Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the CampagnaBurn, Robert
History
Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the Campagna
Burn, Robert
Rome (Italy) -- Antiquities; Rome (Italy) -- Description and travel
The whole space between the Quirinal and the Capitoline Hills was occupied
by the immense Forum and public buildings which Trajan constructed. The
Column of Trajan, with its wonderful spiral reliefs, still marks the site
of this great mass of masonry; but the remainder, which included a
basilica, two libraries, a temple, and two extensive porticoes, has
disappeared with the exception of a fragmentary ruin in the Via della
Salita del Grillo under the Quirinal. This ruin is the remains of a part
of the great semicircular side of Trajan’s Forum under the Quirinal Hill.
It consists of a brick building of two stories high, containing in the
lower story small rooms measuring about ten feet square, probably shops or
offices for notaries and lawyers’ clerks. The interior of three of the
rooms is covered with plaster, and painted roughly. The floors were
covered with mosaic pavement of a common kind, of which much still remains
in situ. Above these rooms runs a corridor with arched windows, at the
back of which a row of large and high chambers opens, resting upon the
natural rock of the Quirinal Hill. The front is faced with brick pilasters
on travertine basements, in a mixed Doric and Ionic style, and there were
formerly pediments over the windows.
It will be seen by reference to the plan that a small portion of the Forum
of Trajan can be now seen in the Piazza della Colonna Trajana. The arch
from which the beautiful bas-reliefs on Constantine’s Arch were robbed,
probably stood in the Via del Priorato at some distance from the Piazza.
The two double rows of bases now to be seen in the Piazza formed a part of
the great Basilica Ulpia, part of the ground-plan of which is still
preserved on two fragments of the Capitoline map. Many fragments are to be
seen here of the columns which supported the roof of the basilica, among
which those of grey granite, probably belonging to the outer rows of
columns, are most conspicuous.
[Sidenote: Column of Trajan.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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