Rome: 900 AD

An artist's interpretation of the Forum of Nerva as it may have looked in 900.  From History on this Day.



Construction of the forum began under the Emperor Domitian around 85 AD but was still underway when the increasingly paranoid emperor was assassinated in 96 in a plot which included his wife (maybe he wasn't so paranoid, after all).  The forum was completed and dedicated in the reign of his successor Nerva (96-98).

The space was one of a series of Imperial Forums constructed adjacent to the older Roman Forum of the Republic.  Nerva's Forum was adjacent to those of Caesar and Augustus, which would be to the right on the image above.

With the deterioration of the City starting in the 5th century and accelerating during the Gothic Wars, the buildings and forums of the Republic and Empire were largely abandoned as the diminished population retreated to the banks of the Tiber.  For more on the history of the city in those times read Belisarius Enters Rome.

Large areas of the Forum returned to marshland as the drainage systems installed centuries before were no longer maintained.  From the archaeological evidence, Nerva's Forum, which lay empty for hundreds of years saw a revival in the 9th century as farm buildings began to occupy its interior, using stone scavenged from the Forum.  It is these tiny farms, huddled in the ruins of a great empire, that are portrayed by the artist in the picture at top.  What did those farmers think of those who built the massive structure centuries before?

As the city began its recovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Forum of Nerva and other ancient sites served as quarries for new buildings and many of the statutes and columns pictured above were removed leaving the forum a complete ruin.