The Forum of Augusta (Foro di Augusto) is one of the five monumental squares of ancient Rome, which is part of the Fori Imperiali (Imperial Forums), located in an archaeological complex in the heart of the city. Unlike the older Roman Forum (Foro Romano), which dates back to the 6th century BC and became the cradle of Roman law, the Fora Imperiali became not only the center of religious, social and political life in Rome, but also an expression of the glory and majesty of the rulers who erected them.
In addition to the Forum of Augustus, the forums of Julius Caesar (Foro di Cesare) and of the emperors Vespasian (Foro di Vespasiano), Nerva (Foro di Nerva), and Trajan (Foro di Nerva) were built in Rome between 46 BCE and 113 CE.
Table of Contents :
Emperor
Where it All Began
Place and Funds for Construction
When Was the Ancient Rome Built
Plan of the Sculptures
Sculptures
Temple of Mars Avenger
Hall of Colossus
History After the Fall of the Roman Empire
How to Get There and Opening Hours
Emperor
Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus (Gaius Iulius Caesar Octavianus Augustus) better known as Augustus was the first Roman emperor, ruling from 27 B.C. to 14 A.D. The Senate bestowed upon him the title Augustus, a title higher than Caesar and used in the East to designate a deity or particularly important rulers. The alternative title of Romulus, as the new founder and savior of the city, was abandoned by Octavian.
The role of the first emperor can hardly be overestimated in the history of ancient Rome and the whole of Europe. During the 40 years of his reign, Augustus carried out many reforms, which in the next 300 years worked to increase the wealth of the empire. One of his efforts to give Rome a monumental image was the construction of many new buildings, including its own forum, second only to the Foro di Cesare.
Where it all began
Young Octavian in 42 BC on the eve of the battle of Philippi (a city in the province of Macedonia) made a solemn vow to build in Rome a temple dedicated to Mars Ultor (i.e. “the Avenger”), in case of victory over the conspirators and assassins of Gaius Julius Caesar.
In alliance with Marcus Antonio and Lipides, the battle was won and the Republican enemies Marcus Brutus (Marcus Junius Brutus) and Gaius Cassius (Gaius Cassius Longinus) defeated.
Augustus kept his vow to the gods to build a temple to the warlike Mars, but his main goal was to glorify his family and gain a strong connection with the Roman people, including through their love for the divine Caesar, whose image in the temple will be present next to the image of Augustus – his adopted son.
At the same time, the question of obtaining additional space for public trials was solved; the existing Roman Forum and Caesar’s Forum could no longer accommodate the large number of the city’s inhabitants.
Place and means for construction
Augustus planned to build his forum in the center of Rome, which should be located next to Caesar’s Forum and not inferior to it in scale and grandeur. Problems arose with the choice of location, because in the I century the nearby area was a densely populated residential area.
It is known that Augustus did not want to expropriate land with Roman houses to expand the construction site of the new complex, and the forum turned out to be smaller than planned. In his so-called will (Res gestae divi Augusti) he declared that he had built the forum and temple on his own land and with money from the spoils of war in Spain, Germany, Dalmatia and Egypt – a claim that is difficult to verify, but in 1932, during excavations of the eastern sector of the forum, remains of dwellings from the Archaic or Republican period were found, which were nevertheless demolished by Augustus.
When Was it Built?
The clearing of the site for the construction of the forum and the laying of the foundations began presumably as early as 30-27 BC, but the main work was carried out in 20-17 BC, after Augustus had consolidated his power and completed the projects started by Caesar.
The Forum was opened in 2 AD, but even then the architectural design was not yet complete. We can assume that the hasty opening took place on May 12 and was associated with Ludi Martiales, an annual festival in honor of the god Mars, when colorful fighting games were held in the city’s circus.
The festive event may also have been timed to coincide with Augustus’ announcement of his successor, his youngest grandson Lucius (he died of illness that same year at the age of 19).
A surviving fragment of the pediment of the Temple of Mars contains an enumeration of Augustus’ titles, on the basis of which the opening of the forum can also be dated.
Plan
The erection of Augustus’ monumental complex was inspired by Caesar’s Forum, which had adorned Rome since 46 BC.
