The Roman forum, over the course of eight centuries, accumulated monuments in ways that reflect the entire arc of Roman history. To walk through it in the late empire was to read a stratigraphy of Roman self-understanding: archaic monuments to the city's founding legends surrounded by Republican temples documenting military victories surrounded by imperial monuments proclaiming dynastic power.

The rostra — the speakers' platform named for the bronze prow-tips of captured enemy ships attached to it after the Latin War of 338 BC — is one of the most symbolically loaded objects in ancient Rome. Every great Roman orator from the Gracchi to Cicero to Octavian spoke from platforms in or near this space. Cicero's hands and head were displayed on the original rostra after his murder in 43 BC.

The Forum's role as commercial space is underemphasized in accounts that focus on its monumental character. It was a market, a law court, a voting space, a religious center, and the physical heart of Roman public life simultaneously. The basilicas surrounding it were multi-purpose halls that handled legal proceedings, commercial transactions, and public assembly. The forum model was then replicated across the empire as the standard template for provincial city planning.

Hadrian's forum and Trajan's forum, built adjacent to the original, expanded the monumental complex to a scale that had no classical Greek precedent. Trajan's Column, still standing, is the most remarkable piece of narrative art from the ancient world.