Here's the plan of the forum itself on the left hand side of this screen where we can see all of its major features. You'd enter into the forum down here. There was a very elaborate entrance way here and you can see that the, the facade is actually not straight but convex, convex. A convex facade, which is very interesting, curved facade with an elaborate entrance way over here. The entrance into the main part of the forum, rectangular in shape. There's a base here for an equestrian statue of Trajan. The exedrae on either side mimicking those of the Forum of Augustus. Colonnades also on either side, and some additional columns here. And we're going to see that just as in Augustus' Forum and other reference back to Augustus that the columns in this main area are Corinthian below, but in the second tier, there are figures. Not figures of caryatids, but different kinds of figures, and I'm going to show you those soon. Over here the basilica, which is perpendicular to the forum proper. This is quite different from the Forum at Pompeii, where you'll remember the basilica was splayed off to the side. Here we have it as a more integral part of the forum and perpendicular to the main space here. It's a very large basilica. It takes the name of Trajan's family. His family name was Ulpius, U-l-p-i-u-s. This is the basilica Ulpia in Rome with a central nave and, and side aisles, a couple of side aisles around it. So a veritable forest of columns. And then other exedrae, matching exedrae, or, in this case, apses on either end. Then through here you see the location of the Column of Trajan, in a small, small piazza, and to left and right, libraries, Greek and Latin libraries. And then at the end a temple. We don't know what Trajan actually the, the, the northern end of the structure was not completed at Trajan's death, and we don't know if he would have put a temple there. It's highly likely because what forum have we seen without a temple at the short end. They all had them. So it's a good guess. The Trajan had that in mind too, but the temple that was built there was actually built after his death by his successor, Hadrian. A temple that Hadrian put up to honor Trajan and also Trajan's wife, Plotina. Now we know quite a bit, a lot of the forum, some of the forum is still preserved and we have evidence for other parts of it that are not preserved. This entrance gate down here, believe it or not, we have coins that have an entrance gate on them. And nicely, they say, fortunately, they say down below, FORVMTRAIAN. Forum of Trajan. So, putting two and two together we have to go on assumption that what we are looking at here is a rendition on a coin of the entrance gate into the forum of Trajan, FORVMTRAIAN. And if we look at it here we see some interesting things. We see first of all, that it has a single arcuation in the center. So one doorway. It has a series of bays that have in them what we call aediculae. A-e-d-i-c-u-l-a-e. Aediculae. Which are little temple, little temple fronts that are niches with little temple fronts around them with columns and pediments. And then you can see statuary inside those. So a series of bays decorated with these aediculae with statues. Then a series of circles with blobs in them. I think those series of circles with blobs in them are probably the portraits represented on shields. Because we have act, we have remains of actual portraits on shields from the inside of the forum. So, that seems to be the case here as well. And, then in the upper most part, we see that they, the gate looks very much like an arch, in the sense that it supports the quadriga at the top. And that quadriga represents two people, possibly the emperor, again, we're dealing with blobs here, we have to do the best we can to interpret them. But they seem to be probably the emperor and possibly Victory crowning him, the way we saw Victory crowning Titus in his chariot on his arch. Six horses in this particular case. And then, on either side, trophies, these tree trunks decorated with captured arms and armor. And we're not absolutely sure what's surrounding them in this case, whether they're prisoners or Roman soldiers. So this gives you a very good idea of the entrance gate into this structure. And I also want to point out, if you look very closely at the columns, and the elements above them in the attic, you can see that the columns project and the attic seems to have projecting entablature. So it looks as if we have the kind of scheme here, that we saw in the forum Transitorium. With that wall decorated with columns that project out of the wall and that have projecting entablatures, giving this undulation, undulating movement from projecting to receding, projecting to receding, across the facade of the entrance gate. The figures that were located on the upper tier of the center, of the main body of this forum, again, we're not caryatid or female figures but rather male figures. Male figures of captured Dacians. Because the war that Trajan had, that enabled him to fun, to celebrate and to fund this building, was his wars against the Dacians. Dacia, Ancient Dacia, modern Romania, today. Trajan had two military campaigns there. One from 102, to 10, to 10, excuse me, one, the first one from 101 to 102, the second one from 105 to 107. He was victorious in both of those. And he he, this forum was built from the spoils of that war to honor his victory over the Dacians. And we see, therefore, that the figures that are in the uppermost tier of the main body of the forum are depictions of captured Dacians, of Dacian prisoners brought back to Rome. You see two of them here. Here a headless figure, here a much more complete figure. The headless figure is still can be seen on the site. And, and the one on the left hand side of the screen now in the Vatican museums in Rome. The one on the left gives you a better sense of what these looked like in antiquity. You can tell that these are not Romans, wearing leggings, a tunic, a fringed mantle that the Romans did not wear, a long fringe mantle. And then above you see that he has, unlike Trajan's closely cropped Augustine type hair style, you can see he has very long hair, and also a beard. And this, and this identifies him as a very different and then sort of of, of boots that