Forum

I didn’t know quite what to expect from my first trip to the Forum, but I decided that if I couldn’t take it all in the first time, I wanted to see one thing: the Rostra - ie. the place where the great Roman orators such as Cicero addressed the populace all those years ago, where Brutus and Antony delivered their speeches after the assassination of Julius Caesar – indeed, where Shakespeare has Marc Antony deliver his famous speech… I’m sure you know the one.

From the tram terminus at the Largo di Argentina it’s only a five minute walk to the heart of Ancient Rome, the Capitoline Hill, the Forum and beyond, the Palatine and the Colosseum.

I made my way toward the Capitoline Hill, turned right down a side-street and beheld my first destination, the Cordonata, a massive marble staircase designed by Michelangelo, flanked by a pair of two-storey high statues, the horse-bound twin sons of Jupiter, Castor and Pollux. This leads to the Piazza del Campidoglio, also designed by said Michelangelo, which is a paragon of open urban design, surrounded by three impressive palaces, now great museums.

I was feeling perky, and was about up to race up the stairs, but decided first to get some smokes. I pulled into the nearest Tabacchi and tried to ask if I could pay for my cigarettes with credit card (I hadn’t found a ‘bancomat’ on my way), but unfortunately my voice came, as per usual here, a bit more like a mouse's than a Roman's. The woman at the counter, who clearly didn’t suffer bumbling tourists (ie. fools) gladly, threw a slab of words back at me that I realized afterwards must’ve meant, ‘What’s that? Come on, speak up a bit!’ – well, I lost any composure I had and asked my question again, but in English this time. Anyway, the answer was no, and I went away feeling like my positive vibes had been dashed. After reminding myself, however, that those are the breaks, I got back on the proverbial horse and pushed that feeling of humiliation back down to the place it sprung from; found a bancomat and returned, to again bumble my way through asking whether they had rollies etc. (I know this might sound a bit soft, but you’d be surprised how difficult it can be when you can’t alleviate feelings of uselessness by sharing them with another person.)

So it was with mixed feelings that I ascended the staircase and into the piazza. I’d bought a gelati (pistachio and something else) to cheer me up, and ate it as I sat on a slab of very cold marble, wondering why the hell I was eating gelati on a slab of cold marble in winter. Then I remembered: when in Rome...

As you leave the piazza, you come around a corner and the Forum is laid out before you. I had an idea that Monday might be the best day for the trip, assuming I wouldn’t have to contend with a throng of fellow trekkers. But if today was a quiet day, I’d hate to see it on a weekend.

It turns out the Rostra is one of the first things you come across when entering from the Campidoglio, though you might miss it if you aren't keeping your eye out. For me, though, this was the highlight. I stood on the Via Sacra (The Sacred Way) staring at it for ten minutes or more, though my imagination spanned two millenia, imagining all the speeches delivered from that marble ledge, Marc Antony offering Caesar the diadem, and Caesar refusing it; and later, Antony's wife, Fulvia, holding up Cicero's decapitated head in a rage and stabbing the dead orator's tongue with her hairpin.

If you keep your head down, it isn't too hard to mistake the sounds of hundreds of tourists' footsteps for those of ancient times.