Agora of Thessalonica (Early Roman Phase)
About
Thessalonica's civic square sat here since a 60 BCE inscription honored public buildings on the spot, continuing a modest Roman-period marketplace through the 1st century CE. The grand two-terraced marble forum tourists see today was not yet built. In 117 CE this was still a working but architecturally unremarkable agora at the junction of the Via Egnatia and the road to the acropolis.
What happened here
Business starts at first light. The magistrates' tribunal opens, cases are called, and the crowd that gathers to listen is half the point of coming. Money-changers work from tables under the porticoes, weighing coin from a dozen mints against the local rate. Notices are painted on the walls and whitewashed over when they go stale: elections, gladiator shows, a lost slave, a house to let. By the sixth hour the heat empties the open square and the arcades fill instead. Statues of the town's benefactors stand between the columns, and the men who paid for them expect to be greeted by name. Public slaves sweep at dusk. The forum is where a Roman town keeps its records, its gossip and its self-regard in the same place.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →