Forum Boarium site features

The Forum Boarium is a patch of green and gravel surrounded by roads, a short way back from the Tiber, and the two things that hold it are both temples, standing a hundred metres apart on open ground.

The round one is the eye-catcher. A ring of tall fluted Corinthian columns in white marble, carrying a low tiled roof, encircles a solid cylindrical core — the temple of circular plan dedicated to Hercules Victor. The columns are weathered to grey-cream, several are patched, and the gaps between them show the brick-and-stone drum behind.

The rectangular one is older and squarer. The temple dedicated to the river divinity Portunus stands on a high podium with a deep porch of columns at one end and half-columns engaged into the walls along the sides, in travertine and tufa that has gone warm grey.

Both are fenced and set in grass, with umbrella pines and cypresses behind them and hedges around the lawns, so they read as objects in a park rather than buildings in a street.

The ground itself is the oldest thing here. This was the marsh of the Velabro until the Etruscan kings drained it in the 6th century BC with the Cloaca Maxima, and the remains of its arches are still visible — a low arched mouth of dark stone at the level of the Tiber.

Two arches stand close by. The Arco degli Argentari, small, square and densely carved, built into the flank of a church; and the four-fronted arch of Janus, a massive blunt block of white marble pierced by four arches, with rows of empty niches on every face.

And the oldest cult object is indoors. The tufa core of the Ara Maxima is inside the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, under its own roof and behind its own door.

The Temple of Hercules Victor

The temple of circular plan of the republican age, towards the Tiber.

The Temple of Portunus

The first and older, of rectangular plan, dedicated to the river divinity Portunus.

The Ara Maxima

The altar the Arcadians dedicated to Hercules after he killed Cacus; its tufa core is preserved inside the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin.

The Cloaca Maxima

Built by the Etruscan kings in the 6th century BC to drain the marsh of the Velabro; the remains of the arches are still visible.

The Porto Tiberino

Attributed to Servius Tullius, it extended where the offices of the Anagrafe now stand.

The Trajanic warehouses

By the river port, of the Trajanic age (98-117 AD).

The Arco degli Argentari

An elegant work of the Severan age, 204 AD.

The four-fronted Janus

An imposing construction probably of the time of Constantius II (337-361 AD).