Tabularium

MonumentItalia · Rome, Italy, Capitoline HillBuilt 78 BCE

About

Rome's public records are kept in a massive building wedged into the Capitoline slope, closing the west end of the Forum like a retaining wall with a face on it. An arcade of eleven arches framed by engaged Doric columns runs along its front, looking down over the whole valley. Inside are the bronze tablets on which laws, treaties and decrees of the Senate are cut — the memory of the state, in metal, in one fireproof room of stone. It was finished in 78 BCE by a consul rebuilding after fire had swept the Capitol. In 117 CE it still works, and its arcade frames every view of the Forum from the west.

What happened here

It was put up to be argued with. Public monuments carry an inscription at eye height naming who paid, what for, and by whose authority, because being read is the whole return on the investment. People meet at them, give directions by them, and shelter under them. Children climb them. The bronze fittings are stolen often enough that they are re-attached with lead. On anniversaries the base is garlanded and the local council makes a short speech nobody listens to. Monuments also date the town for you: a run of them along one street shows which families were rising in which decade, and which ones stopped. When a family falls out of favour, the name is chiselled out and the stone is quietly reused.

In ancient writing

CIL I² 736, building inscription 78 BCE
Cut on the record-office's doorposts: the consul Quintus Lutatius Catulus had the substructure and archive built and approved it, by decree of the Senate.