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Forum Description of the elements of the project » Entrance Small Temples Portico of the square Promenade Central piazza Monuments Esplanade of the temple Criptoportic Portico of the temple Involving Space Temple Architectural order and decoration Pavements Paintings Back »  |
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Entrance The entrance of the forum of Conimbriga was drawn as an arch with four fronts, allowing the access from the square to South of the forum, giving passage for the lateral small temples and introducing the pedestrians in the portico of the piazza in front of the temple. The rebuilding of this entrance is conjectural, due to the state of destruction of the structures, from where were retired all the main construction elements. This rebuilding is inspired by the arch with four fronts of Capera, Roman city of Lusitânia (today in the Spanish county of Caceres). 
Small Temples On the right side of the entrance of the forum existed a small temple, of conjectural reconstitution. It is probable that this small construction was dedicated to the Genius of Conimbriga, because in this area a small altar (árula) of limestone was found with that dedication. On the left side, besides a small square basin, whose merely utilitarian or votive purpose is ignored, there was another small temple of unknown invocation, raised on three steps.
Portico of the square The portico that surrounded the piazza of the forum for three sides, although of an inferior dimension to the temple - as it competed to a hierarchised drawing of the group of elements, in that its dimension translated its importance - was, however, an important and imposing part of the construction. Built in the Corinthian order, the attic bases and the capitals were cut in limestone, the surviving elements allowing us to evaluate the great quality of the sculptural work. The columns were cut in tuff, vestiges of its coating in stucco, being preserved. It is not known if this was original or the product of a phase of repair of the constructions of the forum. In the back walls of the portico the rhythm of the columns was repeated in square pilasters. The supported panelled ceiling was decorated with rosettes.
Promenade Between the central piazza and the portico a promenade spread out that duplicated the space of the portico allowing what certainly was an important function of the forum: the offer of processional space at times of religious festivities, and of space for social intercourse and business; this is in fact, the main function of any forum .
Central piazza The central square maintained its dimensions from the phase dated of Augustus's reign, that fact explaining some of the subjects concerning the urban implanting and of the architectonic program of the forum. Originally the square had a simple earthen, but the flavian intervention covered this with a pavement of limestone slabs. These slabs which respected the existence of several bases of honorary monuments, were later on cut out and altered in its disposition as other monuments were implanted. Among the several monuments that one of larger dimensions located in the center of the south bottom of the square stands out, aligned in the same axis of the entrance of the forum and of the temple: it was probably an altar dedicated to the public cult, and would be integrated in the processional use forum in some especially festival occasions of the year .
Monuments The honorary monuments, of which unfortunately nothing survived, are of two types (considering the plans of its bases): small rectangular monuments , in all likelihood bases for statues or commemorative columns; and in p shaped monuments should which support complex epigraphic groups. For that we know of other cities, here the patrons of the city were consecrated to the posterity, usually those individuals that, linked to the senatorial class and a lot of times living in Rome, act as defenders of the municipal interests; the main magistrates were also honored when concluding its careers in the local administration and they were also monuments dedicated to individuals that stood out for the offers done to the city, namely offers of buildings, philanthropic gesture that was designated by the word Greek "evergetes " or for the in role in the public religion. We know in Conimbriga only one of these monuments, small fraction of what would have been a group of texts of larger dimension. This monument record the dedication (of the monument) to the memory of a local notable, Caius Turranius Rufus by his wife, the father-in-law and a brother-in-law having been the curators of the execution of the dedication. It was the promotion of the family relationships, which was essential to the progress of any political career in the Roman cities. This monument was not located, in the forum, but reused as a covering stone of a sewer pipe, in the street of the baths.
Esplanade of the temple The esplanade of the temple was a very important instrument in the delimitation of the spaces of the forum and of the access among them, it also represented a form of visually elevating the level, above which the structure of the podium was developed, avoiding the excessive visibility that this could have (that would ruin the classic balance of its proportions). But the esplanade of the temple also corresponds to one of the varied ways through which a specific form of Roman temple was developed in Lusitania, whose access is not ever simple and axial, as in the generality of the classic temples. In this area of the Empire it was always preferred a form of indirect access to the temple, using lateral stairways, traverse to the axis of the building or, in this case, through differentiated levels of the construction, physically separate. On the other hand, the esplanade does not allows the access to the temenos defined by the criptoportic, so it is a supplemental form of highlighting, isolating the temple of the imperial cult.
Criptoportic The criptoportic is one of the most important remains of the whole program of constructions; although it was one of the most discreet when the buildings were visible. The architect, to rise the framing portico of the temple, counterpoint the portico of the square, decided to elevate it, make it deeper and, for not disturbing the focal reading of the temple, to reduce the scale of it architecture. For that he created a criptoportic (literally a" hiden" portico) that surrounded the temenos of the temple for three sides.The access was made by small doors, which says well of the character merely utilitarian of its existence (it served perhaps as warehouse of the products distributed the population in the liturgies of the magistrates). Its covering system was particularly ingenious, with a wooden floor place in slices pieces in tuff, inserted in the stonework of the construction. At the upper level, this wooden floor (for which were followed perhaps the complex indications of Vitruvius ), supported a double portico of equal plan. Many of the vestiges visible in this criptoportic nowadays correspond to its late transformation in cistern.
