Trajan's Forum

• 1. Introduction

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  Trajan's Forum stands as the last of the great Imperial fora built in ancient Rome, and when the emperor Constantius II visited it in 357, he reportedly stopped cold. He stared at the gigantic complex around him, declared it unique under the heavens, and admitted that mortal men could never build its like again. That moment of stunned silence from one of Rome's most powerful later rulers tells you something important: this place was built to overwhelm. The questions worth asking are how it came to be, who designed it, what filled its vast spaces, and what happened to it once Rome's power faded.

• 2. Spoils of Dacia

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  Trajan's Forum was paid for with the plunder of Dacia. The conquest of that kingdom ended in 106, and the emperor directed those spoils toward the most ambitious building project Rome had yet attempted on the Forum grounds. Construction began between 105 and 107, and the complex was inaugurated in 112, according to the Fasti Ostienses. Trajan's Column followed a year later, erected and inaugurated in 113. The project ran alongside several other works: the Market of Trajan, the renovation of Caesar's Forum where the Basilica Argentaria was built, and the Temple of Venus Genetrix. The man charged with translating this ambition into stone was Apollodorus of Damascus, who had previously accompanied Trajan himself on the Dacian campaign. That firsthand experience of the conquest that funded the Forum may have shaped how Apollodorus understood his commission.

• 3. Moving a Hillside

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  Before a single column could be raised, a ridge of land had to vanish. A spur connecting the Quirinal and Capitoline Hills stood in the way of the planned complex, and workers removed it entirely. Over 300,000 cubic meters of soil and rock were excavated and carted out through the Porta Collina. It is possible that Emperor Domitian initiated some of this earthmoving before Trajan's project took full shape, though the design of the Forum itself is attributed entirely to Apollodorus. The scale of the excavation was itself a statement of power. To flatten geography was to demonstrate that Rome's resources had no natural limit.

• 4. A World of Marble and Archives

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  Apollodorus arranged the Forum as a sequence of open and enclosed spaces moving from south to north. At the south end stood a triumphal arch commemorating the Dacian Wars, decorated with friezes and statues of Dacian prisoners. Flanking the arch were tall walls of Peperino tuff faced entirely in marble. The piazza itself measured 300 meters long and 185 meters wide, paved from end to end in Carrara marble. Beyond the piazza to the north rose the Basilica Ulpia. Past that was a smaller piazza, and on its far side a temple dedicated to the deified Trajan. The location and even the existence of that temple remain actively debated among archaeologists, with scholars such as James E. Packer and Roberto Meneghini holding competing positions. Between the Basilica Ulpia and the temple piazza stood two libraries: one housing Latin documents, the other Greek documents. Those libraries contained state archives including the acts of the Emperors and the edicts of the praetors. Rising 38 meters between the two libraries was Trajan's Column. Through a doorway in the east wall of the Forum, a visitor could pass into a courtyard that connected in turn to the adjacent Forum of Augustus.

• 5. The Athenaeum and Later Additions

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  Trajan's successor Hadrian added a philosophical school next to the piazza containing the Temple of Trajan. The building, known as the Athenaeum, consisted of three parallel halls separated by annexes. It served multiple functions: as a school, as a venue for judicial proceedings, and as an occasional meeting-place for the Senate. The three-story eastern market, now called Trajan's Market, was positioned to buttress the excavated edge of the Quirinal Hill. That structural role was as practical as it was monumental. The Prince Ormisda, standing next to Constantius II during that famous 357 visit, offered a wry response when the emperor said he wished to imitate only Trajan's great equestrian statue. Ormisda replied: "First, emperor, command the construction of a stable like this, so that the horse you wish to have made can find as appropriate a setting as that we have before our eyes."

• 6. Decline and Rediscovery

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  By the mid-9th century, the marble cobblestones of the piazza were being systematically stripped for lime production. Workers replaced them with concrete, a sign that the space still functioned as a public area even as its grandeur was being quarried away. A century later the Imperial Fora had become semi-rural, a patchwork of houses and farmland crisscrossed by roads where the Forum's plazas had once been. In the late 16th century, a wave of urban expansion built over the entire area, which by then lay 3 to 4 meters below ground level. The neighborhood that grew there became known as the Alessandrino district. The entrance arch was demolished in 1526 by Rome's Commissioners of Streets, an act that prompted Conservatore Francesco Cenci to file a formal report to the city's municipal government demanding redress. Vestiges of that arch were later found, including friezes depicting scenes from the Dacian Wars, described by Flaminio Vacca. The construction of the Via dei Fori Imperiali in 1933 covered additional columns from the Basilica Ulpia; those columns remain visible today beneath the arches supporting the road.