This only shows about half the forum. Temples from left to right: temple of Saturn (several columns remain), temple of Vespasian (three columns remain), temple of Concordia (no column remains)…further right is the arch of Septimius Severus . In the middle are the Rostra, the public platform where politicians gave speeches. Behind is the Tabularium, sort of the archives of ancient Rome. On the left is the Basilica Iulia and in front of it the columns erected by Diocletian. On the right, near the arch of Severus, is the Duilian column erected to celebrate naval victory over the Carthaginians. One monument you can see below and not above, it’s that stand-alone column in the middle, the column of Foca, put there in the 7th century (altough the column itself dates back to centuries before). You can also see, on the right of the photo below, the ruins of the Basilica Emilia.
Having visited Rome twice now really brought me around to the idea that maintaining ruins is not the same as protecting history. It is almost impossible to visit the Forum and really walk away with a proper sense of scale and appreciation for what it used to be. Especially if you’re a more casual tourist who has a harder time coming up with a mental picture of what things might’ve looked like.
This sort of stuff should be rebuilt from the ground up. I don’t care if the materials, or the methods, are not authentic to the time. What matters is restoring things in the semblance of what used to be. I think if the Roman Empire had somehow made it to the year 2024, they’d have done the same thing. We’re needlessly reverent of ruins and overgrown patches of grass.
Also the actual Roman Forum would’ve been more colourful than what we see in that image.
“Older fixer upper for sale in beautiful downtown Rome”.
Imagine being some peasant from bumfuck nowhere and travelling into Rome when your prior experience of buildings has been your small stone house with a straw roof.
Been there and I’m kinda furious how mankind stepped back in development after fall of WRE and ERE, barbarians, Huns and middle ages. Imagine where the mankind could be today if there was no religion and stupidity.
Was it whitе?
Wasn’t the ancient Roman forum full of color. I read somewhere it was very colorful and not pure white marble as it is depicted in this painting.
Italy has really fallen behind /s
Still a beautiful place
Rome is an open air museum. Epic city.
What do you mean now and then? It’s a modern painting on the top, it seems it’s not the case when we have some painting made when building really existed, we don’t really know how it looked. Probably nothing like this painting.
Todays society is just a foken downgrade
They sure took nice photos back then
Roma: 🎶 *I used to rule the world* 🎶
A bit of chaos, innit?
I never got why they keep it in ruins and don’t revive it …
Wow, they’ve really let the place go!
Thoses Italian don’t know how to maintain shit 😂
Reddit is my favorite forum
Didn’t the romans paint their statues?
Italians, you could invest in maintenance a bit more. Your buildings are decrepit.
/s.
savages
Just image, what could have happened to a such developed civilization, that now lies in ruins… A global catastrophic event maybe…!?
Amazing photograph taken by the ancient Romans, really makes you wonder what they had going on all day inside their funny ancient brains to think of such marvellous inventions we still use today
I wish someone would actually build what Rome used to look back then and people could experience it instead of just looking at ruins, i think it would make for such an amazing experience.
It looks worse now.
Bring it back 😔
It’s not really possible to put a pin into the exact ‘when’, because the forum (or should I say various forums) stood there for a 1000 years. A lot of buildings were torn down to make room for new shrines, temples and marketplaces. For example, Caesar purchased very expensive pieces of land in that area (the final cost was said to be 100,000,000 sesterces) and leveled everything in that area in order to build his forum.
What we have now is a collection of ruins from various periods. Some of the ruins on the Palatine hill predate even Rome itself!
Do we know that these buildings weren’t painted? I’ve read that most of the statues were originally colourful, only the paint eroded away over the years, leaving only the white marble behind.
And why exactly dont we make more of this? How can someone actually prefer a steel and glass cube to this? To me, seing some drawings of old rome and greek make me believe that we peak there.
The forum is really hard to picture when you are looking at the ruins, this is a great visualisation. One of the complications is that you are looking at the foundations of several periods built on top of one another. It’s important to remember this picture is just a snapshot of one phase over a period of a millennium.
Not a lot left…
I’m sure Putin looks at this picture of the destroyd Roman Forum every night before sleep…because he compares the Romans with the contemporary “West”
Unpopular opinion Everything should be restored to how it used to be.
Nah, the “then” were rarely plain like that, classical buildings and statues were usually painted back then.
Aaghhh why’d u have to remind me? :*(
Majestic projection.
