The Roman Forum is the place where visitors to Rome get most bored.
I am not saying that to provoke. I am saying it because it is what you see: people coming in through the gate on Largo della Salara Vecchia, walking for twenty minutes across a field of foundations and knee-high walls, photographing three columns and leaving. And in one sense they are right: without a key to read it, the Forum is a pile of stones. It is the hardest monument in Rome, far harder than the Colosseum, which explains itself.
But the key exists, and it is not complicated. You only need to understand one thing: that what you are looking at is not a building, it is eight centuries of buildings stacked on top of each other, and that the only way to read it is by levels and dates, not by beauty.
Shall we try? From here on I will tell you what to look at and in what order, and I will also tell you which ticket you need, because there is a trap on that point that almost nobody flags.
Why the Forum looks illegible (and how to read it)
The Roman Forum begins as a marshy valley between the Palatine and the Capitoline, drained in the archaic period by the Cloaca Maxima. From there it becomes Rome’s public square: market, court, seat of the senate, place of triumphs and state funerals.
The problem is that this function lasts more than a thousand years, and Rome did not demolish in order to rebuild: it raised the ground level and built on top. The level of the Forum rose steadily, and every emperor added his own piece, often over somebody else’s piece.
Here is the practical rule that changes the visit: the lower a thing is, the older it is. The Lapis Niger, which sits in a pit below the level of the square, is from the sixth century BC. The Column of Phocas, standing on the highest level, is from AD 608. That is twelve hundred years apart, twenty metres from each other, and the difference in height tells you so.
The other tool is the date of the most recent monument. On 1 August 608 the exarch Smaragdus raised a column in the middle of the square with a gilded statue of the emperor Phocas: it was the last honorary monument ever put up in the Forum. And even that column was second-hand, reused from an older building, with the earlier inscription shaved off to make room for the new one. That is how the Forum ends: with a recycled monument.
The Curia, the only building still standing
Look towards the Capitoline and find a large brick box with a pitched roof. In a field of ruins, it is the only whole building. It is the Curia Iulia, the seat of the Roman senate.
The story of why it is still standing is worth the trip. Caesar began rebuilding it after the fire of 52 BC, Augustus completed and inaugurated it on 28 August 29 BC, Domitian restored it in AD 94, and Diocletian rebuilt it after the fire of AD 283: the building you see today is essentially his.
Then, in 630, Pope Honorius I turned it into a church, under the name of Sant’Adriano al Foro. And that is what saved it. While the rest of the Forum was being dismantled for lime and building material, the Curia was a place of worship in use, and therefore maintained, roofed, repaired. It crossed thirteen hundred years sheltered from its own fame.
And the ending? In the excavations of 1930 to 1936 the church was deconsecrated and stripped of everything added after Diocletian, in order to return it to its ancient form. So today you are looking at a Roman building that survived intact because for thirteen centuries it was not a Roman building, and that became Roman again only when it became archaeology.
A practical warning: the Curia is one of the SUPER sites, so the standard ticket does not get you in. More on that below.
The Arch of Septimius Severus and the erased name
A few metres from the Curia stands a triple arch covered in worn reliefs. It is the Arch of Septimius Severus, put up between AD 202 and 203 by the senate to celebrate the victories over the Parthians, and dedicated to the emperor and his two sons, Caracalla and Geta.
Now look up at the inscription, on the attic, and look at the fourth line. That line has been recut.
In 211 Septimius Severus died and the two brothers inherited the empire jointly. It lasted a few months: in 212 Caracalla had Geta murdered and ordered his damnatio memoriae, systematic erasure from public memory. Geta’s name was chiselled off monuments across the empire. Here the line that read ET P SEPTIMIO L FIL GETAE NOBILISS CAESARI was shaved away and replaced by a generic formula of praise, patri patriae optimis fortissimisque principibus: father of the fatherland, to the best and bravest of princes. No names.
And here comes the beautiful part. The letters of those inscriptions were not carved and painted: they were bronze letters, fixed into the marble with pins. When the line was recut, the surface was chiselled away, but the pin holes of the original letters remained. By counting and mapping those holes, scholars have reconstructed the erased text, letter by letter.
