The Forum Romanum is quite obviously an amalgamation of culture. Or, in other words, it's a right mess. I say this affectionately, of course, because even if you're planting yourself on the benches at the top of the forum —dusty, skin-stuck-together sweaty, and slumped against a fence —you can still stare out at the arch of Septimius Severus, the rising columns, and the distant remains of temples and feel amazed.
Standing on the Sacra Via, a hike of a walk for all that you have to hopscotch from one stone to the next, you get that combined sense of askew architecture and overwhelming awe. Clearly the Forum Romanum was the junkyard of monuments: the Temple of the Divine Julius Caesar and the Basilica Aemilius have a stand off on either side of the Sacra Via, the Curia Julia —once the house of the Roman senate, then a Christian church, and now an open building housing statue heads and Roman relics —stares down the housed off excavation of the site of the lapis niger (where you literally have to press up against the tinted glass to be able to see anything), and the arch of Septimius Severus looms imposingly overhead at the top of Capitoline, while a church overwhelms it from the side. The Basilica Maxentius stands modestly off to the left of the Forum's entrance, surrounded by trees, but of course it was locked up in preparation for some not-too-distant performance, a wide-screen TV taking up the western apse and fold-up chairs arranged across. If you ignore that side road and keep walking straight toward the Palatine, you'll cross the Temple of the Vestal Virgins on the right, the Regia and Temple of Antoninus and Faustina on the left, and eventually you'll keep walking straight into the gardens of the Vestal Virgins, where most of these revered women are ironically decapitated and "stare" out at a pristine rectangle of green grass. It's perhaps the cleanest part of the forum, and it's certainly beautiful, a pool at the far left end and even a (closed-off) well. The Palatine with its massive brick structure towers above, and to the left in the distance the modest but beautiful Arch of Titus sits enshrouded by trees. This corner, for all that it boasts of capital hills, lifelong virgins, and conquests of Jerusalem, is nonetheless impressive for its simplistic beauty. With the scattered remains of the forum to your back, this area feels far more put together.
It's hard to imagine what the forum was like back when structures were more than heads of columns or bases of temples. The sheer amount of haunting space that now resides in this multicultural graveyard must have been choked up by massive and multitudinous structures. Even with the remains of the Temple of Antoninus and the Basilica of Maxentius, you can stand at or near the base and feel vertigo at how tall the structures stand. To be able to walk through such displays of power everyday back in ancient times is unfathomable. And it still lasts today: on the altar of Caesar, people leave flowers and cards as tokens of his memory, having not forgotten him some two thousand years later. And I connect with that. Though the decimation of such beauty is at times disheartening, and some structures stand as single columns or piles of brick, I absolutely love the Forum Romanum. I don't feel overburdened by the amount of structures (even if I at times confuse them or am unable to tell them apart) but rather love being able to imagine Romans trailing their togas over the Sacra Via or climbing the steps into one of the temples. Maybe they too paid their respects to Caesar, or strolled the garden of the Vestal Virgins, or sat by the base of the arch of Titus. I could get lost for days in the forum (though not literally; the streets pretty much determine your route for you, with a few variations), and even if only the bones of the Roman empire lay here, surrounded by the memory of Christian domination, what remains is still a sight to see.
Standing on the Sacra Via, a hike of a walk for all that you have to hopscotch from one stone to the next, you get that combined sense of askew architecture and overwhelming awe. Clearly the Forum Romanum was the junkyard of monuments: the Temple of the Divine Julius Caesar and the Basilica Aemilius have a stand off on either side of the Sacra Via, the Curia Julia —once the house of the Roman senate, then a Christian church, and now an open building housing statue heads and Roman relics —stares down the housed off excavation of the site of the lapis niger (where you literally have to press up against the tinted glass to be able to see anything), and the arch of Septimius Severus looms imposingly overhead at the top of Capitoline, while a church overwhelms it from the side. The Basilica Maxentius stands modestly off to the left of the Forum's entrance, surrounded by trees, but of course it was locked up in preparation for some not-too-distant performance, a wide-screen TV taking up the western apse and fold-up chairs arranged across. If you ignore that side road and keep walking straight toward the Palatine, you'll cross the Temple of the Vestal Virgins on the right, the Regia and Temple of Antoninus and Faustina on the left, and eventually you'll keep walking straight into the gardens of the Vestal Virgins, where most of these revered women are ironically decapitated and "stare" out at a pristine rectangle of green grass. It's perhaps the cleanest part of the forum, and it's certainly beautiful, a pool at the far left end and even a (closed-off) well. The Palatine with its massive brick structure towers above, and to the left in the distance the modest but beautiful Arch of Titus sits enshrouded by trees. This corner, for all that it boasts of capital hills, lifelong virgins, and conquests of Jerusalem, is nonetheless impressive for its simplistic beauty. With the scattered remains of the forum to your back, this area feels far more put together.
It's hard to imagine what the forum was like back when structures were more than heads of columns or bases of temples. The sheer amount of haunting space that now resides in this multicultural graveyard must have been choked up by massive and multitudinous structures. Even with the remains of the Temple of Antoninus and the Basilica of Maxentius, you can stand at or near the base and feel vertigo at how tall the structures stand. To be able to walk through such displays of power everyday back in ancient times is unfathomable. And it still lasts today: on the altar of Caesar, people leave flowers and cards as tokens of his memory, having not forgotten him some two thousand years later. And I connect with that. Though the decimation of such beauty is at times disheartening, and some structures stand as single columns or piles of brick, I absolutely love the Forum Romanum. I don't feel overburdened by the amount of structures (even if I at times confuse them or am unable to tell them apart) but rather love being able to imagine Romans trailing their togas over the Sacra Via or climbing the steps into one of the temples. Maybe they too paid their respects to Caesar, or strolled the garden of the Vestal Virgins, or sat by the base of the arch of Titus. I could get lost for days in the forum (though not literally; the streets pretty much determine your route for you, with a few variations), and even if only the bones of the Roman empire lay here, surrounded by the memory of Christian domination, what remains is still a sight to see.
Shannon,
ReplyDeleteAn excellent chronicle of the spatial relationship of the structures in the Forum (note capital F) and the place of the student-tourist in them. Apart from a few awkward turns of phrase ("...the arch of Septimius Severus looms imposingly overhead at the top of Capitoline" -- I'm not a fan of 'verbs adverbingly'-type contructions), you might consider this: Next time you write a Space and Place entry (in the Vatican Museums), try putting it in the present tense. This move will help you get to the next level. Right now the exercise reads both like a history lesson and a diary. Pick a point A and move to point B and describe the journey.
9.5/10