seem to be made out of suede or felt of some sort. So a very different kind of image. Clearly these are again the Dacian prisoners, one after another, aligning that second tier. And for any of you interested in the fact that the Romans made nearly exact duplicates of things, mechanical copies you can see in this particular statue we rarely have this preserved. So it's an interesting example of these points. You see these little ex, excess pieces of marble. The Romans had created a kind of pointing machine which they used to make exactly replicas of originals. And they usually, when the statue was done, they would usually obviously take these away. I mean, carve them away. Which they didn't do. This one probably was not used for some reason. It was copied and never put up on the building, and so those points still remain. This is a model of the Forum of Trajan as it would have looked in antiquity, with that convex entrance way, the location of the equestrian statue, the exedrae on either side here. Here you can imagine the Dacians in the second tier. The roofed Basilica Ulpia here. The column of Trajan, flagged by the Latin and Greek libraries. And then over here the temple to divine Trajan. The plan again and here we can, here I just want to mention looking back at that plan that there was also another elaborate entrance way from the main part of the forum into the Basilica Ulpia on its long side. And once again how fortunate we are that we have a, have coins that say BASILICAVLPIA. Basilica Ulpia. So we can guess, I think quite accurately, that this must be the entrance way to the Basilica Ulpia. Here we see something different. We see three openings, not arcuated openings but trabeated openings, straight lintels above. But look again in the way in which they're, they're represented. It looks like they're quite solid and that they project into the spectator's space. So again, this idea of projection, recession, projection, recession across this facade. This is very important because as I mentioned, of, of Roman architecture, using the traditional language of Greek architecture, ultimately developed something that we call a baroque trend in Roman architecture. And you see it happening here in Rome based on the experiments of Domitian's Forum Transitorium. And you can see that same, roughly that same scheme here. Up above, once again, a chariot, in this case a four-horse chariot, seemingly with one figure. And a series of standards being hold, held possibly by Roman soldiers. The the forum of Trajan has been the professional the, the life work of professor formally of the, of Northwestern University, James Packer. Who spent a very long time pulling together all the evidence that the Forum of Trajan still provides, to allow a very good reconstruction of what that forum looked like. It's computer generated. I urge you all to look at it. If you just, If you just Google James Packer, Forum of Trajan, UCLA. Because that's the u-, or the Getty. Either of those two, UCLA and the Getty supported this work. You will be able to see computer simulations of of his work. There's also a book by James Packer, on the form of Trajan that's on reserve for the this course. I send you to it less for the form of Trajan, but for any of you working on city plans, again, this could be a very inspiring, a book to look at. Not that I expect you to come up with something like this, but nonetheless, I think it can give you an idea of what one can do if one thinks about designing one's own city. He has, he has done enough research to allow a very accurate reconstruction of what this forum would have looked like. We are looking at the entrance way into the Basilic Ulpia here. We are looking at the marble, you can see real marble and variegated marbles brought from all over the world. So Trajan continues the Flavian tradition of bringing marbles from all over, from places outside of Italy, from Africa, from Asia Minor from Egypt, and so on, for the decoration of these buildings and an interest in multicolored marbles as facing. We see also up here the Dacian prisoners and between them, in this instance, the shields, with portraits on them. We have remains of some of those, so that's an accurate reconstruction, the same sort of thing that we saw on the entrance way. And then up there an inscription a couple, some several other Dacians and some other decoration at the apex. I'm going to show you just a few of these quickly from Packer's book. You see here a corridor with a barrel vault stuccoed and painted. Lot's of statuary that would, lot's of honorific statuary in this structure. Sometimes instead of the shield, with portraits between the Dacians, we see piles of captured arms and armor, as you can see in that view. Here a couple of more showing again, the marble decoration of the walls. A very, a very, it varied in color here niches with portraits. Over here, more shields with portraits. And here you can see some of the sculptural remains some parts of, of a breast, military figure in a breast plate, a man, both of them headless, a man in a toga. And over here part of one of these decorative shields, with a portrait. We actually think this is a portrait of Nerva. Portrait of Nerva that would have been placed inside this shield and hung on the upper part of the wall above the columns. And this, this is important, and on your monument list. This is a view of the Basilica Ulpia in Rome and what, what it would have looked like in antiquity. You can see it conforms to basilican architecture that we've looked at before, with a central nave divided by two, by its two side aisles, in this case, as you'll recall in plan, And those are Corinthian capitals, as you can see down here. You can see also that it's a gargantuan structure. Look at the size of the people, the men in their togas, and the building itself. And it had a flat roof with a corporate ceiling and you can see that it had a clear story. We talked about the clear story before. We saw it in the house of the Mosaic Atrium, for example. The clear story which is the opening up of the wall in this case through ionic columns to see the vistas that lie beyond, and to let light into the structure. And you can see the vista that lies beyond is the Column of Trajan and one of the Libraries.
