Forum of Trajan--(Sta. Maria di Loreto)--Temple of Mars Ultor--Forum of Augustus--Forum of Nerva--Forum of Julius Cæsar--(Academy of St. Luke)--Forum Romanum--Tribune--Comitium --Vulcanal--Temple of Concord--Temple of Vespasian--Temple of Saturn--Arch of Septimius Severus--Temple of Castor and Pollux--Pillar of Phocas--Temple of Antoninus and Faustina--Basilica of Constantine--(Sta. Martina--S. Adriano--Sta. Maria--Liberatrice, SS. Cosmo and Damian--Sta. Francesca Romana)--Temple of Venus and Rome--Arch of Titus--(Sta. Maria Pallara--S. Buonaventura)--Meta Sudans--Arch of Constantine--Coliseum.
Following the Corso to its end at the Ripresa dei Barberi, and turning to the left, we find ourselves at once amid the remains of the _Forum of Trajan_, erected by the architect Apollodorus for the Emperor Trajan on his return from the wars of the Danube. This forum now presents the appearance of a ravine between the Capitoline and Quirinal, but is an artificial hollow, excavated to facilitate the circulation of life within the city. An inscription over the door of the column, which overtops the other ruins, shows that it was raised in order to mark the depth of earth which was removed to construct the forum. The earth was formerly as high as the top of the column, which reaches, 100 Roman feet, to the level of the Palatine Hill. The forum was sometimes called the "Ulpian," from one of the names of the emperor.
"Before the year A.D. 107 the splendours of the city and the Campus beyond it were still separated by a narrow isthmus, thronged perhaps by the squalid cabins of the poor, and surmounted by the remains of the Servian wall which ran along its summit. Step by step the earlier emperors had approached with their new forums to the foot of this obstruction. Domitian was the first to contemplate and commence its removal. Nerva had the fortune to consecrate and to give his own name to a portion of his predecessor's construction; but Trajan undertook to complete the bold design, and the genius of his architect triumphed over all obstacles, and executed a work which exceeded in extent and splendour any previous achievement of the kind. He swept away every building on the site, levelled the spot on which they had stood, and laid out a vast area of columnar galleries, connecting halls and chambers for public use and recreation. The new forum was adorned with two libraries, one for Greek, the other for Roman volumes, and it was bounded on the west by a basilica of magnificent dimensions. Beyond this basilica, and within the limits of the Campus, the same architect (Apollodorus) erected a temple for the worship of Trajan himself; but this work probably belonged to the reign of Trajan's successor, and no doubt the Ulpian forum, with all its adjuncts, occupied many years in building. The area was adorned with numerous statues, in which the figure of Trajan was frequently repeated, and among its decorations were groups in bronze or marble, representing his most illustrious actions. The balustrades and cornices of the whole mass of buildings flamed with gilded images of arms and horses. Here stood the great equestrian statue of the emperor; here was the triumphal arch decreed him by the senate, adorned with sculpture, which Constantine, two centuries later, transferred without a blush to his own, a barbarous act of this first Christian emperor, to which however we probably owe their preservation to this day from more barbarous spoliation."--_Merivale, Romans under the Empire_, ch. lxiii.