The Foro di Augusto measured 125 x 118 meters and was formed around a rectangle of 70 x 50 meters. The Temple of Mars the Avenger was inserted on the short side of the central square, and porticos (covered galleries) and exedras (semicircular niches) were placed along the long sides.
The entire complex to the northeast was enclosed by an imposing 33-meter-high wall known as the Muro della Suburra (Suburra Wall). It was built with square blocks of fire-resistant stone to insulate the forum from the fires that often broke out in the high-rise buildings of Rome’s disadvantaged neighborhood.
Two entrances opened in this wall, on either side of the temple, which were connected to the level of the square by steps. In 19 AD, Tiberius added two arches to the bases of the stairs on the north side in honor of his son and grandson who had won military victories, and named them Arcus Drusus and Arcus Germanicus respectively. The southern arch is known as the Arco dei Pantani.
The architectural layout of the Forum of Augustus and its role as the military, administrative and political center of Rome became the prototype for the construction of forums in many provincial cities of the empire.
Sculptures
The Forum’s sculptures were adorned with a large number of statues representing the emperor himself, as well as real and mythological characters from Roman history.
All this had its meaning: statues of prominent figures of the republic, bearing the insignia of achieved triumphs, were meant to inspire citizens with their achievements, while heroes of legends and heavenly lords were meant to point to the divine origin of Augustus.
Images of prominent Romans formed a long gallery in the porticoes, while the main sculptural composition, the colossal figure of Augustus on a triumphal quadriga, was in the center of the square.
The side arcades of Corinthian columns had high mansards decorated with giant figures of caryatids, which alternated with shields bearing the heads of Jupiter-Amon and other deities. The overall picture drew a parallel: young women from Caria, enslaved by the Greeks, and bearded gods were reminders of Augustus’s subjugated peoples and provincial rulers.
The statues of Aeneas and Romulus, placed in opposite exedras of the forum, represented a particularly important decorative cycle. According to legend, their progenitors were Venus and Mars, and Aeneas, as is known, was the mythological ancestor of the Julian family, which proved the presence of divine genes in Augustus.
It is worth noting that Augustus was the first to use lunar marble from the quarries of Carrara in Tuscany. He combined it with marble of exotic yellow and greenish shades, brought as war trophies from Greece and Africa. The sheer amount of expensive stone and its unusual combination made the Forum of Augustus a particularly beautiful and extravagant structure.
Temple of Mars the Avenger
The dominant element of the Forum of Augustus was the Temple of Mars Ultor. Its construction was long, lasting about 40 years through 2 AD. The sanctuary became the place where magistrates made sacrifices before leaving for provincial service, victorious generals mounted their insignia, and heirs of noble families donned the adult toga (toga virilis) for the first time, expressing their readiness for military service.
The majestic temple impressed its contemporaries with its size, richness and importance of decoration.
The appearance of the ancient structure became possible to visualize thanks to the surviving sketches of the Renaissance period and the results of modern analytical study of the building’s construction based on its ruins.
The temple, with dimensions of 30×40 meters, rose on a podium 3.55 meters high, which was made of thousands of tuff blocks, hidden under an outer covering of white marble slabs. A wide staircase with 17 steps rose from the level of the square to the entrance of the temple, with a large altar in the middle and two square bases with fountains on each side.
The temple was surrounded by 26 Corinthian columns of white marble about 15 meters high; today only 3 on the south side are preserved. The pediment of the temple was decorated with a number of colossal statues with the figure of Mars in the center.
The god of war was depicted wearing a helmet and holding a spear in one hand and a sword in the other; his left foot held the globe. The figure of the aggressive and armed Mars was clearly a reference to Augustus as the conqueror of the empire.
Nearby were placed images of a half-lying Palantine, Romulus, Venus with Eros, Fortuna, the goddess of Rome and the Tiber. The inner part of the sanctuary had a row of lateral columns and an apse accommodating on a 9 m long podium statues of Mars, Venus and Julius Caesar, who was numbered among the deities. Caesar’s sword was kept in the temple as a special relic.
Colossus Hall
In the northeast corner of the Forum of Augustus was a richly decorated room called the Hall of the Colossus (L’Aula del Colosso) because of the colossal statue of the Genius of Augustus. This room was a true sanctuary of justice, as the presence of the emperor’s image was a guarantee of a just decision by the magistrate.
