figures represent the Roman state and the triumphal ceremony. These carvings show what the emperors wanted the public to remember: Rome's strength, the dynasty's achievements and the honors owed to a victorious ruler. They are images of conquest made by the conquerors.

Above the reliefs, in the center of the vaulted ceiling, an eagle carries Titus toward the heavens. It represents his elevation to divine status after death. The columns framing the passage have Composite capitals, which combine the scrolls of the Ionic order with the leafy decoration of the Corinthian.

You are also looking at a monument that has been rebuilt. In the Middle Ages, the arch became part of a fortress belonging to the Frangipane family. During a major restoration in the early nineteenth century, Giuseppe Valadier removed later structures and rebuilt missing portions using travertine, a pale limestone that contrasts with the original marble. You can still distinguish the ancient carving from much of the restoration.

Another conservation campaign began in 2025, when scaffolding temporarily blocked parts of the reliefs. The park expected that work to finish in June 2025. An earlier restoration notice is not proof that the panels remained obstructed in October 2026, so their visibility depends on the conditions when you visit. Even if you cannot approach every detail, the arch is a remarkable introduction to how Roman emperors used public monuments to tell their version of history.

A small circle of columns near the eastern side of the Roman Forum marks one of the most sacred places in ancient Rome. This was the Temple of Vesta, where priestesses kept a flame burning for the protection of the Roman state. The building was modest in size compared with the Forum's great basilicas, but its religious importance was immense.

Vesta was the goddess of the hearth, the fire at the center of the household. In the Forum, her sanctuary served as the symbolic hearth of the entire city. Romans believed that the continued burning of its sacred flame was bound up with Rome's safety and prosperity. Allowing it to go out was treated as a serious warning.

Roman tradition credited the temple and its priesthood to Numa Pompilius, Rome's legendary second king. Archaeology, however, reveals a succession of buildings altered and rebuilt over centuries. The original temple cannot be reconstructed as precisely as those later stories might suggest. The precinct stood beside the House of the Vestal Virgins and the Regia, a building linked in Roman memory to the kings and later to the state's chief priest.

The temple's shape is one of its most distinctive features. Most Roman temples were rectangular, but Vesta's was circular. Ancient writers connected this design to the round huts of Rome's earliest inhabitants, built using timber and thatch. By the imperial period, the shrine was much more elaborate, with marble columns around a raised circular building.

Its interior was unusual too. Instead of a large cult statue of Vesta, the sanctuary's main focus was the fire itself. Six priestesses, the Vestal Virgins, were responsible for its care. The inner part of the temple also housed the penus Vestae, a restricted store of sacred objects closely associated with Rome's continued survival.

Among those objects, ancient tradition named the Palladium, an image of Athena or Minerva said to have come from Troy. Romans believed that keeping it safe helped protect their city. Its original appearance and history are uncertain, and no such statue survives in the sanctuary today. The tradition reveals how the Romans linked their present religious practices to a heroic past.

There is a striking irony in the temple's history: a sanctuary devoted to a sacred fire was itself repeatedly damaged by fire. One of its major rebuildings followed the disaster of AD 192. The surviving architectural phase is largely associated with the Severan dynasty, particularly work under Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus.

The temple continued functioning until the late fourth century AD, when imperial policy increasingly restricted Rome's traditional state cults. After worship ended, much of its marble was stripped away and reused. Excavations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries uncovered the podium and surviving architectural fragments.

What stands today is only part of the original building. The columns and entablature forming the familiar curved section were partly reconstructed in the 1930s, using surviving ancient pieces to suggest the temple's shape. Most of the walls and the roof are missing, and there is no ancient sanctuary interior or sacred fire to enter. From the visitor path, follow the circle of the podium and imagine a complete enclosed building at the heart of a ritual Romans considered essential to their existence.

