Roman Forum | Rome, Italy

The Roman Forum at first light is one of my favorite photographs that I took in Rome. It was the kind of moment that is rare in that city. I woke up early in the morning and walked through the empty streets before the city woke up. Normally, those streets are shoulder-to-shoulder with tourists, but that morning, they were almost completely empty. Silence is rare in Rome, and I wanted to capture that silence in my photograph. I made my way up to Capitoline Hill, the site of so much history. In a moment, I was looking over the Forum as the sun began to rise. The first of the morning’s rays stretched over the Temple of Saturn and the Arch of Septimius Severus. It’s a mind-boggling sight.

Two thousand years of history in the Roman Forum

Standing there in that silence, my mind began to wander. The weight of time and history in that place is heady and awe-inspiring. I could picture Cicero walking among these columns. I could almost hear the arguments and debates that played out in this space. It’s one thing to read about the Roman Forum, the civic and political heart of ancient Rome. It is quite another to stand above it at daybreak with no one else around you. The same hill looks down on the Forum of Caesar and the Altare della Patria on its other side. From the ruins, the Via Sacra runs east toward the Colosseum. Two thousand years of history has a way of making you feel very small. I’ve been privileged to photograph some remarkable places. The Roman Forum may be the one exception. No photo, even my own, can capture what it’s like to stand there.

An image of grass and stone

The sun didn’t rise and illuminate the scene as I had expected. It stayed mostly hidden that morning, and I was initially disappointed. But the grass had such a deep, lush green tone. The more I looked at the frame, the more that rich green came to mean to me. I began to think of Rome not at its peak, but later, in the year 1000. That is roughly halfway between Rome at its most powerful and the present day. Rome had largely been abandoned as the center of power, its glories mostly forgotten. The Roman Forum wasn’t a historic attraction, it was pastureland. Sheep and cattle grazed among the half-buried ruins. I think that’s what I like the most about this photograph. It’s more than just a picture of the Forum at daybreak. I like to think that this single image holds both versions of the Roman Forum. One is the heart of an empire. The other is the later, declining city, a fragment of what it once was.