Forum Romanum

Abstract

Abstract Situated in the valley between the Capitoline and Palatine hills, the Forum Romanum was Rome's primary political and economic center and a home to major religious offices during the late Regal period, the republic, and the empire. Though originally its morass environment rendered it inhospitable, in the late seventh century Romans re‐engineered the geography of the valley and began monumentalizing it; by the Middle Republic, textual and archaeological evidence indicates that it was a formal plaza confined by the Regia on the east, a line of shops and bankers, stalls on the north, the Capitoline Hill on the west, and prominent houses on the south. Under Caesar and Augustus, it underwent another architectural transformation and became an austere center of imperial administration.