It is the same principle as the holes in the walls of the Colosseum, and in a way it is archaeology’s revenge on censorship: the erasure left its own negative behind. Caracalla removed his brother’s name and handed us the exact coordinates of where it stood.
The Lapis Niger, the oldest Latin you can read here
Near the arch, on the side of the square towards the Capitoline, there is a rectangle of black stone slabs set into the ground, often under a shelter. If you do not know what it is, you walk right past it. It is the Lapis Niger, and it is the oldest thing in the Forum.
The black paving marked, for the Romans, a sacred place underneath, whose meaning they themselves had forgotten. Below it are the remains of an archaic sacred area and an inscribed pillar, dated to around 575 to 550 BC: one of the oldest written records in the Latin language that exists.
What does it say? Little, and not all of it. The text is mutilated at the top and is written boustrophedon, that is, in alternating lines running left to right and right to left, the way a furrow is ploughed. The Latin is archaic, with forms and sounds unlike the classical ones. What can be read looks like a religious prohibition with a curse: whoever violates this place be cursed, and there is mention of a herald and of draught animals. It is a ban on desecration, carved on a place that was already untouchable then.
The Romans of the imperial period told each other that there was a tomb underneath, and argued about who was in it: Romulus, according to some, or Faustulus who raised him, or King Tullus Hostilius. Dionysius of Halicarnassus recalled seeing a statue of Romulus with an inscription in the Volcanal, which is precisely this area. We do not know, and probably never will. But the point is something else: the Romans themselves visited the Forum as an ancient and mysterious place, exactly as you are visiting it.
The House of the Vestals and thirty years of service
Towards the Palatine, behind the round temple of Vesta, there is a long courtyard with two rows of statue bases and basins down the middle. This is the Atrium Vestae, home of the six priestesses who guarded the public fire of Rome.
The residence becomes part of the complex from the second century BC; what you see is largely Trajanic, with a major rebuilding after the fire of AD 191, promoted by Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus. So here too, the same family as the arch.
The rule of the Vestals explains that courtyard better than any information panel. At first there were three or four, later six. They were drawn by lot from twenty girls of patrician families, aged between six and ten. The service lasted thirty years: ten as novices, ten performing the cult, ten training the new ones. For all that time, compulsory chastity.
And if they broke it? The violation was treated as sacrilege beyond forgiveness. The guilty Vestal was whipped, dressed in funeral clothes, carried in a closed litter to the Campus Sceleratus and walled up alive in an underground cell with minimal provisions. Her name was struck from the records.
In exchange they had a power no other Roman woman had: they could make a will, testify in court without swearing an oath, they were preceded by lictors, and they had the right, unique in Rome, to pardon a condemned person they met in the street. Six women, inside that courtyard, with the power to cancel a death sentence.
The Palatine, where power lived
Climb the Palatine from the Arch of Titus side. Everything changes: fewer people, shade, pines, and in the middle a labyrinth of brick walls as high as apartment blocks.
In the republican period the Palatine was the residential quarter of the aristocracy: Cicero and Mark Antony lived there, among others. Then Augustus arrives, buys the house of the orator Hortensius and gradually enlarges it with neighbouring properties. It is perfect propaganda: the hill where Rome was founded, but a pointedly modest house.
His successors dropped the modesty and kept the hill. Tiberius built the Domus Tiberiana, which Caligula enlarged. Domitian did the big thing: the Domus Flavia for public functions, the Domus Augustana as private residence, and between them the Palatine stadium, a garden shaped like a circus, a hundred and sixty metres long, for the emperor’s private use. Septimius Severus added the Domus Severiana and the Septizodium, towards the Circus Maximus.
The result is that at a certain point the hill no longer has houses: it has one house, filling the whole of it. And here comes the piece of linguistic history: that house was called Palatium, from the name of the hill, and from that proper name came the common noun palace, present in every European language. Palais, Palast, palacio, palazzo. Every time you say “palace” you are quoting this hill.
What to see if you only have an hour
The minimum route, in order, entering from Largo della Salara Vecchia:
- Curia Iulia, to understand what you would be seeing if the Forum had not been dismantled.
- Arch of Septimius Severus, with the fourth line of the inscription.
