Roman Forum of Arelate
About
Founded as the civic and commercial hub of Arelate around 25-10 BCE, the forum once filled the city center with a temple, porticoes, and a paved plaza. Only two Corinthian columns and a fragment of entablature survive today, built into the corner of a later building. The whole complex sat atop the cryptoporticus, whose vaults absorbed the weight of the sloping ground below. By 117 CE the forum was still the busy administrative and commercial center of the colony, well over a century into daily use.
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
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