Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Audioguides cost €5/2 hours (€7 version includes Roman Forum and lasts 3 hours, must
leave ID). Guided tours in English might be available (inquire at the ticket booth). WCs are
at the ticket office when you enter, up the hill near the stadium, at the museum in the center
of the site, and hiding among the orange trees in the Farnese Gardens.
This 2,500-year-old cistern-like prison is where, according to Christian tradition, the Ro-
mans imprisoned Saints Peter and Paul. Though it was long a charming and historic sight,
its artifacts have been removed, and today it's run by a commercial tour-bus company char-
ging €10 for a cheesy “multimedia” walk-through. Don't go in. Instead, stand outside and
imagine how this dank cistern once housed prisoners of the emperor. Amid fat rats and rot-
ting corpses, unfortunate humans awaited slow deaths. It's said that a miraculous fountain
sprang up inside so Peter could convert and baptize his jailers, who were also subsequently
martyred. Before the commercial ruination of this sacred and ancient site, on the walls you
could read lists of notable prisoners (Christian and non-Christian) and the ways they were
executed:
strangolati,decapitato,mortoperfame
(diedofhunger).ThesignbytheChristian
names read, “Here suffered, victorious for the triumph of Christ, these martyr saints.” Today
this sight itself has been martyred by a city apparently desperate to monetize its heritage.
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Trajan's Column, Market, and Museum of the Imperial Forums
Thisgrandcolumnisthebestexampleof“continuousnarration”thatwehavefromantiquity.
More than 2,500 figures spiral around the 140-foot-high column, telling of Trajan's victori-
ous Dacian campaign (circa
A.D.
103, in present-day Romania), from the assembling of the
army at the bottom to the victory sacrifice at the top. At one point, the ashes of Trajan and
his wife were held in the base, and the sun glinted off a polished bronze statue of Trajan at
the top. (Today, St. Peter is on top.) Study the propaganda that winds up the column like a
scroll, trumpeting Trajan's wonderful military exploits. This column marked
“
Trajan's For-
um,” which was built to handle the shopping needs of a wealthy city of more than a million
people. Commercial, political, religious, and social activities all mixed in the forum.
Nestled into the cutaway curve of Quirinal Hill is the semicircular brick complex of Tra-
jan'sMarket.Itwaslikelypartshoppingmall,partwarehouse,andpartadministrationbuild-
ing. Or, as some archaeologists have recently suggested, it may have contained mostly gov-
ernment offices.
Paying the admission fee gets you inside Trajan's Market, Trajan's Forum, and the
Mu-
seumoftheImperialForums
.Themuseumfeaturesdiscoveriesfromtheforumsofemper-
ors Julius Caesar, Augustus, Nerva, and Trajan, with fragments of statues and a slideshow
that reconstructs how the forum looked in each emperor's time.
