Forum Aquileiae
About
Aquileia's forum anchored the colony's public life at the junction of the Via Iulia Augusta and the Via Sacra. Workers paved the square with pale Aurisina limestone slabs quarried from the nearby Karst hills, replacing the timber-and-rubble forum that had served the colony since its founding in 181 BCE. A civil basilica closed the square's south side, housing courts and the city council, while merchants kept shops along its east and west flanks. A canal ran beneath the pavement, channeling river water toward the port. By 117 CE the forum had stood at the heart of Aquileia for over a century, hosting markets, trials, and the colony's public assemblies beneath the Alpine sky.
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.
In ancient writing
- AE 1996, 685, elogium 169 BCE (content date)
An honorific elogium for one of the colony's founding triumvirs recorded the powers granted him to draft Aquileia's laws, enroll its senate, and dedicate a temple during the colony's 169 BCE reinforcement.
Sources
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 →