Immediately beside the Temple of Vesta are the remains of a residence occupied by some of the most respected and tightly regulated women in Roman public life. This was the Atrium Vestae, or House of the Vestal Virgins. Its long courtyard, pools, rooms and surviving statues give us a rare glimpse into the world of a religious community whose duties were tied to the safety of Rome itself.

The Vestals were priestesses of Vesta, goddess of the hearth. Ancient tradition traced their institution to Numa Pompilius, Rome's second king, although the remains of the residence belong to a long series of later building phases. Their central responsibility was maintaining the flame in the neighboring temple. Romans believed that the city's prosperity depended, in part, on that fire never going out.

There were traditionally six Vestals at any one time. They were selected as young girls, often between the ages of six and ten, and committed to thirty years of service. According to the customary division of their training, they spent ten years learning, ten carrying out their duties, and ten teaching the next generation. After completing their term, they could leave the priesthood and marry, though many chose not to.

Their work extended beyond tending the fire. The Vestals prepared mola salsa, a mixture of salted flour used in Roman sacrifices, and performed rituals connected with the state's religious calendar. Their public standing was extraordinary. They could own property, write wills and occupy honored seats at public events. Magistrates and crowds alike were expected to show them respect.

That honor came with severe restrictions. Their obligation to remain chaste was enforced with punishments that could be terrifying. A Vestal convicted of violating her vow could be condemned to death by being confined in an underground chamber. The priesthood brought privileges unavailable to most Roman women, but it also placed their lives under extraordinary public scrutiny.

The residence was rebuilt and expanded over the centuries. Much of the complex visible today belongs to the imperial period, with substantial reconstruction after the fire of AD 192, which also damaged the Temple of Vesta. It developed into a large building arranged around an elongated courtyard, with colonnades, reception and living rooms, gardens and pools. Some of the rooms originally rose above the ground level preserved today.

The courtyard makes the layout easy to recognize. Follow its long rectangular shape and the remains of the columns that once bordered it. The water basins were part of a carefully arranged landscaped space rather than accidental holes in the ground. Surrounding foundations mark rooms where members of the priesthood lived and worked.

Look especially at the portrait statues and inscribed bases arranged around the courtyard. Many honor individual chief Vestals, preserving the names of women who held one of Rome's most prestigious religious offices. They give the ruins a human connection that is often missing from monumental history. Several statues were discovered broken or displaced, and not every figure now stands on its original base. Some have lost their heads. Even so, the surviving inscriptions are unusually revealing.

When the cult of Vesta ended in late antiquity, the complex lost its original purpose. Later occupants altered the buildings, and the residence gradually became a ruin. Nineteenth-century excavations brought its courtyards and rooms back into view.

Today you can explore the permitted outdoor areas, see parts of the basins and colonnades, and examine the statue bases. Fragile spaces may be fenced off, and most upper floors have disappeared. The most compelling part of this stop is its proximity to the Temple of Vesta: the priestesses lived beside the fire they were charged with protecting, placing their domestic lives and Rome's public religion in the same tightly connected precinct.

Few monuments show the many lives of the Roman Forum as clearly as the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina. Enormous ancient columns line the Via Sacra, but behind them stands the facade of a Christian church. The two buildings occupy the same structure, separated by centuries of changing religious practice and rising ground levels.

The emperor Antoninus Pius built the temple in AD 141 to honor his wife, Faustina the Elder, after her death and official deification. The Roman state sometimes declared deceased emperors and members of their families divine, allowing them to receive public worship. At first, this temple was dedicated to Faustina alone.

When Antoninus died in AD 161, he too was deified. His name was added to the dedication, which you can still read on the great entablature above the columns. The upper line honors the divine Antoninus; the lower one names Faustina. The inscription is especially interesting because it preserves two separate stages in the building's history within the same stone facade.

