FIRST ITINERARY

THE CAPITOLINE HILL, THE ROMAN FORUM,
THE PALATINE HILL, THE COLOSSEUM AND THE BASILICA OF ST. JOHN IN LATERAN
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Mercati Traianei

Mercati Traianei

The Augustan Forum, the best preserved of the Imperial Forums, easily evokes its bustling days in our imagination, and for its small dimensions is easily appreciated, thus acquiring more grander and solemn qualities. On the two sides, two sumptuous basilicas arise, terminating in porticos covered with coloured marble and adorned with colossal statues. In the centre is a titanic temple commissioned by Augustus in honour of Mars the Avenger, as fulfilment of his vow made the night before the battle of the Filippi, in which he defeated Brutus and avenged the death of Caesar.In front of the temple is a wide stairway with equestrian statues on either side and an altar in the middle. Between the temple and the basilicas two triumphant arches are located, and in the background is the enormous wall, built to separate the zone of the forum with that of Suburra, one of the most squalid neighbourhoods of the city. Behind the wall in miserable hovels built on top of each other lived the crowds of people which would invade the forum through narrow passageways in a tumultuous often threatening mass, until a new religion came along and banished the exaltation of force and sanctified the brotherhood of all peoples and united all different classes in the single love for and name of Christ.When this happened Roman power was shaken at its bases, and Rome began its decline and decay, only to return one day with a new face and under another light. Beyond the Augustan Forum are the remains of the Temple of Minerva and two columns which are all that is left of the grandiose Forum of Nerva. Then there is the Tower of the Conti, a powerful medieval construction, once the tallest and most splendid of medieval towers in Rome.