This page was compiled by Rob Carlson of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County for an Archaeology 201H Honors Section Project.

The current page is located at http://epistolary.org/1948.html and is part of the Epistolary database. A lot of effort went into this page, so please give credit when linking to or copying this page for your own use. All feedback is welcome and appreciated.

November 21, 2002 - Moved file to the Epistolary system, removed suggestion form. Will replace with comments system soon.

July 6, 2002 - Small updates.

July 26, 2000 - Removed dead links. Please suggest any pages to be added by sending me e-mail.

September 25, 2000 - Added a suggestion form. * Detailed Text * Short Text and Images * Mostly Images * Reference and Link Pages

Detailed Text

Imperial Fora Rome 2002 is a collection of freelance research written by Martin G. Conde of Washington, DC on the recent archaeological excavations in the area of the Imperial Forums of Rome (1997-2002). For the past few years, Conde has e-mailed and spoke with Professor James E. Packer regarding his research in the Forum of Trajan from 1972-2002. This site contains a tremandous amount of professional published journal articles in English and Italian, news media acounts of the excavations, and about 500 images of the site.

The Web exhibition from the ArtsEdNet at the Getty Education Institute and J. Paul Getty Museum titled The Forum of Trajan in Rome is one of the most comprehensive and riveting sites concerning The Forum of Trajan. This web site draws from "Beyond Beauty: Antiquities as Evidence," which was a major opening exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center. This online exhibition focuses on a cutting edge virtual reality model of the forum. The site is well designed and easy to navigate, and contains a wealth of text and visual (both snapshot and animated information) about the Forum of Trajan, and details on the complete process of correlating the data into a comprehensive virtual reality model. Also in this article, Science Centers and Museums, Silicon Graphics describes the technology and work behind the virtual walkthrough at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

The students of the Ross School provide a nice basic summary and history of Trajan's Market and Forum. This is one of the best (although brief) summaries of the Trajan Forum that I found. It mentions not only specific details about the art but also some of the background into why the forum and column were built.

For information on James E. Packer, author of "Forum of Trajan in Rome, A Study of Monuments", you can see his faculty member page at Northwestern University.

On the Washington State University faculty page of Richard A. Hooker entitled About World Cultures, there is an essay on the history of Imperial Rome from 14-180 C.E. This is tangentially relevant to the Forum of Trajan as it briefly explains the motivation behind the large Roman building projects during that period.

Richard Prior's Study Guide for Roman Architecture and Engineering at Furman University provides a list of important terms and questions to consider when evaluating Roman Architecture such as the Forum of Trajan. Also from the encyclopedia.com site comes a much more general article on Roman architecture with cross links to specific styles within the architecture.

From the infoplease.com web site there is a short one paragraph encyclopedia entry on Apollodorus of Damascus and a lightly longer one on Roman forums in general.

For more background information, the homepage of Jim Miller contains a chronological list of the events surrounding the dedication of the Forum of Trajan in Rome from 101 to 161 C.E.

From the Great Buildings Online site database, this is a short article detailing the life and accomplishments of Apollodorus of Damascus, including the Trajan Forum. A similar detailed article about the Markets of Trajan as well as the various architectural classifications for the style and construction is also on the site.

From the Volume 51, Number 1 issue of Archaeology Magazine published by the Archaeological Institute of America's is an excellent abstract of an article by James E. Packer entitled Trajan's Glorious Forum. The article details the history of the Forum of Trajan as well as a short description of how the forum was used as a form of early political propoganda. As part of that article, this page is a reconstruction drawing of the Forum of Trajan highlighting the more important aspects of the forum such as the trumphal arch, statue of the emperor, law court, libraries and Trajan's Column and temple.

Short Text and Images

From the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, the Roman Art and Architecture site is a more general look at the architecture and art that make up the various parts of the Forum of Trajan, grouped by type and by historical periods. The Roman Architecture section contains ten images of various parts of the forum.

From a site of Roman landmarks and sites called ROMA: History and Civilization of the Eternal City is a page about Trajan's Column, which contains a blurb about and two images. This page on Trajan's Forum has a shot of one of the curved walls of the forum. This page contains a paragraph about Trajan, a picture of the column and a nice map which depicts his conquests from 98 to 117 C.E.

Mary Ann Sullivan's Digital Imaging Project at Bluffton College contains a page of six excellent images of the Markets of Trajan and some techincal description and detail into what makes up the individual shop units.

From the Marlborough Boys' College there is a very detailed site of Trajan's Column, that includes background, function, how the column commemorated Trajan and his deeds, construction, the story of the column, symbolism and a detailed description of the events in each of the lower bands on the west side.

From the University of Kansas, a clickable map of the column at the site Trajan's Column: A Record of the Dacian Campaign and a Monument to Logistics.

Mostly Images

From the Department of Classics at San Francisco State University, this page on Trajan's Forum contains a view of the forum surrounded by a number of the modern day Roman buildings with a short description, and a painted reconstruction image of one of the libraries.

La Ville Architecture Urbanisme Image Virtualle or Virtual Reconstruction Project is a archaeological modelling project of ancient Rome. The original project was of plaster models, and an image of a plaster reconstruction of the Temple of Trajan is pictured. The translation of the text below the image reads "Set up by Hadrian in the honor of Trajan and his Plotine wife, it was certainly built in the years which followed the death of the Trajan emperor (in 117 ap. J.C.)." This site is difficult to navigate, but much of the background material is either available in both French and English or easily translatable.

The LetterPerfect company of Seattle, WA has snapshots from one of their Lettering Tours of inscription details in Trajan's Forum. Their Tour Day Journal for September 30 details their arrival at the Trajan Forum along with a few pictures along the sidebar. The Tour Scrapbook contains some of the more striking images, although they aren't very well labeled as to what tour sites they are all from.

Some anonymous Latin club* was nice enough to post up this excellent image of the forum, with the column in the foreground.

From the Faculty of Literae Homaninores at Oxford University is this image page which contains shorts of the Forum Traianum main area and North Colonnade; close ups of the base of Trajan's Column (detail #1, detail #2, detail #3); and Trajan's Market of a vaulted precinct and gallery and a shop doorway.

Here is a link to a virtual reality reconstruction of the Trajan Forum, probably borrowed from the ArtsEdNet Gallery, but there aren't any captions saying either way.

These pages from Prof. Higginbothman's class at Bowdoin College provide another perspective of the Column of Trajan, as well as a black and white photo reconstruction of the main courtyard in the forum.

This is an image of the Trajan Forum from the homepage of David Anderson, without a caption. Through digital editing, the columns in the foreground are highlighted in blue while the background of the image is a dark brown.

This page from the Department of History at Utah State University contains two images of the forum looking towards palatine hill and two of the base of Trajan's Column in their Slide Review.

Reference and Link Pages

All have been removed due to attrition.

* This is a totally unintentional pun, and you can't prove otherwise.

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