Portico of the temple The double portico that seated on the criptoportic was build with brick stuccoed columns, that created a ambulatory where, judging by the discoveries in excavation, were concentrated great part of the scenic and religious apparatus of the forum, fragments of inscriptions, of statuary, ritual objects, were retrieved in the excavation of the criptoportic (where the deterioration of the structures it dragged them) in unparallel amount. Remarkable the ornamentation of this zone, was also favoured by the external painting of the walls of the criptoportic, multiplied in the chancel of carved stone, in the painting of the columns and of the walls (scarce fragments survived that don't allow restitution) and in the pavement of opus sectile in white marble and slate.
Involving Space Between the temple and the criptoportic walls there was a space of restricted access that seemingly was covered by a simple soil earthen, that was destined to form a free space that granted the temple, besides a visual framing that to raise the effect of the surrounding porticos, an isolation area that forced in the esplanade the circulation and attention of whom frequented the forum. One of the most interesting effects of the construction of this space, that it was perhaps unperceived for the contemporaries of the constructions, was the fact that in this space, the remains of the indigenous town that surrounded the first forum and some fragments of this last one were preserved. They are small houses of central patio, built in adobe on two rows of tuff, that show us the aspect of the pre-Roman habitations, allowing to understand the impact that the introduction of the roman construction in the oppidum should have had, in the public constructions, and in the private ones.
Temple The temple is, unfortunately, one of the worse known elements of the forum. This happens because, being located in a higher level, it suffered more with the erosion of the zone. We don't know anything of its walls, the structures whole being preserved below the original level of the pavements. Some architectonic elements survived but in insufficient amount for it's complete construction. We can make use of comparison, because for religious reasons, the Roman religious architecture was deeply conservative, being invariable in some of its elements. The temple was pseudo-peripteral, with the walls of the cell decorated by half addorsed columns having had probably four columns in the façade. Was accessed by a stairway framed by two great construction blocks, of square plan, that substituted the usual antae. These supported perhaps sculptures . Nothing is known about its interior, although it is an acceptable hypothesis that there were the most important pieces of imperial sculpture known in the city, which would have been moved there from the older forum, would. The interior arrangement of the temple is conjectural.
Architectural order and decoration The whole forum adopted the Corinthian order for its decoration, although it was very varied the range of scales and techniques used in the construction.
Pavements Being the whole forum a zone of intense circulation, the great part of the chosen pavement was a simple floor of limestone, using rectangular slabs. The marbles of better quality, especially those imported from extra-peninsular zones, as the "verde-antico" that the Romans extract from the quarries of Thessaly (Greece), were reserved for the temple . In the portico of the temple the pavimental technique more appreciated by the Romans - the opus sectile was used. The known elements let us guess a floral composition in white, surrounded by elements forming a black square, that would alternate with other squares of white background. The amount picked up in excavation is, however, just a tiny part of the total extension that will have existed.
Paintings Little survived of the paintings of the forum, because the years of abandonment that arrived with the coming of the Christianity, should have been especially severe in this ornamental element, which is of the most fragile. We just know the pictorial outline that adorned the external walls of the criptoportic, that was composed by great yellow panels, divided by water-green strips enhanced by white fillets. These panels seated on a very dark blue socle. The survival of these paintings is due to the fact of they have already been replastered in the referred phase of remodelling of the forum . IMPERIAL CULT The forum was the central pole of the imperial cult in the city. This cult was, the essential element of political and ideological aggregation of the cities of the empire with Rome. One of the more effective ways of promotion of the imperial cult was its association to established cults, by means of the invocation of another gods with Augustus's epithet: there are other dedications in Conimbriga to Apollo Augustus and to Mars Augustus; but the same epithet it could apply to indigenous divinities of unknown nature as the Remetes. The imperial cult, however didn't dispense with the direct devotion to the Emperor, to its deified ancestres and to other elements of its family. The first imperial image in Conimbriga would have been an image of Caius (called Caligula), wearing a toga, that reigned between 37 and 41, dying victim of a conspiracy, and subject to a "damnatio memoriae ", what would have the statue reworking in the physiognomy of the crazy emperor's respectable grandfather Augustus. The fragments of statue that represents an emperor in deified poses Claudius, may have arrived to the city at the end of this emperor's reign or in the beginning of its successor Nero, perhaps contemporany to the portrait of Agripina the Younger (last wife of the former and mother of the latter), that is to say, between 49 and 59 of our era.
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