The Roman Forum is located between the Palatine hill and the Capitoline hill of the city of Rome. The forum was the centre of political, commercial and judicial life in ancient Rome.
The largest buildings were the basilicas, where legal cases were heard. According to the playwright Plautus, the area teemed whit "lawyers and litigants, bankers and brokers, shopkeepers and strumpets, good-for- nothings waiting for a tip from the rich".
As Rome's population boomed, the forum became too small. In 46 BC Julius Caesar built a new one, setting a precedent that was followed by emperors from Augustus to Trajan. As well as the Imperial Forum, emperos also erected triumphal arches to themselves, and just to the east Vespasian built the Colosseum, centre of entertainment after the business of the day.
The formation of the Forum valley was to the erosion of a bank of volcanic tufa by a stream named the Velabrum, which meandered between the Palatine and Capitoline hills toward the Tiber.
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