The temple originally stood on a high podium reached by a broad staircase. Its front had six columns of cipollino marble, a green-veined stone quarried on the Greek island of Euboea, with more columns continuing down its sides. Look up at the beautifully carved white marble Corinthian capitals and the entablature above them. Along the sides, surviving frieze decoration includes griffins, creatures with the bodies of lions and the heads and wings of eagles, among scrolling foliage.

The inner chamber, or cella, was built with large blocks of peperino stone and once faced with marble. Much of that surface decoration has disappeared. Some columns also bear deep diagonal grooves high on their shafts, often explained as marks made by ropes during attempts to pull them down for reuse. That interpretation is plausible, although the origin of every mark is not certain.

The building survived because it was converted into a church, eventually known as San Lorenzo in Miranda. Its present facade largely dates from the early seventeenth century. The church entrance is now strikingly high above the excavated Roman pavement. During the Middle Ages, earth and rubble accumulated in the Forum until people were walking several meters above the ancient street. When archaeologists later cleared the valley, they exposed the temple's lower level but left the church doorway in its elevated position.

From the Via Sacra, you can take in the ancient columns, inscriptions, cella walls, high podium, sculpted details and Christian facade together. There is no intact Roman temple interior to enter. The monument's appearance tells its history: a second-century shrine to a deified imperial couple remained standing because later generations found an entirely different use for it.

The Basilica Aemilia once occupied a huge stretch of the northern side of the Roman Forum. Today you see low walls, fragments of paving and scattered pieces of marble. It takes a little imagination to picture the roofed halls, polished stone and constant activity that once filled this space, but its remains reveal how Rome's public life was changing during the Republic.

A Roman basilica was a large civic building. People came here for legal proceedings, business transactions and public meetings, sheltered from the sun and rain. The word later became closely associated with Christian churches, but the building's original purpose was secular. Across the Forum stood another monumental hall, the **Basilica Julia**.

The earliest major basilica associated with this site was built in 179 BC by the censors Marcus Fulvius Nobilior and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Censors were senior Roman officials responsible for the census and aspects of public administration, including certain building projects. The hall was initially known as the Basilica Fulvia, but later work by the Aemilian family gave it the name by which its successor is remembered.

The relationship between the different building phases remains a subject of archaeological debate. What is clear is that this site was rebuilt repeatedly as Rome expanded, and each new project gave aristocratic sponsors another opportunity to display their wealth and status in the city's most important public space.

The basilica had close links with commerce. Shops and financial businesses operated around the Forum, and its spacious interiors gave merchants, legal representatives and clients somewhere to conduct their affairs. During the first century BC, members of the Aemilian family invested heavily in rebuilding and decoration. Augustus and later emperors also supported repairs after fires.

The imperial version was magnificent. Marble columns, colored stone and sculptural panels decorated a large, carefully organized building. Some fragments depict scenes from Rome's legendary early history, while other surviving architectural pieces reveal the richness of the upper structure. Very little of this decoration remains in its original place.

The basilica was devastated by a serious fire in late antiquity. Archaeologists found coins damaged by intense heat in deposits associated with its destruction. Some historians have linked the fire to the sack of Rome in AD 410, but the archaeological evidence does not prove that this particular event caused it. The coins are significant because they offer physical clues rather than a complete account of what happened.

As you look across the foundations, follow the long rectangular footprint to appreciate how much of the Forum's northern edge the building filled. The original columns, roof and decorated galleries are gone. Certain fragments or sections may be inaccessible during conservation work. What survives is the ground plan of a place where Roman government, law, money and everyday business came together beneath one enormous roof.

The tall brick building near the Forum's northwestern corner is the Curia Julia, the meeting place of the Roman Senate. With its plain rectangular walls, large windows and monumental entrance, it looks surprisingly different from the marble temples surrounding it. Yet this was one of the most powerful rooms in ancient Rome: a place where senators debated war, public finances, foreign affairs and the affairs of the state.

