Forum of Caesaraugusta
About
Augustus founded the colonia around 14 BCE for veterans of the Cantabrian Wars; the forum, including its cryptoporticus — the vaulted substructure that leveled the site's slope down to the Ebro — dates to that foundation phase. New colonnades were added under Tiberius and Claudius in the 1st century CE, but the core structure was already in place well before 117 CE and remained the civic center where the colony did business, worshipped, and posted its laws under Trajan and Hadrian.
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 →