Photo by Pat Tyler

The Forum Julium (Forum Caesaris) was the first of the imperial fora. Julius Caesar began to collect money to purchase the site in 54 BC, just a year after Pompey had dedicated his theater, with its own temple, to Venus Victrix. The remains of the Temple of Venetrix still overlooks the forum with its last three columns. It once contained a statue of the goddess Venus and one of Julius Caesar and his lover, the Egyptian Pharoh, Cleopatra.

The cost of the land, which already had been commercially developed, was more than a million gold pieces, paid for from the spoils of the campaign in Gaul. The Forum had not been finished when it was dedicated in 46 BC and was completed by Augustus. A colonnaded square, with porticoes on the long sides in which permitted commercial and government business to be conducted, and dominated at the far end by the Temple of Venus Genetrix, the design was followed in the construction of all later fora.

Photo by Gertrude Meyer

Click any image above to go to the next page, or use the navigation buttons below.