In Poland, they would put a supermarket in the middle of this square 😆
37 comments
This only shows about half the forum. Temples from left to right: temple of Saturn (several columns remain), temple of Vespasian (three columns remain), temple of Concordia (no column remains)…further right is the arch of Septimius Severus . In the middle are the Rostra, the public platform where politicians gave speeches. Behind is the Tabularium, sort of the archives of ancient Rome. On the left is the Basilica Iulia and in front of it the columns erected by Diocletian. On the right, near the arch of Severus, is the Duilian column erected to celebrate naval victory over the Carthaginians. One monument you can see below and not above, it’s that stand-alone column in the middle, the column of Foca, put there in the 7th century (altough the column itself dates back to centuries before). You can also see, on the right of the photo below, the ruins of the Basilica Emilia.
Having visited Rome twice now really brought me around to the idea that maintaining ruins is not the same as protecting history. It is almost impossible to visit the Forum and really walk away with a proper sense of scale and appreciation for what it used to be. Especially if you’re a more casual tourist who has a harder time coming up with a mental picture of what things might’ve looked like.
This sort of stuff should be rebuilt from the ground up. I don’t care if the materials, or the methods, are not authentic to the time. What matters is restoring things in the semblance of what used to be. I think if the Roman Empire had somehow made it to the year 2024, they’d have done the same thing. We’re needlessly reverent of ruins and overgrown patches of grass.
Also the actual Roman Forum would’ve been more colourful than what we see in that image.
“Older fixer upper for sale in beautiful downtown Rome”.
Imagine being some peasant from bumfuck nowhere and travelling into Rome when your prior experience of buildings has been your small stone house with a straw roof.
Been there and I’m kinda furious how mankind stepped back in development after fall of WRE and ERE, barbarians, Huns and middle ages. Imagine where the mankind could be today if there was no religion and stupidity.
Was it whitе?
Wasn’t the ancient Roman forum full of color. I read somewhere it was very colorful and not pure white marble as it is depicted in this painting.
Italy has really fallen behind /s
Still a beautiful place
Rome is an open air museum. Epic city.
What do you mean now and then? It’s a modern painting on the top, it seems it’s not the case when we have some painting made when building really existed, we don’t really know how it looked. Probably nothing like this painting.
Todays society is just a foken downgrade
They sure took nice photos back then
Roma: 🎶 *I used to rule the world* 🎶
A bit of chaos, innit?
I never got why they keep it in ruins and don’t revive it …
Wow, they’ve really let the place go!
Thoses Italian don’t know how to maintain shit 😂
Reddit is my favorite forum
Didn’t the romans paint their statues?
Italians, you could invest in maintenance a bit more. Your buildings are decrepit.
/s.
savages
Just image, what could have happened to a such developed civilization, that now lies in ruins… A global catastrophic event maybe…!?
Amazing photograph taken by the ancient Romans, really makes you wonder what they had going on all day inside their funny ancient brains to think of such marvellous inventions we still use today
I wish someone would actually build what Rome used to look back then and people could experience it instead of just looking at ruins, i think it would make for such an amazing experience.
It looks worse now.
Bring it back 😔
It’s not really possible to put a pin into the exact ‘when’, because the forum (or should I say various forums) stood there for a 1000 years. A lot of buildings were torn down to make room for new shrines, temples and marketplaces. For example, Caesar purchased very expensive pieces of land in that area (the final cost was said to be 100,000,000 sesterces) and leveled everything in that area in order to build his forum.
What we have now is a collection of ruins from various periods. Some of the ruins on the Palatine hill predate even Rome itself!
Do we know that these buildings weren’t painted? I’ve read that most of the statues were originally colourful, only the paint eroded away over the years, leaving only the white marble behind.
And why exactly dont we make more of this? How can someone actually prefer a steel and glass cube to this? To me, seing some drawings of old rome and greek make me believe that we peak there.
The forum is really hard to picture when you are looking at the ruins, this is a great visualisation. One of the complications is that you are looking at the foundations of several periods built on top of one another. It’s important to remember this picture is just a snapshot of one phase over a period of a millennium.
Not a lot left…
I’m sure Putin looks at this picture of the destroyd Roman Forum every night before sleep…because he compares the Romans with the contemporary “West”
Unpopular opinion Everything should be restored to how it used to be.
Nah, the “then” were rarely plain like that, classical buildings and statues were usually painted back then.
Aaghhh why’d u have to remind me? :*(
Majestic projection.
In Poland, they would put a supermarket in the middle of this square 😆