The provincial origin of the Trajan’s Forum

Abstract

The Trajan’s Forum has always been considered the ‘high point’ of the development of the Roman fora. The last of the Imperial Fora built in the centre of the Vrbs, during centuries it caused admiration to the visitors of the city, even when Rome was any more the capital of the Empire. Until some decades the scholars have considered it as the model for the provincial fora, specially in the European Occident. Nevertheless more recent works brought to light instances of contemporary canonic (tri-divided) fora or even elder than Trajan’s, putting down the notion that this kind of fora arose at Rome and then spread to the Empire. Actually it was a model, but not an initial one; it was indeed the highest degree of the canonic fora, the model followed in many provinces as from the 2nd century.