Via Sacra, Rome

Via Sacra is ancient Rome’s principal street, carrying you from the Capitoline across the Forum’s sacred precincts toward the Colosseum. Let the paving draw your attention along the Forum valley: this was a route built for spectacle as well as passage. Triumphal parades of victorious commanders travelled here, their route running from the area of the Arch of Titus to the Arch of Septimius Severus.

After the great fire of sixty-four AD, Nero reshaped the stretch beyond the Forum, making a straighter course between the Velian and Palatine hills and adding colonnades for trade. The pavement beneath you belongs to the Augustan period and sits above the earlier royal-era road surface. This was also an intensely ordinary Roman thoroughfare, where people gathered at basilicas to bargain, gossip, gamble, and pursue legal cases; sex workers sought clients here too.

Imperial funerals passed along Via Sacra during ceremonies that made dead emperors divine. Local legend connects the street’s sacred name with a peace agreement between Romulus and Titus Tatius, sealed with sacrifices after the conflict sparked by the abduction of Sabine women.