The Senate had existed for centuries before the Curia Julia was built. During the Republic, its members generally came from Rome's wealthiest and most influential families. They discussed policy and advised the magistrates, while elected officials formally exercised many of the government's executive powers. Senators had once met nearby in the Curia Hostilia, beside an ancient assembly space called the Comitium. Roman tradition linked that earlier Senate House to Tullus Hostilius, one of the city's legendary kings.

The Curia Hostilia met a violent end in 52 BC. After the politician Publius Clodius Pulcher was killed in a clash with supporters of his rival Milo, his body was brought to the Forum. An angry crowd set up his funeral pyre inside the Senate House, and the fire destroyed the building. This was one of many signs that political violence had become deeply entrenched in the late Republic.

Julius Caesar began constructing a new Senate House as part of his wider rebuilding of the Forum. He also changed its alignment to connect more closely with his own new forum just to the north. Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, before the building was finished, and Augustus finally dedicated the Curia Julia in 29 BC.

One famous misconception is worth clearing up: Caesar was not murdered here. The assassination took place during a Senate meeting in the Curia of Pompey, part of Pompey's theater complex in the Campus Martius. The Curia Julia was still under construction when Caesar died.

The building was damaged and restored several times. Much of the structure standing today belongs to a major rebuilding under the emperor Diocletian in the late third or early fourth century AD. Inside was a high hall, with broad stepped areas along the sides where senators could be seated. Part of its beautiful late Roman opus sectile floor survives. This is a technique in which carefully cut pieces of differently colored stone form geometric patterns.

The building owes much of its preservation to another change of purpose. In the early Middle Ages, it became the church of Sant'Adriano, and it remained in use for centuries. In the seventeenth century, its ancient bronze door leaves were transferred to the **Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano**, where they can still be seen. The doors on the Curia today are replacements.

During the 1930s, restorers removed many of the church's later additions to give the building a more ancient appearance. The Curia therefore combines substantial Roman masonry with the results of modern restoration.

You can always examine its exterior from the Forum paths, but seeing the inside requires the right ticket and an open visiting slot. In October 2026, the interior was available with Forum Pass SUPER and certain Full Experience tickets, subject to the park's schedule, and was closed on free-admission Sundays. Even from the outside, its size and position help explain why this building mattered: the Roman Senate met here as the political world around it changed from Republic to Empire.

At the western end of the Roman Forum stands a great marble arch with three passages, richly carved battle scenes and an enormous inscription. Built in AD 203, the Arch of Septimius Severus celebrated victories over the Parthian Empire. It also preserves a remarkable piece of evidence for murder, rivalry and the rewriting of imperial history.

Septimius Severus became emperor in AD 193, after a period of civil war and competing claims to the throne. Having defeated his Roman rivals, he campaigned in the east against the Parthians, one of Rome's most formidable enemies. His forces captured Ctesiphon, an important Parthian city on the Tigris, and the resulting victories helped establish the prestige of his new dynasty.

The Senate and People of Rome dedicated the arch to Severus and his sons, Caracalla and Geta. Its position near the Rostra and the Curia Julia, on the route leading toward the Capitoline Hill, ensured that the monument would be seen by crowds taking part in public ceremonies.

The arch has a wide central passage flanked by two smaller ones. Tall Composite columns decorate the facades, while relief panels depict episodes from the eastern campaigns. You can make out Roman soldiers on the march, cities under siege, defeated enemies submitting and the emperor addressing his troops. These were carefully chosen scenes of victory and authority, although weathering and the height of the carvings now make some details difficult to distinguish.

Look up to the great inscription above the arches. Originally, it named both of Severus's sons. After Severus died in AD 211, Caracalla and Geta inherited power together, but their uneasy partnership quickly collapsed. Caracalla had Geta murdered, then ordered his name and images removed from public monuments. This campaign against a dead person's memory is often described by the modern term damnatio memoriae.

On the arch, part of the inscription was altered to remove Geta's name. Scholars can trace the changes in the arrangement of the letters and in the small holes that once held the bronze lettering. The stone still bears evidence of an emperor attempting to erase his own brother from the dynasty's official story.