It can be assumed that this room was about 24 meters high and was illuminated through openings designed above the level of the porch roof. The hall was paved with alternating rectangular slabs of colored marble, and the statue was backdropped by a wall draped in blue cloth with gold and red stripes decorated with vegetal elements.
The figure of Augustus himself, made of particularly valuable marble, at least 12 m high, was represented wearing a toga veiled on his head and holding special attributes in his hands.
Fragments of the hands and the left foot, which reaches a length of 1.66 meters, have been preserved. The remains of the decoration and the statue are on display in the Museo dei Fori Imperiali (Imperial Forums Museum). Here is a video of the reconstruction.
Museum website: www.mercatiditraiano.it
From extant descriptions by Pliny we know that the walls of the Hall of the Colossus could have housed pictorial masterpieces by the Greek artist Apelles depicting the legendary twin brothers Castor and Pollukas with Victory and Alexander the Great.
History after the fall of the Roman Empire
During the reigns of subsequent emperors, the Foro di Augusto was displaced for the construction of new Foro di Traiano and Foro di Nerva sites.
The last mention of the Forum of Augustus dates back to 395 AD. Most likely, it was destroyed during the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 AD or by the Vandals in 455 AD.
The earthquake of the 5th century finally destroyed the forum and the Temple of Mars Ultor. For several centuries the area remained marshy and unpopulated. By the 10th century the forum was so filled with ruins and vegetation that the Romans gave it the name Hortus mirabilis (Miraculous Garden).
In the ninth and twentieth centuries a monastery and a small church dedicated to St. Basil, known as San Basilio al Foro di Augusto, were built on the ancient ruins. On the architrave and the surviving three columns of the Temple of Mars Ultor, Basilian monks built a bell tower in the 12th century.
It looked rather incongruous from an architectural point of view, but it preserved the columns from further destruction. An engraving by Giovanni Battista Piranesi from 1756 brings to this day an image of the Forum of Augustus with this bell tower.
It was not demolished until 1838 due to the unreliability of the structure and the threat of collapse.
From the 13th century the church and the Basilian monastery came into the possession of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who later became known as the Knights of Rhodes or Malta.
Between 1467 and 1470, radical rebuilding resulted in the present form of the Casa dei Cavalieri di Rodi (House of the Knights of Rhodes).
With the waning influence of the Order of Knights, Pope Pius V in 1568 settled Dominican nuns in the Basilian convent, who built a new church, the Santissima Annunziata, in place of the old one.
At the same time, from 1570, on the initiative of Cardinal Michele Bonelli, an active development of the whole area began, which was called the Alessandrino quarter (Alessandrino).
Excavations in the area of the Forum of Augusta began already at the end of the XIX century, after the acquisition of historical land by the municipality of Rome, but systematic work and scientific research began to be carried out only in the next century.
In the 30s of the XX century, the monastery and the church of Santissima Annunziata were demolished, as well as other buildings of the Alessandrino quarter, interfering with the ongoing excavations. Of the medieval buildings in the Forum Augusta survived only the House of the Knights of Rhodes, which now belongs to the Order of Malta.
The current ruins of the Forum of Augustus do not convey its former grandeur, of which a few columns of the temple and a staircase remain. Not all of the artifacts have been found, as no archaeological excavations were carried out during the construction of the Via dei Fori Imperiali (Via dei Fori Imperiali), which runs through part of the territory of the Forum.
Nevertheless, the surviving fragments of architecture, works of art and manuscripts of ancient Roman authors allow us to visualize the Forum of Augustus, which Pliny considered to be the most beautiful building he had seen in the world. On his deathbed, Augustus boasted: “I took Rome brick by brick, and I leave it marble by marble,” and there was a great deal of truth in this.
How to Get There and Opening Hours
The Forum of Augusta is within walking distance of the Colosseum (Colloseo) and the Altar of the Fatherland (Il Vittoriano), no more than 5 minutes away. You can see the forum for free all year round, but during the warm season, from about April to the end of October, an incredibly beautiful laser show is organized.
A special tribune is set up for the spectators and with the sunset every hour the installation is launched. The ticket costs 15 euros, you can buy it on the spot before the show, the current schedule and prices should be checked on the official website www.viaggioneifori.it . Also check the article “What to do in Rome in the evening” for tips.
