Forum

The administrative center and marketplace of a Roman town, usually placed at the intersection of the main streets, the decumanus and cardo. The square served as a meeting- and/or market-place; it answered the Greek agora. Public notices were displayed on the basilica. Inside the basilica, the court of law would meet, functions of the town hall carried out, and businessmen would discuss deals. The forum was the main shopping center, with rows of shops having colonnades in front, most having open fronts to the forum. The main baths and temples were adjacent to the forum. The Roman Forum (Forum Romanum) was important from the time of the republic onwards and various emperors built fora of their own: Caesar, Augustus, Vespasian, Nerva, and Trajan. Most include a temple (sometimes the capitolium), peristyle courtyard, basilica, comitium, and curia.

Generally, any large open space in a Roman town. Often used specifically of the main square which, like the Greek agora, served as commercial, social, legal and political centre. It was usually rectangular, colonnaded, and lined with public buildings, including typically a temple and a basilica. A largish town might have more than one such forum and a number of minor fora or ‘markets’ devoted to particular purposes, as, for example, forum piscarium (fish-market), forum olitorium (vegetable market) or forum cuppedinis ^damties-market’f ‘Forum’ in the sense of ‘market’ or legal ‘assize’ is also common in place names as, for instance, Forum Appii, Forum Julii etc.