The Roman Forum was the center of public life in ancient Rome, a low valley between the Capitoline, Palatine and Esquiline hills that was drained and paved over centuries from the early first millennium BCE. Over time it filled with temples, basilicas, public buildings and monuments, including the Senate House, the Rostra where orators spoke, and the temples of Saturn and Vesta. Citizens gathered there for politics, commerce, religion, law courts and triumphal processions. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire the area declined, was used as pasture and as a quarry for building stone, and by the Middle Ages it was known as the cow field. Excavations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries uncovered much of the site, which is now a major archaeological park in the heart of the city.
Before and after
- from c. 818 BCE to 715 BCETwenty-third Dynasty of Egypt
- from c. 814 BCE to 146 BCEAncient Carthage
- from c. 808 BCE to 167 BCEMacedonia
- from 9th century BCE to 4th century BCEAchaemenid dynasty
- 9th century BCEConstruction of Roman Forum
- from 8th century BCE to 3rd centuryClassical antiquity
- from c. 800 BCE to 800 CEHerrera Period
- c. 782 BCEOrigins of Yerevan
- from c. 782 BCE to 595 BCEConstruction of Erebuni Fortress
More in Civilizations & archaeology
- c. 1,200 BCEIron Age
- c. 700s BCEConstruction of Great Wall of China
- from 206 BCE to 220 CEHan dynasty
- 19 BCEConstruction of Western Wall
- 81 CEConstruction of Colosseum
- from 476 CE to 1492Middle Ages
The era
This moment belongs to the Ancient civilizations (3,200 BCE to 500 CE), writing, cities and empires.