Forum of Pompeii

About

The rectangular civic, religious, and commercial heart of Pompeii, laid out by the 2nd century BCE and ringed by the Capitolium, Basilica, macellum, comitium, and temples of Apollo and the Genius of Augustus. The paved plaza measured about 143 meters long by 38 meters wide, framed on three sides by a two-story colonnaded portico. All of it was buried in the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius, 38 years before this map's snapshot. Systematic excavation of the forum didn't begin until the 19th century, well after the first digs at Pompeii started in 1748 — included here as an essential part of the story.

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

• CIL X 794, building inscription 89-80 BCE

  The quaestor Vibius Popidius records having the porticoes around the Forum built, in the years after Pompeii became a Roman colony.

Sources

• https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/433032 (Pompeii)
• https://www.worldhistory.org/image/11271/the-basilica-of-pompeii/ (Pompeii Archaeological Park, Forum overview)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii

Nearby

Temple of Apollo

61 m

Pompeii

89 m

Temple of Jupiter / Capitolium

91 m

Basilica of Pompeii

103 m

Tomb of Vestorius Priscus

156 m

Garum Workshop of Umbricius Scaurus

156 m