Beyond Statues: All About the New Excavations in Rome

The area being explored is that of the Imperial Forums, a series of distinct but adjoining monumental spaces constructed over approximately two centuries, from 55 BC to AD 112, by Julius Caesar and the emperors Augustus, Vespasian, Domitian, and Trajan. Although each Forum differed in design, they all effectively comprised a large, rectangular, open court, surrounded by colonnades, and dominated by a temple at one end. Used to host ceremonies and to hear legal cases, the Forums also served as showpieces for the regimes and were richly ornamented with statues and colored marbles brought from across the Empire.

The Forums were abandoned by the early Middle Ages, their temples and colonnades collapsing in earthquakes or pulled down and recycled for construction. By the 10th century AD, the central piazzas were given over to agriculture, and a series of rudimentary structures were built atop where there had once been marble pavements. The recently discovered head, as well as those of Dionysus and Augustus, were all found in similar medieval walls, having been crudely reused as building material.

In the 16th century, Cardinal Alessandro Bonelli, great-nephew of Pope Paul V, instigated an urban regeneration scheme by constructing a road (the Via Alessandrina) through the area, which was largely deserted at that time. In turn, a new neighborhood (the quartiere Alessandrino) grew up alongside the road, now several meters above the Roman ground level. Although vestiges of some ancient monuments remained visible, with a few walls and columns poking up out of the ground, the original layout of the Forums disappeared under modern streets and houses.

The rediscovery of the Imperial Forums began as early as the 19th century, before accelerating dramatically under the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini in the early 20th century. In the 1930s, a major new road (today’s Via dei Fori Imperiali) was planned to run some 600 meters from the Colosseum directly over the top of the Forums. To make way for it, the Alessandrino neighborhood was demolished, not only where the road itself ran, but on either side. This created a monumental route with tree-studded parks, framed by the still standing (or re-erected) and partially excavated ruins of the Forums.

In the late 1990s, new excavations tore up these parks, once again exposing the ancient level of the Imperial Forums. While the Via dei Fori Imperiali and Via Alessandrina remained, further digging throughout the 2000s increasingly removed the open areas on either side of the roads, effectively leaving them as raised paths above the ancient archaeological remains. Work to demolish the Via Alessandrina itself began in 2019, and the current excavations, from where the colossal marble head was recovered, are a continuation of this project.

Collectively, the excavations have immeasurably enhanced our knowledge about the ancient Imperial Forums, produced some remarkable artifacts, and transformed the understanding of what happened to the area after antiquity. However, excavation in urban environments such as Rome, which have complicated histories and are still living cities, means that there are competing interests and that the consequences of so much digging are not necessarily positive for all.

It is the irony of archaeology that to reveal the past also involves its obliteration. Excavation is a destructive process and necessitates the removal of more recent historical layers. In this instance, the Via Alessandrina, a once major Renaissance-era thoroughfare, has been sacrificed to uncover Rome’s ancient history. Moreover, and just as important for tourists and residents navigating the city today, each excavation reduces the space available for other activities, and the thousands of people who traverse the Via dei Fori Imperiali are increasingly crowded into ever narrower paths. Nor are the archaeological remains much to look at, with most of the ancient decoration long since removed and a muddle of medieval walls scattered over the barren concrete bedding of the missing marble pavement. In places, the ruined basements and ground floors of the neighborhood demolished in the 20th century are still visible. The result is that it is extremely difficult to understand what you are looking at, let alone to mentally reconstruct the appearance of the ancient monuments.

Efforts are underway to improve this situation, and millions of euros have been allocated to enhance the appearance of the area and increase accessibility along the route (the CARME project). Periodically, fallen columns are also re-erected to provide people with an idea of what the buildings looked like, or at least a point of interest. 

Another, more controversial possibility, which does not seem to have been considered, would be to backfill parts of the excavation and turn the regained space back over to the public. Regardless, the case highlights the conflicting problems faced by urban archaeology, and that while it is nice to find statues, it comes at a cost.