[2] For centuries, the Forum was the centre of day-to-day life in Rome: the site of triumphal processions and elections; the venue for public speeches, criminal trials and gladiatorial matches; and the nucleus of commercial affairs.

[3] Located in the small valley between the Palatine and Capitoline Hills, the Forum today is a sprawling ruin of architectural fragments and intermittent archaeological excavations attracting 4.5 million or more sightseers yearly.

This new Forum, in what proved to be its final form, then served as a revitalized city square where the people of Rome could gather for commercial, political, judicial and religious pursuits in ever greater numbers.

Unlike the later imperial fora in Rome—which were self-consciously modelled on the ancient Greek plateia (πλατεῖα) public plaza or town square—the Roman Forum developed gradually, organically, and piecemeal over many centuries.

[citation needed] An important function of the Forum, during both Republican and Imperial times, was to serve as the culminating venue for the celebratory military processions known as Triumphs.

[12] In the early Iron Age an area of the future Forum, close to the site of Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, was used as a cemetery (10th century BC), possibly by the communities based on the Palatine and Capitoline hills.

The urn containing the ashes of the deceased was placed inside a large earthenware jar, along with grave goods, and then buried in a cavity cut into the ground and covered with a capstone.

[citation needed] Rome's second king, Numa Pompilius (r. 715–673 BC), is said to have begun the cult of Vesta, building its house and temple as well as the Regia as the city's first royal palace.

[citation needed] Originally a low-lying, grassy wetland, the Forum was drained in the 7th century BC with the building of the first structures of Cloaca Maxima, a large covered sewer system that emptied into the Tiber, as more people began to settle between the two hills.

Archaeological evidence shows that by the end of the 7th century BC, the ground level of the Forum was raised significantly in some places to overcome the problems of poor drainage and provide a foundation for a pebble-paved area.

[24] It appears that the Romans were aware of the sites’ archaic origins: the foundation of the Comitium and Vulcanal were attributed to Romulus himself while the first Curia (senate house), which was located nearby, to Tullus Hostilius.

[28] However, to create a larger gathering place, the Senate began expanding the open area between the Comitium and the Temple of Vesta by purchasing existing private homes and removing them for public use.

When Censor in 318 BC, Gaius Maenius provided buildings in the Forum neighborhood with balconies, which were called after him maeniana, so that the spectators might better view the games put on within the temporary wooden arenas set up there.

The earliest basilicas (large, aisled halls) were introduced to the Forum in 184 BC by Marcus Porcius Cato, who thus began the process of "monumentalizing" the site.

In the 80s BC, during the dictatorship of Sulla, major work was done on the Forum including the raising of the plaza level by almost a meter and the laying of permanent marble paving stones.

[33] Remarkably, this level of the paving was maintained more or less intact for over a millennium: at least until the sack of Rome by Robert Guiscard and his Normans in 1084, when neglect finally allowed debris to begin to accumulate unabated.

[34] In 78 BC, the immense Tabularium (Records Hall) was built at the Capitoline Hill end of the Forum by order of the consuls for that year, M. Aemilius Lepidus and Q. Lutatius Catulus.

In 63 BC, Cicero delivered his famous speech denouncing the companions of the conspirator Catiline at the Forum (in the Temple of Concord, whose spacious hall was sometimes used as a meeting place by the Senators).

After Julius Caesar's death and the end of the subsequent civil war, Augustus finished his great-uncle's work, giving the Forum its final form.

The white marble Arch of Septimius Severus was added at the northwest end of the Forum close to the foot of the Capitoline Hill and adjacent to the old, vanishing Comitium.

The emperor Constans II, who visited the city in 663 AD, stripped the lead roofs of the monumental buildings, exposing the structures to the weather and hastening their deterioration.

The Forum Romanum suffered some of its worst depredations during the Italian Renaissance, particularly in the decade between 1540 and 1550, when Pope Paul III exploited it intensively for material to build the new Saint Peter's Basilica.

[49] Historically, the maestri and the Conservatori saw themselves as guardians of Rome's ancient legacy and zealously protected the ruins in the Forum from further destruction, but in the 15th century the Papacy gradually encroached upon these prerogatives.

[50] In the 15th century, the Vatican escalated the issuance of excavation licenses, which gave broad permission to individuals to mine specific sites or structures for stone.

[58] The Conservators protested vehemently against the ruination of their heritage, as they perceived it, and on one occasion applied fruitlessly to Pope Gregory XIII (1572–1585) to revoke all licenses for foraging materials, including the one granted to the fabbrica of Saint Peter's in the forum.

[61] In 2008, heavy rains caused structural damage to the modern concrete covering holding the "Black Stone" marble together over the Lapis Niger in Rome.

The focus of many of these works produced by visiting Northern artists was on the current state of the Roman Forum, known locally as the Campo Vaccino, or "cow field", from the livestock who grazed on the largely ignored section of the city.

Especially notable is Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who created a set of 135 etchings, the Vedute di Roma ("Views of Rome"), in which the Forum figured significantly.

Other notable artists of the Forum include Canaletto, Maerten van Heemskerck, Pirro Ligorio, Giovanni Paolo Panini, and Hubert Robert.

The planners of the Mussolini era removed most of the medieval and Baroque strata and built the Via dei Fori Imperiali road between the Imperial Fora and the Forum.