Forum of Caesar

Lean on the railing and look down. The street noise of modern Rome is behind you, with scooters and buses and the rattle of tour groups. Below you, several metres down, lies a quiet rectangle of pale stone. Grass grows between the paving slabs. Lizards cross warm marble in the afternoon sun. Three tall columns stand at one end, holding up a fragment of carved stone against the sky. This is the Forum of Caesar, and you are looking at it from the level of a much later city.

The drop in height matters. Over many centuries, Rome slowly buried its own past. Floods left mud, fallen buildings left rubble, and new houses rose on top of old ones. The ground climbed higher and higher. So when you stand at this railing, you stand on top of history itself. The open space below was once at the centre of public life. It was a place where Romans walked, argued, signed contracts and came to pray.

This forum was the first of what we now call the Imperial Fora. A forum was a public square, the heart of a Roman city. The old Roman Forum, just next door, had grown crowded and chaotic over hundreds of years. Julius Caesar decided to build something new beside it. He was not yet emperor, and Rome was still officially a republic. Even so, this was a bold move. One man was building a whole public square that carried his own name.

The money came from war. Ancient writers tell us that Caesar paid for the land with wealth from his campaigns in Gaul, the region of modern France and its neighbours. The land here was not empty. It was crowded with private houses, and buying them cost an enormous sum. Caesar paid it. A great general was turning plunder into public space, and every Roman who walked here would know whose generosity they were enjoying.

Now look again at those three columns. They belonged to the Temple of Venus Genetrix, which means Venus the Mother. This was not a random choice of goddess. Caesar's family, the Julii, claimed descent from Venus herself. The family story ran through the Trojan hero Aeneas and his son Iulus. So this temple honoured a goddess of love, and it also announced Caesar's divine family tree in marble. It was religion and political advertising at once.

The temple began with a promise. Before the Battle of Pharsalus in Greece, in 48 BCE, Caesar faced his great rival Pompey in a civil war. According to the ancient sources, he vowed a temple to Venus if he won. He did win. The temple was dedicated in 46 BCE, even before the whole complex was finished. Caesar did not live to see the final result. He was assassinated two years later, and Augustus, his adopted heir, completed the work.

Here is the first surprise. The columns you see are not the ones Caesar knew. A great fire in the year 80 damaged this area badly. The forum was rebuilt under later emperors, especially Trajan, in the early second century. The temple was rededicated in 113. So the carved stone above those columns belongs to Trajan's Rome, more than a century and a half after Caesar. Even the standing columns were set upright again by archaeologists in the twentieth century.

The temple was once full of treasures. Ancient writers describe a statue of Venus by a Greek sculptor named Arcesilaus. They also mention collections of engraved gems and paintings. And here is the second surprise. According to the historian Appian, Caesar placed a gilded statue of Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt, inside the temple, beside the goddess. Cleopatra was Caesar's ally and lover. To many Romans, a foreign queen in a Roman temple looked shocking. To Caesar, perhaps, it was a statement of power.

In the open square in front of the temple stood a bronze statue of Caesar on horseback. The writer Suetonius describes Caesar's own horse as unusual, with front hooves split almost like human toes. A statue of that horse, he says, stood before this temple. Whether the hooves were really so strange, we cannot know. It is the kind of detail Romans loved to repeat about a great man. Treat it as a good story with ancient roots.

Now follow the long sides of the square. Along one side, you can make out a row of small rooms built into the slope of the hill. These were tabernae, which means shops or offices. Here, business filled the air. Under Trajan, a hall known as the Basilica Argentaria was added nearby, linked to bankers and money dealers. So this was never only a sacred space. Prayer, commerce and politics shared the same stones, a short walk apart.

After Rome fell, this square slowly disappeared. Over the medieval and later centuries, houses, workshops and streets covered it. People lived their whole lives on top of Caesar's forum without seeing it. Then, in the 1930s, the government of Mussolini cut the wide avenue you are standing beside, Via dei Fori Imperiali. Whole neighbourhoods were demolished. The ancient fora came back into the light, but the people who had lived above them lost their homes.

Before you leave, look along the avenue. Near this spot stands a modern bronze statue of Caesar, one of several emperor figures placed along the street in the twentieth century. He raises his arm toward the city. Behind him, you can see the old Roman Forum and the slope of the Capitoline Hill. Caesar also began rebuilding the Senate house there, the Curia, which still stands. His forum and his Senate house were planned to sit close together, side by side.

Take one more moment at the railing. Listen to the traffic above and the stillness below. Notice the colours: white marble, grey tufa, green grass, warm brown brick. Then look at those three columns once more. A general paid for this square with the wealth of war, built a temple to his divine ancestor, and died before it was finished. As you walk on, the street under your feet is just the newest layer. Rome keeps building on top of itself.