From the Colosseum to the Roman Forum

In the year 80, the emperor Titus opened this amphitheatre with games that lasted a hundred days. Ten years earlier, the ground under your feet was a private lake in the gardens of Nero's Golden House, the Domus Aurea. After Nero's death and a year of civil war, the new emperor Vespasian drained the lake and began a public arena on the site, between the years 70 and 72. His son Titus dedicated it, and his younger son Domitian added the top storey. Romans called it the Flavian Amphitheatre, after the family. The name Colosseum came later, from the Colossus, a giant bronze statue of Nero that stood nearby. Look up the outer wall. The building is an oval about 189 metres long and 156 metres wide, and the wall rises about 48 metres. The three lower storeys of arches are framed by half-columns in three styles: Doric at the bottom, Ionic in the middle and Corinthian at the top. Renaissance architects copied that stacking for centuries. The top storey has small windows and stone brackets that held the masts of the velarium, a huge awning that sailors rigged to shade the crowd. About 50,000 people could sit inside. They came to watch gladiators fight each other, hunters fight wild animals, and staged sea battles. Historians are uncertain whether early Christians were martyred in this arena. In the twelfth century, the Frangipane and Annibaldi families used the amphitheatre as a fortress. Earthquakes brought down part of the outer ring, and for centuries the building served as a quarry. Its stone went into new buildings, St Peter's Basilica among them. Now look at the end of the standing outer wall on this side. The arches there are partly rebuilt in brick, plastered to look like the travertine around them. That is Giuseppe Valadier's buttress, built between 1823 and 1826 to stop the end of the wall from falling. At the opposite end, Raffaele Stern had already propped the wall in 1806 and 1807 with a plain slanting spur of brick. Turn around so the Colosseum is behind you. The triple arch about 100 metres away to the south is the Arch of Constantine. Walk over to it and stand on its far side, where Via di San Gregorio begins.

On 28 October 312, Constantine defeated his rival emperor Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge, on the northern edge of Rome. The Senate dedicated this arch to the winner on 25 July 315, at the start of the tenth year of his reign. The inscription across the top, the same on both faces, records the dedication. It is the largest Roman honorary arch that has survived. Much of the sculpture is older than Constantine. The builders took reliefs and statues from monuments of three earlier emperors: Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. The eight standing figures at the top, one above each column, are Dacian prisoners from Trajan's time. The round reliefs above the side arches, with scenes of hunting and sacrifice, come from Hadrian's reign. The large rectangular panels beside the inscription come from a monument to Marcus Aurelius and show him on campaign. Wherever an earlier emperor's face appeared, the sculptors recarved it as Constantine. The narrow frieze that runs just above the side arches was carved new for this monument. It tells the story of Constantine's war against Maxentius. Compare it with the older panels above: the figures in the frieze are squat and lined up in rows, and the emperor is drawn larger than the people around him. The arch stands on the route of the Roman triumph, the victory parade of a returning general. Processions came up the valley from the Circus Maximus, passed this spot, and turned along the Via Sacra toward the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. You will follow part of that route in reverse. Between the arch and the Colosseum lie the excavated remains of the Meta Sudans, a fountain built under the Flavian emperors. Drawings made before its demolition show a cone about 18 metres high, faced with marble, standing in a round basin. Its ruins survived until 1936, when the Fascist government demolished them to build two new avenues, Via dell'Impero, today's Via dei Fori Imperiali, and Via dei Trionfi, the road in front of you. Walk south down Via di San Gregorio, with the slope of the Palatine Hill on your right and the Caelian Hill on your left. Stop after about 300 metres, where the brick walls on the Palatine side come close to the pavement.