The arch originally had an enormous bronze sculptural group on top, probably showing Severus and members of his family riding in a chariot. That decoration has disappeared, but images on Roman coins help historians reconstruct its general form.

The marble exterior, the three passages and the high relief panels survive. The surrounding street levels have changed through centuries of building, burial and excavation, so the arch no longer stands in precisely the urban setting its builders knew. Walk around the public viewpoints to compare its two faces, and look up at the inscription. The monument was meant to celebrate an emperor's victories abroad, yet one of its most revealing details concerns the violence within his own family.

Eight enormous columns rise above the western end of the Roman Forum, just below the Capitoline Hill. They are the remains of the Temple of Saturn, one of Rome's oldest sanctuaries and a building connected to something surprisingly practical: the money and financial records of the Roman state.

According to Roman tradition, the temple was dedicated around 497 BC, in the early years of the Republic. Its god, Saturn, was associated with agriculture, sowing and the abundance of an imagined golden age. Romans described his distant reign as a time of prosperity and peace, a memory that inspired one of their most popular festivals.

Saturnalia, beginning on December 17, brought feasting, gift exchanges and a temporary relaxation of ordinary social rules. It was a holiday many Romans eagerly anticipated. The celebrations connected a famous public temple to the rhythms of life far beyond the Forum.

Yet the sanctuary also had a central role in government. The aerarium, Rome's state treasury, was kept in connection with the Temple of Saturn. Public funds and important financial records were associated with the building, supervised during the Republic by officials called quaestors. This combination of religion and administration was perfectly natural in ancient Rome, where temples frequently served public purposes as well as housing rituals and sacred images.

The building was not preserved unchanged from the fifth century BC. It underwent multiple rebuildings as Roman politics and architecture developed. Lucius Munatius Plancus financed a major reconstruction in 42 BC, during the turbulent years following the assassination of Julius Caesar. Significant parts of the surviving podium, or raised base, are connected with the later Republican temple.

Another restoration followed severe damage in late antiquity. The columns and upper architectural pieces visible today largely belong to this late Roman rebuilding, which reused material from older structures. The sanctuary was ancient, but much of what stands above the podium is much younger than its traditional foundation date.

Look across the inscription above the columns. Part of it reads SENATVS POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS ... INCENDIO CONSVMPTVM RESTITVIT, meaning that the Senate and People of Rome restored the building after it was destroyed by fire. It does not name an emperor. Instead, it emphasizes the public authority behind the restoration.

The standing columns have Ionic capitals, recognizable by their scroll-shaped ornaments. Compare them with the more elaborate Corinthian capitals of the nearby Temple of Castor and Pollux. The front columns and those returning along the sides give some impression of the temple's original facade, but the roof, cult statue, staircase and most of the building are gone.

You can see the monumental podium beneath the columns, although there is no intact treasury chamber to enter, and the ancient storage arrangements are more complicated than the popular picture of a single vault. What survives still places the treasury at the edge of Rome's political center, beneath a temple that was old even in the age of the emperors.

Three beautiful Corinthian columns rise from a large platform on the southern side of the Roman Forum. They are all that remain standing of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, a sanctuary built to honor two divine brothers whose appearance on horseback was said to have helped save the early Roman Republic.

Castor and Pollux, also known as the Dioscuri, were twins from Greek and Roman mythology, closely associated with horses, cavalry and the protection of warriors. Their Roman cult had a particular connection with the legendary Battle of Lake Regillus, fought during the conflict between the new Republic and Latin forces supporting the return of the expelled king Tarquinius Superbus.

According to the story, two magnificent horsemen suddenly appeared in battle and led the Roman cavalry toward victory. Later that day, they arrived in the Forum and watered their horses at the Fountain of Juturna, close to where the temple stands. They announced the Roman victory and then vanished. Only afterward, the story goes, did the Romans realize that the strangers were Castor and Pollux themselves.

