But I'd like to turn from the Trajanic Bath, to the unquestionably the most

important public building that was commissioned by Trajan during his reign.

And I can't overemphasize enough the importance of

this building in the history of Roman architecture.

And we're going to see that it is two part in the sense that

it has, it is a forum, it has the forum proper and it also

has markets appended to us. They are done in a different architectural

style and herald something very important, a very important development in Roman

architecture that's going to be carried further by Trajan's successors.

The, what we're looking at here is a spectacular aerial view of

the part of Rome in which the forum of Trajan finds itself.

We are looking, we are looking at buildings that we

have looked at before so we can get our bearings.

This is of course the wedding cake of Victor Emmanuel over here.

You can see a part of the

oval piazza designed by Michelangelo of the Campadoglio.

You can also see and, what's this down here?

Forum, me-, Wendy?

>> Student: The Julian.

>> The Julian Forum, the forum of Julius Caesar, much

lower ground level than the rest of the city today.

And you can actually see those three columns from the temple, that I

showed you just before, as well as the tabernae of the Julian forum.

And note the relationship of the Julian forum to the Trajanic forum.

He's restoring Julius Caesar's forum. At the same time, he's building his own.

I can also show

you here, if you look right above my hand,

you can see the Piazza Venezia and the Palazzo.

Venezia, if you look at the center of

that building right over the doorway, there's a balcony.

That is the famous Mussolini balcony.

That's the balcony from which Mussolini made all his

speeches with his followers gathering in the Piazza Venezia.

And from that, from the Piazza Venezia,

the street that goes from there to the Piazza del Popolo, is the Corso, the

racecourse, the Corso of Rome, which is one of the major streets of Rome.

One of the major shopping streets of Rome, as well as

one of the major thoroughfares that takes you if you go down

it halfway, take a right, you are at the Via

Condotti and ultimately at the Piazza di Spagna, or the Spanish steps.

Which of course is a trek that everybody

who visits Rome follows that path, to see the Spanish steps.

Over here the forum that we are going to be talking about today.

The Forum of Trajan.

Much of that forum is underground and some of it was turned into a

garden as you can see here, Pleasant Park. As you can see here.

Here we are looking at some of the columns from the Basilica

that's part of that forum from the very well preserved Column of Trajan.

And also over here we'll see the markets of the Forum.

But I just wanted you to get your bearings again in terms of

where it's situated in Rome and what it looks like today from the air.

Although it is changing all the time, and I wanted to show you a Google Earth image

as well because this is much more up to date than the aerial view that I showed

you just before. And you'll see the same buildings.

You'll see the Victor Emmanuel monument. You'll see part of the Campidoglio.

You'll see the, the Mussolini balcony and the corso and you

will see the column of Trajan and part of the Basilica.

But what you see here is that park

has been replaced by structures because they are excavating.

I've mentioned this before. They, they are excavating

more of this now with the hope of

someday, rejoining the Roman forum with the Imperial fora.

That may not be able to happen because of traffic

concerns but it is certainly something that's on the drawing board.

And at the very least right now, without

narrowing the street the main Via Dei Fori Imperiali.

They are doing excavation in that park area,

and you can see what they've brought up.

This is not ancient.

It's actually mostly Medieval houses I hope, and felt there are no

Medievalists among you, but I hope they'll eventually realize that these are.

Well, who's to say?

that, that, they should probably remove these as well,

and take us back to the original forum of Trajan.

I hope that happens someday.

They're not very distinctive if one looks at them.

They're just mainly rectangular rooms.

But nonetheless, they're at that medieval level now, and the question is whether

they're going to go down any further.

But here you can see not only the remains of

the forum of Trajan, but also the forum of Augustus.

Here's the temple of Mars Ultor.

That great precinct wall that divided it from the Subura also ava-, visible here.

And here we see the great hemicycle that we'll look

at today, of Trajan's Forum behind it, the markets of Trajan.

It's important for us to look back at the general plan

of the imperial fora to see where the Forum of Trajan fits in.

We have already looked at the Forum of

Julius Caesar, with its Temple of Venus Genetrix.

We have looked at the Forum of Augustus, with its Temple of Mars Ultor.

Remember the exedrae on either side of that temple, the embracing arms that

were new at that time and an important component of the Forum of Augustus.

Vespasian adds his Forum

Pacis over here.

Domitian adds a narrow forum, the so called forum Transitorium.

that served as a point of transit between the Roman forum and the Subura.

Here it is at, at, he puts a temple to his patron Goddess, Minerva,

in that forum. But it is at his death, it is taken over by Nerva and

renamed the Forum of Nerva.

I mentioned to you when we talked about the Forum Transitorium.

That Domitian also had his eye on this property over here.

He had his schemes as grandiose

for public architecture at one point as for palatial architecture.

But palatial architecture won out and he put all of his

efforts into the palace on the Palatine hill and never realized

any construction in this area.

When Trajan became emperor, he decided that he would, again, focus on public

architecture, and that he would build a forum like none other before it.

And so he begins to do that.

Now, that was no small feat in this particular part of

the city, because most of this area was occupied by a hill.

The so-called Quirinal, Q-u-i-r-i-n-a-l, the Quirinal Hill

in Rome, occupied most of this space.

So what he needed to do, it's great

to have an architect-engineer in your back pocket.

So he set Apollodorus of Damascus to work.

He said “you're a great engineer.

All you need to do is take down a good part of the

Quirinal hill to make way for this great forum that I want to build.”

And lo and behold, Apollodorus was absolutely

up to the job and that's exactly what

he sets out to do. He removes 125 feet

of the Quirinal Hill in order to make way for the forum of Trajan.

And that very number, 125 feet, is

actually commemorated in the column of Trajan, because

the column of Trajan was built to that very same height, 125 feet, to show you,

as you stand in the forum, how much of that hill had

to be cut back in order to make way for the forum.

You can see by looking at this plan of the imperial fora as a

whole, and this is not only did Trajan take the empire to its furthest extent.

This is the last forum that was added to the imperial fora, in Rome.

You can see by looking at it in connection to the others that

it, if you count it plus the markets, which you see wending

their way up what was left of the Quirinal Hill here in plaid.

If you compare that to the others, you can see that the forum of

Trajan, the markets of Trajan, were almost as large as all of the other

fora, not counting the Roman fora, but all of the other Imperial Fora together

which gives you some sense of why I call this the mother of all forums.

Now we're going to look at the plan of this and

I'm going to show you an individual plan in a moment.

But what I want to say while this is still on the screen.

Is that I want you to look at the exedrae that you see on either side

of the main space of the forum, and on either side of the basilica over here.

These are not coincidental.

They are certainly meant to make reference to the exedrae of Augustus' forum.

Trajan models himself after Augustus. He became a kind of neo-Augustus,.

He took on Augustus's hair style and his manners and so

he was trying to associate himself in his life with Augustus.

He is doing it here also through architecture by

placing those exedrae on either side of this forum.

14.3 The Forum of Trajan

Roman Architecture

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