Open Forum

Saturday, June 27 - Rome

Only three more of these photo-posts to go. Whatever your response to that news, I've drawn a lot of satisfaction from recapitulating our travels, researching the things we saw, sort of rolling them around in my brain for a while. I'll be sad when the pictures run out. Guess we'll have to go back, huh?

The Forum was presented in the way I'd naïvely expected all of the antiquities in Rome to be — neatly contained, fenced off, collected in one convenient historical park. I didn't expect it to be so far below street level, though I should have: it was built on a drained swamp, and for a very long time it was buried beneath the returned soil, with monuments and temples poking up out of the ground like rock outcroppings. (There is evidence of this raised ground level all over the Forum — see the photos for details.) As of the 19th century, it's all been excavated, and we can walk among the ruined buildings just as the ancient Romans did when they were new. It's a humbling, evocative experience. adfamiliares caught fire as soon as we entered, impressing me mightily with her deep knowledge of everyone who ever sat on every paving stone we passed (or so it seemed to me).

The experience was marred by an art installation by Jimenez Deredia — vaguely Eskimodal sculptures with modern curves and bright blue-white surfaces. They might have been nice elsewhere, but against the weight of history they looked like disposable plastic. I did my best to pretend they didn't exist, but if you peer long enough at some of the wide shots you'll find them.

Above is the portico of the Temple of Saturn, the oldest building still standing in the Forum — about 2500 years old.

( Cut for a moderated Forum! )

The whole set is here.