- Lapis Niger, a few steps away, on the black paving.
- Column of Phocas, in the middle of the square: the last monument, from 608.
- Basilica of Maxentius, the three enormous vaults on the north side: 100 by 65 metres, nave 35 metres high, and not one of its columns is still here. Pope Paul V had the last surviving one moved to Piazza di Santa Maria Maggiore in 1613, where it still stands. The fragments of the colossal statue of Constantine that stood inside, found in 1487, are in the Capitoline Museums, including a head 2.6 metres tall.
- House of the Vestals and the temple of Vesta.
- Arch of Titus and the climb to the Palatine, with the stadium and the view over the Circus Maximus.
If you have more than an hour, reverse it: go up the Palatine first, look at the Forum from above and grasp the plan, then come down to see the pieces. From above the valley reads in thirty seconds; from below it takes far longer.
Practical information
Details verified on 30 July 2026 on the official site of the Colosseum Archaeological Park. Before you travel, check again on colosseo.it; the only genuine ticketing domain is ticketing.colosseo.it.
The ticket is the same as the Colosseum’s, and this is where the trap is. The standard 18-euro ticket is valid for 24 hours and gives one entry to the Colosseum (first and second levels, no arena) and one entry to the archaeological areas of the Roman Forum, the Palatine and the Imperial Fora, current exhibitions included. What it does not give you is the SUPER sites, which are the most interesting things to see: the Curia Iulia, Santa Maria Antiqua, the Temple of Romulus, the Domus Tiberiana (exhibition rooms), the Aula Isiaca with the Loggia Mattei, the Horrea Piperataria, the House of Augustus (closed Monday) and the House of Livia (closed Tuesday), plus the lower floor of the Palatine Museum.
There are two ways to get them, both costing 18 euros:
- the Forum Pass SUPER, which gives the Forum, the Palatine, the Imperial Fora and all the SUPER sites, but not the Colosseum. It allows a single entry and, once validated, is good only for that day. It is the right choice if you have already been to the Colosseum;
- the Only Arena ticket, which at the same price gives you twenty minutes on the Colosseum arena floor plus all the SUPER sites. On paper it is the best value of the three, and hardly anyone knows it.
The reduced EU 18 to 25 fare is 2 euros. MIC Card holders are entitled to the R.A.P. reduction at 12 euros on the 24-hour ticket. Admission is free on the first Sunday of the month, on 25 April, 2 June and 4 November, and always for under 18s. Only Arena and Full Experience tickets must be booked.
Entrances. For the Roman Forum: the gate at Largo della Salara Vecchia 5/6, and Via Sacra from Piazza del Colosseo. For the Palatine: Via di San Gregorio 30. They are not interchangeable in terms of convenience: if you start from the Colosseum, the natural way in is Via Sacra; if you come from the Capitoline, it is Largo della Salara Vecchia.
Opening hours. The Roman Forum and the Palatine open at 9 am, half an hour after the Colosseum. Closing is 7.15 pm from 29 March to 30 September, 6.30 pm from 1 to 24 October, 4.30 pm from 25 October to 28 February. Closed on 25 December and 1 January.
What to allow for. The Forum has no shade and the ground is uneven: ancient cobbles, irregular slabs, beaten-earth slopes up to the Palatine. Closed shoes, and water, because there are few drinking fountains inside the area. In summer the liveable hours are the first one and the last two.
If you would rather arrive with it all sorted, you can book entry to the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine online and check the available time slots.
Where to go from here
The Forum is the centre of a system, and the pieces taken out of it are almost all a short walk away.
The statues and fragments that ended up in the papal collection are in the Capitoline Museums, above the Capitoline Hill, five minutes from the Salara gate. The full historical context, from the villages of huts to the nineteenth century, is in this brief history of Rome. And if you want to see how the same architecture works outside the city, the Appian Way is the natural continuation: the road started here.
One last thing. Before you leave, stop on the Capitoline side of the Forum and look up, at the Tabularium, the Roman state archive on which the Palazzo Senatorio rests. Under a building in use for two thousand years there is a Roman structure that has never stopped holding something up. It is not a ruin: it is a foundation.
