Trajan’s Market

It seems that we were in a very historic area of Rome. The entire historic center of Rome is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. This is a testament to the huge amount of historical value this place gives. One needs to be very careful when digging here since you don’t know what you may find. It will not be surprising to dig up some huge archeological discovery just by digging a few feet. You can just have a lot at large number of public fora which which were built in this area. Forum or fora in plural form are large public open spaces and they were usually associated with the Roman empire. Emperors built these fora which serve as primarily as marketplaces. An area across the Colosseum in Rome is considered the Roman Forum, this is encompassed by the Palatine Hill, which unfortunately, was closed due to a public holiday.

There are a few fora here, one is from Augustus and one is from Trajan. Trajan’s Forum is probably one of the more interesting ones since this is one of the more restored ones. One of the largest features of Trajan’s Forum is the presence of Trajan’s Market. This is a large semi circular building surrounding an open space. It seems to be in amazingly good shape. What is interesting about Trajan’s Market is that it is very much reminiscent of something very modern, the shopping mall. Trajan’s Market was revolutionary that it divided the building into numerous stalls where people can sell their goods. The stalls can be very tiny that mall goers won’t be able to enter the shop itself. It appears the market is two stories high and you can say this is the world first and oldest shopping mall. Now, if only they remembered to allocate space for a car park.

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