Trajan's Forum
About
Last and largest of the Imperial Fora, built with the spoils of the Dacian Wars, designed by Apollodorus of Damascus, construction begun around 105-107 CE and formally dedicated in 112 CE; the Basilica Ulpia, twin libraries, and Column followed by 113 CE. At its center stood a colossal gilded bronze equestrian statue of Trajan, its foundation pit still traceable by excavators today, offset slightly south of the piazza's geometric middle. Along the roofline of the surrounding colonnade, more gilded bronze, horses and military standards cast from war booty, caught the sun. Newly completed and the showpiece of the city in 117 CE, the forum was funded entirely from Dacian gold and silver seized after Trajan's two campaigns.
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
- Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae 16.10.15
Constantius II, shown Rome in 357, stops dead in Trajan's Forum — a structure, Ammianus says, unique under heaven and beyond description.
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 →