Forum Ovale Gerasae
About
Gerasa's showpiece piazza measured about 90 by 80 metres and swung an oval colonnade between the Cardo's grid and the skewed axis of the Zeus sanctuary. Engineers filled a deep hollow between two hills to flatten the ground. The plaza belongs to the great early second-century rebuilding around Hadrian's visit, so it postdates the 117 CE snapshot. Its paving curves in concentric rings toward a central pedestal.
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 →