This wall, thirty metres high, is the largest piece of ancient architecture still standing in Rome, and it was built out of fear of fire.
Behind it lay the , the most crowded quarter of the old city: wooden upper floors on stone bases, workshops with open flames, streets so narrow that a fire could leap from one roof to the next. The emperor built his new right up against that district and placed this wall in between, made of hard volcanic stone that doesn't crack in the heat.
You can clearly see the difference in the types of stone. The bottom is rough grey material, higher up it becomes finer, and in some spots the layers run straight through a medieval repair, because the monastery that later stood here simply used the wall as its outer wall.
Of the forum behind it, three columns and a stretch of temple floor still stand, and above them once ran a hall filled with statues of every Roman who had done something great, from to Augustus himself.
We follow the road until we reach the square in front of the Colosseum.
Sources. Story: Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali (Foro di Augusto, muro di recinzione); Parco archeologico del Colosseo Photos: Photo: Paris Orlando (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