The commander Aulus Postumius was said to have vowed a temple in their honor, and ancient tradition places its dedication by his son in 484 BC. The date of the battle differs between ancient accounts, and the tale of the divine horsemen is religious legend, not a contemporary eyewitness report. It nevertheless explains why this place became important to Roman ideas about military success and divine support.

The temple had a particularly strong association with Rome's equestrian order, whose members had supplied cavalry in the early Republic. Ceremonial processions of horsemen passed through the city and honored the twins. The temple also played a broader public role. Its high platform could be used for speeches, and buildings in the precinct were connected with official and financial business.

The structure was rebuilt several times. The three columns you see today belong to a reconstruction undertaken under Tiberius, which was dedicated in AD 6. They once formed part of a much larger colonnade around a rectangular temple about 50 meters long. Its elegant fluted shafts, Corinthian capitals and surviving entablature show the richness of the imperial rebuilding.

Most of the temple has disappeared, but the podium and surrounding foundations reveal how much larger it was than the three columns suggest. Close by are archaeological remains of the Fountain of Juturna, the place featured in the legend of the twins' arrival. You can visit the stones associated with the spring, although the divine horsemen belong to the Romans' own understanding of their past.

Stand where you can see the columns against the wider Forum and trace the outline of the lost temple. They preserve the architecture of early imperial Rome on the site of a sanctuary whose traditions reached back to the Republic's beginnings.

Look up at the three colossal concrete vaults rising above the northeastern side of the Roman Forum. They belong to the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine, one of the last great buildings added to the ancient civic center. What makes them so extraordinary is that the surviving arches formed only a side aisle. The main hall was even larger.

Construction began around AD 308, when the emperor Maxentius controlled Rome and Italy amid struggles between rival claimants to imperial power. A building of this scale advertised his authority and reminded people that Rome remained an important imperial city.

Maxentius did not live to see it finished. In AD 312, Constantine defeated him at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, north of Rome. Maxentius died in the fighting, and Constantine took control of the city. Work continued under Constantine, which is why the basilica is associated with both men.

In Roman architecture, a basilica was a large public hall used for administration, business and legal proceedings. The name did not originally mean a Christian church. Several older basilicas had stood in the Forum since the Republic, including the Basilica Aemilia and Basilica Julia, but the new building used a very different kind of engineering.

Rather than supporting its roof with conventional rows of columns, the builders constructed massive walls and concrete vaults resembling those of the great imperial bath complexes. The structure measured approximately 100 meters long and 65 meters wide. Its central hall had three enormous cross vaults, carried by giant piers and monumental columns. On either side stood three chambers covered by barrel vaults, with recessed decorative panels called coffers that also helped reduce the weight of the concrete.

The building's main space rose to approximately 35 meters. Much of it has collapsed, including its great central roof. The surviving three barrel-vaulted chambers belong to the northern aisle, which explains why they feel so enormous even though they represent only part of the original complex. Imagine the vaults repeated across a vast, brightly decorated interior.

The inside was covered with fine marble and impressive sculpture. An enormous seated statue generally identified as Constantine stood in a western apse. Its surviving head, hands and feet are now displayed in the Capitoline Museums, outside the archaeological park. These fragments give a remarkable sense of the colossal statue's original scale.

The basilica was built partly above earlier imperial warehouses, including the Horrea Piperataria, where valuable spices and other goods were stored. Those structures still survive below the later building, but they cannot be seen on the main outdoor route. Visiting them requires separate arrangements through the archaeological park.

From the Via Sacra, examine the surviving brick-faced walls, the northern apse and the deep coffers in the three vaults. The original floors and most of the central hall are lost, and not every section is open to visitors. Yet the building remains one of the clearest ways to appreciate the ambition and technical ability of the late Roman Empire. A ruin this immense is only the surviving edge of what was once an extraordinary public building.