Roman ForumHistory & audio guide · Rome

Today it's an esplanade of stray columns, but for over a thousand years it was the political, religious and judicial center of the ancient world. And before anything, it was a swamp: a low stretch between the Palatine and the Capitol, impossible to inhabit until the Romans drained the water through the Cloaca Maxima, in the 6th century BC. That channel, more than 2,500 years on, still works.

Over that drained ground walked kings, consuls, vestals and emperors. Here laws were voted in the Curia, the state treasury was kept in the Temple of Saturn, and Julius Caesar was cremated on a makeshift pyre —where people still leave flowers today. There's the arch that celebrates the fall of Jerusalem, the column that was the Forum's last monument, the eternal fire the vestals tended under pain of being buried alive.

Then came the oblivion: the Forum turned to pasture and market, and they called it the Campo Vaccino, the field of cows. It had to be dug out stone by stone. Each of those stones carries a name and a story, and many go unnoticed unless someone tells you. Ruthy reads them with you across twenty-six chapters, standing right there.