In the 1930s Mussolini's government laid out this road and named it Via dei Trionfi, the Street of Triumphs. The name borrowed an older use of the valley. Roman triumphal processions came through here, between the Palatine Hill on your right and the Caelian Hill on your left, on their way to the arch you just left. The hill on your right is the Palatine. According to Roman legend, Romulus founded the city here, and a hut on the hill was shown to visitors as his house. In the Republic, rich Romans built houses on its slopes. Augustus lived here, and the emperors after him covered the hilltop with palaces. Under Domitian, at the end of the first century, the palace grew into a single great complex, with official halls and a private wing that looked down over the Circus Maximus. The Latin name of the hill, Palatium, became the word for an emperor's residence, and from it come the English word palace and the Italian palazzo. The brick walls and terraces you see from here belong to that palace complex and to the structures that held it up on the hillside. The paths and ruins on top are part of the Parco archeologico del Colosseo and need a ticket, which also covers the Roman Forum. One of the park's entrances is on this street. Look ahead and to the left, toward the end of the road. The church with a staircase and a light stone front up on the Caelian slope is San Gregorio al Celio, which gave the street its modern name. Gregory, who became Pope Gregory the Great, turned his family's property on the Caelian into a monastery dedicated to St Andrew. In 596 he sent its prior, Augustine, with a group of monks to England to convert the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Kent. Augustine became the first Archbishop of Canterbury. The church you see stands on the site of that monastery. Keep walking south to the end of Via di San Gregorio. At the big junction, cross toward the long grassy valley on your right and walk into the Circus Maximus. Stop near its curved eastern end, close to the square medieval tower, about 350 metres from here.

On the night of 18 July in the year 64, a fire broke out in the shops at this end of the Circus Maximus, the end that touches the Palatine and Caelian hills. The historian Tacitus wrote that the flames, fed by the goods in the shops and driven by the wind, ran down the whole length of the circus. The Great Fire went on to destroy much of Rome. The grassy valley in front of you was the largest racecourse of ancient Rome. In its imperial form the circus was about 600 metres long and 140 metres wide. Ancient sources put its capacity at about 250,000 people. Romans raced horses in this valley from the time of the kings. Julius Caesar built the first masonry circus, and after later fires Trajan rebuilt it. Most of the remains at this end date from his reign. Chariots raced around a long central barrier, the spina, decorated with shrines, basins and statues. Officials counted the laps with rows of large eggs and dolphins that were moved at each lap. Racing teams wore four colours, red, white, green and blue, and the crowd sat and shouted by colour. Augustus set an Egyptian obelisk on the spina in 10 BC, and the emperor Constantius II added a second one in 357. Pope Sixtus V had both dug up in 1587. One stands today in Piazza del Popolo, the other at St John Lateran. At this curved end stood a triple arch that the Senate dedicated to the emperor Titus in 81, for his war in Judaea and the capture and destruction of Jerusalem in 70. Triumphal processions passed under it on their way to the Capitol. Its few remains lie in the fenced archaeological area nearby, beside the Torre della Moletta on your left, a tower that the monks of San Gregorio leased to the Frangipane family in 1145. That area has its own ticket. On the hill to your right, the tall brick ruins are part of the imperial palace. A curved terrace there probably served the emperor as a private box above the track. Races here continued until the early sixth century. Now walk the whole length of the circus toward the river, about 800 metres, on the gravel track or along Via dei Cerchi on the Palatine side. At the far end, cross Via della Greca at the lights and head for the church with the tall brick bell tower.

In the 1953 film Roman Holiday, Gregory Peck takes Audrey Hepburn to a stone face with an open mouth and gets her to put her hand inside. The scene was filmed here, in the porch of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, and visitors still queue at the gate to do the same. The Mouth of Truth is a marble disc about 1.75 to 1.8 metres across, carved with a bearded face. The eyes, nose and mouth are holes. It has stood in this porch since 1632. It was probably an ancient Roman drain cover, and the face has been read as Jupiter, a faun and a river god. Fabio Barry, an art historian at the University of St Andrews, has argued that it shows Oceanus, the god of the ocean that was believed to encircle the world, because of the forked, claw-like horns on its head. The question is still open among scholars. The legend that the mouth bites off the hand of a liar is medieval. A writer in the fifteenth century describes it as a test for wives accused of adultery. By about 1800 it had become a general lie detector. The church behind the porch is first recorded in the sixth century as a diaconia, a church centre for aid to the poor. Pope Hadrian I enlarged it in 782. Greek-speaking residents worshipped here, and the name Cosmedin comes from the Kosmidion, a monastery in Constantinople. The rear of the church stands on a large block of ancient tufa that belonged to the Ara Maxima, the Great Altar of Hercules, which stood in the cattle market outside. The church took its present form in the twelfth century, when the porch and the bell tower were added. The tower is about 34 metres high, with seven storeys of arched windows, and one of its bells dates from 1289. The porch keeps opening hours, posted at the gate, and in busy months the queue can be long. Inside, the church has a medieval marble floor and marble choir screens. When you are ready, cross the road at the crossing to the small park facing the church, toward the river. Two ancient temples stand there, one round and one rectangular, about 150 metres from where you are standing.

