ROMAN FORUM - Heart of Ancient Rome - To Get Makeover - HISTORY
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Roman forum to get makeover - Ancient site to be lit up too
(ANSA)
- Rome,
January 7, 2009
- The glories of Ancient Rome are to get a total makeover over the next two years, officials said this week.
The famed architectural sights will then be illuminated by a new lighting system, they said. Sites set for ''a complete clean-up'' include the Colosseum, the Palatine Hill, the Roman and Imperial Forums and Nero's Golden House, said Heritage Undersecretary Francesco Giro.
Long-awaited projects such as an underpass linking the forums and a new walkway up to the Palatine are part of the scheme which aims to restore Rome's ancient splendour by the spring of 2011.
Unsightly scaffolding, rusty fences and open digs will be cleared away ''so that the central archaeological area regains all its sumptuous beauty,'' Giro said.
The ''crowning touch,'' he said, would be an ''integrated'' illumination system for the entire area.
Giro said the culture ministry hoped to have the lights in place for the 2,764th anniversary of Rome's traditional founding date, April 21 753 BC.
Bianca:
Bianca:
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Roman Forum, Forum Romanum
Roman Forum
Location
Regione VIII Forum Romanum
Built
in Unknown Kingdom Era
Built by/for
Unknown builder
Type of structure
Imperial forums
The Roman Forum, (Latin: Forum Romanum) sometimes known by its original Latin title, is located between the Palatine hill and the Capitoline hill of the city of Rome. It is the central area around which the ancient Roman civilization developed. Citizens referred to the location as the "Forum Magnum" or just the "Forum".
The oldest and most important structures of the ancient city are located in the forum, including its ancient former royal residency the Regia and the surrounding complex of the Vestal virgins. The Old Republic had its formal Comitium there where the senate, as well as Republican government began. The forum served as a city square and central hub where the people of Rome gathered for justice, and faith. The forum was also the economic hub of the city and considered to be the center of the Republic and Empire.
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The area of the forum was originally a grassy wetland. It was drained in the 7th century BCE by building the Cloaca Maxima, a large covered sewer system that drained into the Tiber River, as more people began to settle between the two hills.
The second king, Numa Pompilius, 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. Later Tullus Hostilius erected the Curia and enclosed the Comitium. In 600 BCE Tarquinius Priscus had the area paved for the first time.
Over time the Comitium was lost to the ever-growing Curia and Julius Caesar's rearranging of the forum before his assassination in 44 BC. After Caesar's death Octavius finished the work.
Many of the forum's temples are from either the kingdom or the Republican era.
Many have been destroyed and rebuilt several times.
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