Tabularium

Cool air settles on your skin here. The stone under your hand is grey and slightly rough, and it has been in shade for a very long time. Then you reach the open arches, and the light changes completely. Below you, the whole Roman Forum opens out. Broken columns, worn paving and the roofs of the modern city lie in the warm Roman haze. This is the Tabularium. Few places in Rome give you this view from inside an ancient Roman building.

Let's start with where you are standing. The Tabularium sits on the slope of the Capitoline Hill, the smallest of Rome's seven hills. It was also the most sacred. The Capitoline held the great temple of Jupiter, the chief god of the Roman state. The Forum below was the political heart of the city. This building stood between the two. It looked down on the Forum and it backed onto the holy hill.

The building dates to the early first century before Christ. Rome was going through violent civil wars in those years. In 83 BC, a fire destroyed the temple of Jupiter on the summit above you. The rebuilding fell to a senior politician, the consul Quintus Lutatius Catulus. An inscription records his name in connection with this structure. Most scholars date its completion to around 78 BC. That makes it more than two thousand years old.

The name comes from the Latin word tabula, which means a tablet. Romans recorded laws, treaties and official decrees on tablets, often of bronze. A tabularium was a place where such records were kept. So the traditional story is simple. This was the state archive of the Roman Republic, the memory of Roman government. It held the documents that made Roman power official.

Here is the first surprise. Not every scholar agrees with that story. The surviving inscription mentions a tabularium, but the exact link between that word and these walls is still debated. Some researchers think the building had a wider role. It may have been a monumental platform or a grand connecting structure between the hill and the Forum. The name has stuck for centuries, and it may be correct. But the certainty you might expect simply does not exist.

Now look closely at the arches beside you. Each opening is a rounded arch, and each arch is framed by flat half-columns attached to the wall. Above them runs a horizontal beam. This pattern is an arch set inside a frame of columns. It became one of the most important ideas in Roman architecture. You will see the same rhythm on the outside of the Colosseum. The Tabularium is one of the earliest surviving examples of this design.

That combination matters because it joins two traditions. The Greeks built with columns and flat beams. The Romans perfected the arch and the vault. Here, the columns do not carry much weight. They are mostly decoration, a Greek costume over a Roman body. Renaissance architects studied this facade carefully, and the same motif spread through palaces and churches across Europe. In a way, much later architecture has its roots in this wall.

Notice the materials too. The massive lower walls are built from blocks of volcanic stone, cut and fitted together with great precision. Romans had large supplies of this stone near the city. In places you can see different types of stone used side by side, harder pieces where strength was needed. Run your eyes along the joints. The blocks are huge, and they were set without the decoration that once covered other parts of the Forum.

The second surprise sits right above your head. Look up as you leave this gallery, or step outside onto the Capitoline square later. The building on top of these ancient walls is the Palazzo Senatorio, the seat of the mayor of Rome. In the Middle Ages, the city's government built its palace directly on the Roman foundations. Later, the hilltop square was redesigned to plans by Michelangelo. So the Roman city government still works on top of a Roman Republican building.

The centuries between were not always kind. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the vaults were reused in practical ways. Medieval Romans used parts of the structure for storage, and parts served as a prison. Stone was taken away for new buildings. Much of the upper floor disappeared. What survives is mostly the strong lower part, the section built into the hillside. Its weight and solid construction kept it standing.

Now turn back to the view, because it shows the Forum from an angle you cannot get at ground level. Just below you rises the triumphal Arch of Septimius Severus, with its three openings. Close by stand the tall columns of the Temple of Saturn, which once guarded the state treasury. Three slender columns nearby belong to the Temple of Vespasian. Further away, the Palatine Hill rises on the right, and the Colosseum appears in the distance.

Think about what a Roman would have seen from these arches. The Forum would have been full of colour, painted temples, bronze statues and crowds of people. Senators walked to meetings. Lawyers argued cases in the open air. Market traders and priests moved through the same spaces. Today the colour has gone, and the bronze was melted down long ago. But the layout is still clear from up here. You can follow the line of the Sacred Way, the main road through the Forum.

Today the Tabularium is part of the Capitoline Museums. It links the museum buildings on either side of the square through an underground route. Many visitors rush through it on the way to the next gallery of sculptures. Take your time instead. Stand still at the arches for a few minutes and let your eyes adjust to the brightness. Watch how the light moves across the ruins below.

Before you go, put your hand on the stone one more time. It is cool and solid, and it has carried the weight of palaces above it for centuries. Behind you are museum halls, and below you is the Forum. Above you, the modern city government is at work. As you walk back into the shade, listen to the echo of your footsteps in the vaults. People have walked these corridors for more than two thousand years.