Two thousand years ago, cattle were driven and sold on this ground. It was the Forum Boarium, Rome's cattle market, next to the river harbour, the Portus Tiberinus. Two temples used by the people of this market and harbour still stand here, among the best preserved buildings of ancient Rome. The round temple ringed with twenty Corinthian columns is the Temple of Hercules Victor. It was probably built near the end of the second century BC by the Greek architect Hermodoros of Salamis, possibly for Marcus Octavius Herennius, a rich olive oil merchant. It is built of Greek marble and is the oldest marble building still standing in Rome. Hercules was the protector of the traders in the cattle market. For centuries people called the building the Temple of Vesta, because of its round shape. In the twelfth century it became a church. In 1809, when Rome was part of Napoleon's empire, the French government had it restored by Giuseppe Valadier, the same architect who later built the brick buttress at the Colosseum. The rectangular temple, with four Ionic columns across the front and half-columns along the sides, belonged to Portunus, the god of harbours and river ports. A temple stood here by the late fourth or early third century BC. The building you see was put up on the same high podium, probably around 80 to 70 BC, mostly in tufa with details in travertine. It faces north, toward the old harbour and the road to the Aemilian Bridge. For a long time it was called the Temple of Fortuna Virilis. Most scholars now agree it belonged to Portunus. In the ninth century it became a church, later named Santa Maria Egiziaca, and it stayed a church until 1916. Byzantine-era frescoes with scenes from the life of Mary survive inside. Both temples are fenced, and you can see them from all sides from the garden paths. Leave the garden at its northern end and walk north along Via Luigi Petroselli, which becomes Via del Teatro di Marcello, with the Capitoline Hill rising on your right. After about 350 metres, two tiers of curved stone arches appear on your left. Stop on the pavement opposite them.

These two tiers of travertine arches were finished nearly a century before the Colosseum. Julius Caesar began a theatre on this site and cleared the ground for it, demolishing older buildings, among them a temple, and Romans criticised him for it. After his murder, Augustus took over the project, bought more land and built a larger theatre. It was probably in use by 17 BC and was dedicated in 13 or 11 BC; the sources give both years. Augustus named it after Marcellus, the son of his sister Octavia and his chosen heir, who had died young. The theatre measured about 130 metres across. It held about 15,000 spectators, and up to 20,000 when needed. The lower arches are framed by Doric half-columns and the upper ones by Ionic half-columns. A third storey, now gone, had Corinthian pilasters. The keystones of the lower arches carried huge marble masks of tragedy, comedy and satyr plays. Look above the ancient arches. The rows of windows on top belong to a palace. In the Middle Ages the Pierleoni and Fabi families turned the theatre into a fortress, because it stood high above an easy crossing of the Tiber. In the sixteenth century the architect Baldassarre Peruzzi built a palace on top for the Savelli family, and two centuries later the Orsini family bought it. Between 1926 and 1932 the city of Rome bought the lower Roman part, cleared away the houses and workshops built against it, and restored the arches. To the right of the theatre, the three white Corinthian columns belong to the Temple of Apollo. It was rebuilt in the time of Augustus by Gaius Sosius, so it is called the Temple of Apollo Sosianus. The columns were set back up in 1940. Next to it, a block of concrete is all that remains of the Temple of Bellona, the Roman goddess of war. A pedestrian path runs along the theatre's arcades and between the columns, linking Via del Teatro di Marcello with the Jewish quarter. If works have closed it, walk around by Via Montanara and Via del Portico d'Ottavia instead. Take that path around the north side of the theatre, heading west for about 300 metres, to a small square named Largo 16 Ottobre 1943. The tall gateway of brick and marble columns there is the Porticus of Octavia.

