Roman Forum Tickets

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The climb up the Palatine is gentler and more shaded than the one from the Forum floor. This is the hill the emperors chose, and they built one palace over another until the summit was covered.

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The biggest is Domitian’s palace, which split in two: the public Domus Flavia and the private Domus Augustana. Beside them, a vast sunken oval was his stadium, though no one is sure whether it held races or was simply a private garden.

The Domus Tiberiana runs along the ridge, nearly ten acres on its own. What survives across the hill is brick and vaulted shell, sprawling and roofless, yet the scale still lands.

The two rooms worth slowing down for are the Houses of Augustus and Livia, still lined with fresco. Give them under an hour. If you want the finds themselves, the Palatine Museum on top of the palace gathers the frescoes and mosaics lifted from the hill, along with its portrait heads.

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Nearby, the Farnese Gardens were laid out in the sixteenth century as the first botanical garden in Europe. A pavilion and a fountain are what remain.

The hill ends at the Terrazza Belvedere, about forty metres up. The Forum spreads out on one side, the long oval of the Circus Maximus on the other. From up here the layout finally makes sense.

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Come down the slope and you land on the Via Sacra, the main street of ancient Rome. Much of the paving is original: big, glassy cobbles, larger than the stones in the modern city. It runs the length of the Forum and ties the monuments together.

The Arch of Titus stands at the head of the street. Look closely and you’ll find a relief of soldiers hauling away a menorah, looted from the temple in Jerusalem.

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Below it the Basilica of Maxentius rises: three colossal brick vaults, less than a third of what once stood, still large enough to feel built for giants. A little further on, a long flight of steps is nearly all that’s left of the Basilica Julia, the law court Caesar put up in the 50s BC. The round Temple of Romulus, close by, still hangs its original bronze doors, fitted in AD 309 and swinging to this day.

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The middle of the Forum held the machinery of the republic. The round Temple of Vesta, once ringed by twenty columns, kept the sacred fire of the state. Beside it, the House of the Vestals stood around a long courtyard of pools, home to the priestesses who tended the flame.

This was the stage for Rome’s politics too. The Rostra is the low platform where the orators addressed the crowd, probably where Mark Antony spoke over Caesar’s body. A few steps away, the Temple of Julius Caesar marks the spot where he was cremated, and people still leave flowers on the altar.

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At the far end the columns cluster. The Temple of Saturn, the oldest in the Forum and once the city’s treasury, keeps a row of tall columns. Next to it stand three surviving columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, and the triple Arch of Septimius Severus, raised for a victory in Mesopotamia.

Two odd ones repay a look. The Temple of Antoninus and Faustina has a later church built straight inside it, a church in a temple. And set low in the pavement, the Lapis Niger is a black-stone shrine the Romans themselves tied to Romulus, their mythical founder.

The Curia Julia was the senate house itself, where the laws of Rome were passed. Off to one side, Santa Maria Antiqua is the oldest Christian building in the Forum, reopened not long ago with its early frescoes still on the walls.

By now the pattern is plain. Most of it is columns and footings now, broken down to fragments. It rewards knowing what you’re looking at, which is exactly what the audio guide, or a guide, is for.