Few photos to best represent the Roman Forum , what is commonly defined as the political center of Rome. To say so would be an understatement, although in reality it reflects well what the Urbe was like more than two thousand years ago, especially in the Republican age, when the Forum really served citizens to get an idea of the politics around them. After all, with the advent of the Empire, only one man could make the good and the bad weather... As a tour guide, I spend my days here, among the remains of a memory still well imprinted in the social and cultural fabric of Rome. And, often, I try to make people understand the true essence of the Roman Forum. So what was the Forum? In general we say the public square. And with that I said everything and nothing.

The term forum probably has the meaning of atrium , vestibule. It was the entrance to Rome, the way in which the city presented itself, in the same way in which, in a domus of a rich Roman noble and aristocrat, the first environment in which one found oneself was the entrance, often adorned and decorated. The Forum was truly the place of politics, where it became propaganda, communication, proposal, participation, conflict . In the morning, even early, superior and inferior magistrates, tribunes and senators went to the Forum to be seen. Court arguments, trials, public orations and community speeches were their daily bread. They went to the Forum to find new friends and clients, very useful in times of difficulty or in those of political ascent. The Forum was like a large TV, in which the Romans could see and touch the person proposing himself as the new aedile or praetor, the senator with the lictors at his side, the young scion of a noble family ready to make his way into Roman politics. But it was in the afternoon that the true rite of the Forum took place. The afternoon was dedicated to ordinary people, who met in the basilicas, near the temples, in the central square to discuss, talk and gossip about this or that. It was here that popular consent or public discredit was generated. It was here that Pompey began to be accused of being too effeminate, as he thought more of his (sincere) loves than of battle. It was here, following  rumours and fake news, that real popular uprisings helped to change secular laws. It was also here that Julius Caesar was ignominiously accused of being a prostitute (woman) or of being the "queen of the triumvirate " (with Pompey acting as King). Such a thing could have cost him his political career, since Caesar would have indulged in luxury (a real excess for the sober Roman Republic) with the King of Bithynia during a diplomatic mission. Almost as if Rome itself submitted. Everyone would have felt the pinch, since the people were the mirror of your political activity, capable of deciding their fate. But for someone who aimed to be a real dictator, he cared little about popular consent.

So the Roman Forum was this and more, it was where Roman historians set some of the most moralizing and foundational stories of the history of Rome itself. At the Forum, for example, in the 4th century BC it was decided that the war against Veii should go ahead, when all by now seemed lost. And today, millennia later, the Roman Forum plays the main role on the great stage that is Rome. We have remains of basilicas, temples, Roman-style cult buildings transformed into Catholic churches, medieval porticoes, horrea, domus, triumphal arches. We have the same story of Urbe here. Perhaps it is precisely here, in the Roman Forum, that the following words, penned by Goethe during his famous trip to Rome, can be most strongly appreciated: "Whoever knows how to look seriously at these things and has eyes to see must strengthen himself, must acquire an idea of solidity such as it never had so vivid [...] I at least have the impression of never having appreciated the value of the things of this world as I do here, and I rejoice in the auspicious consequences that I will draw from them for the rest of my life. [...] I want to immerse myself in the study of this greatness, I want, before I turn forty, to educate and cultivate my spirit" .