In front of you is the entrance porch of the Porticus of Octavia. Augustus rebuilt this colonnaded square between 27 and 23 BC, on the site of an older portico, and dedicated it to his sister Octavia. It measured about 119 by 132 metres. Inside were two temples, a Greek and a Latin library, a meeting hall and many works of art, among them a bronze group of Alexander the Great and his horsemen by Lysippos. After a fire in 191 it was restored, and the inscription on the beam above the columns records that rebuilding in 203, under Septimius Severus, the period of most of what you see. In the Middle Ages the two front columns on the right were replaced by the large brick arch, and the church of Sant'Angelo in Pescheria was built into the ruins at the end of the eighth century. Pescheria means fish market. From late antiquity until the end of the nineteenth century, the city's main fish market was held in these porticoes. From here, walk back along the path past the Theatre of Marcellus to Via del Teatro di Marcello, about 350 metres. Cross at the lights. Ahead of you, two stairways climb the hill: a steep one on the left to the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, and a broad ramp of shallow steps on the right. Climb the ramp on the right, the Cordonata, to the square at the top.

In January 1538, Pope Paul III had a gilded bronze horseman moved up here from the Lateran. The rider is the emperor Marcus Aurelius, who ruled from 161 to 180. A year later, Rome's civic Senate asked Michelangelo to give the statue a proper setting. Michelangelo designed its base and made it the centre of a new square. Rome once had more than twenty bronze equestrian statues of this size, and this is the only one that survived. Probably it survived because people in the Middle Ages believed it showed Constantine, the first Christian emperor. The original was restored in the 1980s and has stood inside the Capitoline Museums since 1990. The statue in front of you is a copy, put up in 1997. The Capitoline Hill had been the seat of Rome's city government since 1143. Michelangelo gave the square its shape. The Palazzo Senatorio at the back is still the seat of the city's government. The two palaces on either side have matching façades and are set at a slight angle to each other, so the square opens out toward the city. On your right is the Palazzo dei Conservatori, on your left the Palazzo Nuovo. Together they hold the Capitoline Museums, which began with a gift of ancient bronzes from Pope Sixtus IV in 1471. The star pattern in the oval paving follows Michelangelo's design, but it was only laid in 1940. The two marble giants with their horses at the top of the ramp are Castor and Pollux, the twin sons of Jupiter. They were found in pieces in the area of the ghetto in the 1560s and placed here in 1583. On 25 March 1957, in the Hall of the Horatii and Curiatii inside the Palazzo dei Conservatori, representatives of six countries signed the Treaties of Rome, which created the European Economic Community. Michelangelo's design also changed which way the hill faced. In ancient times the Capitol faced the Roman Forum and the great Temple of Jupiter stood on this hill. The ramp you climbed points it toward the modern city instead. To see what the hill used to face, walk to the right of the Palazzo Senatorio, the building at the back of the square, and follow the lane down past its corner for about 120 metres to a railed terrace above the Roman Forum.

Look down at the long valley below you. This was the Roman Forum, the centre of public life in ancient Rome. The massive stone wall in the hillside right below you is the Tabularium, built in 78 BC and traditionally identified as the state record office. The Palazzo Senatorio stands on top of it. In front of it, the eight columns on a high podium belong to the Temple of Saturn. Under that podium the Roman Republic kept its state treasury. A little to the left is the triple arch of Septimius Severus, dedicated in 203 for his victories over the Parthians. Beyond it, the tall, plain brick building is the Curia, the Senate house. The building you see is the rebuilding by the emperor Diocletian. In the seventh century it became the church of Sant'Adriano. In 1660 its ancient bronze doors were taken to the Basilica of St John Lateran, where they still hang; the doors on the Curia today are copies. The single column standing on its own in the open square is the Column of Phocas. It was dedicated in 608 to the Byzantine emperor Phocas, and it was the last monument added to the Forum. At the far end of the open square, a low ruin marks the Temple of the Deified Julius. After Julius Caesar was murdered in March 44 BC, his body was burned in the Forum, and Augustus built this temple on the spot. The paved road running away from you through the middle of the Forum is the Via Sacra. Follow it with your eyes as it climbs to the Arch of Titus on the rise, and past that you can see the top of the Colosseum, where this walk began. Triumphal processions came the other way. They entered the city through the Circus Maximus, passed the Arch of Constantine and climbed the Via Sacra to end at the Temple of Jupiter on this hill. The Forum and the Palatine can be visited with a ticket from the Parco archeologico del Colosseo. To get back to the Colosseum metro station, walk around the Palazzo Senatorio to the steps on its far side, go down to Via dei Fori Imperiali and follow it east for about a kilometre. Thank you for walking with Odisea.