Boarium

The Forum Boarium is an ancient market area in Rome, traditionally understood as the city’s cattle market and one of the earliest permanent market spaces in the city. The name derives from the Latin boarium, meaning a place dealing in cattle and livestock, and the site also served as a commercial hub for goods from rural areas and ports.

Location and setting are on the southern edge of the ancient city, along the Tiber River, near the confluence of routes to Ostia. In the modern city it lies close to the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin and the famous Bocca della Verità, with the two surviving ancient monuments forming a notable landmark at the site.

Historically, the Forum Boarium was a focal point of Roman trade from the early Republic onward. It hosted shops, warehouses, and facilities associated with the transport and sale of livestock, meat, and other goods drawn from the countryside and from transshipment at the river port. The market space was complemented by religious and ceremonial functions, underscoring the integration of commerce, religion, and urban life in the area.

The principal surviving monuments are the Temple of Portunus (also known as the Temple of Fortuna Virilis), a well-preserved example of early Roman temple architecture dating to the 2nd century BCE, and the Temple of Hercules Victor, a circular or polygonal temple dating to around the same period. These monuments, set within the forum, are among the best-preserved remnants of early Rome’s commercial and sacred landscape and illustrate the forum’s dual economic and religious character. Today the site is an archaeological landmark within the historic core of Rome.