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piazza della bocca della verita'

This is an old area even for ancient Rome. When the early town was located on the Palatine Hill and the zone that would become the Forum was just marshland, there was a market here between the Palatine and the river where foreigners traded with the early Romans. A small stream, the Velabrum, flowed through the valley of the Forum down through this zone and into the Tiber.

The Etruscan kings were responsible for reclaiming the marshland and channelling the Velabrum which was eventually closed during republican times (becoming the Cloaca Maxima).

This area became known as the Forum Boarium, the first forum in Rome, and the name basically means the "ox market". It was frequented by Greek merchants and it was they who built a temple to Hercules here. There was also a Great Altar to Hercules, whose remains lie under the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedim. With the trading here a port, the Emporium, sprang up on the river and later a temple to the divinity of ports, Portunus. The republican walls, built in the third century, included the forum in the city.

There were always bridges which connected the area with Transtiberim. The earliest, Pons Sublicius, was made of wood and later removed to make way for the Pons Aemilius which was the first bridge made of stone to cross the river. The remains of the latter can be seen from the new Ponte Palatino: it's known today as Ponte Rotto (the broken bridge), and only one arch remains standing lonely in the river.

On the river side of the Piazza della Bocca della Verita' there is a park which contains two small well preserved temples from the republican period. The Temple of Portunus on a high podium (perhaps to protect it from the Tiber floods) and featuring an ionic facade with only four columns. Just to the north on the river edge was the port. In 872 it became a church known as Santa Maria Egiziaca, named after the reformed prostitute who lived as a hermit therein.

The other temple, commonly known as the Temple of Vesta because of its similarity to the temple of Vesta that stood in the Roman Forum, was actually dedicated to Hercules Victor. This is the oldest preserved temple in Rome. It is cylindrical, surrounded by twenty fluted columns, and constructed from Greek marble, though partially reconstructed during the reign of Tiberius with marble from Carrara. It is thought that the architect was also Greek, perhaps Hermodoros of Salamina.

At the eastern extremity of the piazza is a somewhat strange arch that opens in four directions. It is known as the Arch of Janus, though it may in fact be a Constantine arch, and stands directly above the Cloaca Maxima. The arch is a square whose corners are four large pilons each covered with marble. There are rows of niches in the marble which obvious held statuary. Above the pilons was an attic that bore inscriptions. The attic has not survived, though a part of one of the inscriptions was found in a wall of the nearby church of San Giorgio in Velabro, at the right flank of which is a small arch (Arco degli Argentari) erected in 204 CE, probably an entrance into the Forum Boarium.

To the south of the piazza is the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, which contains the famous Bocca della Verità from which the piazza takes its name.

Ian Hutchesson