Hello! This is my interpretation of the Forum of Julius Caesar, also known as the Forum Iulium in its Latin name. This forum was commissioned by Julius Caesar himself and was completed in 46 BCE, the same year he assumed full authority over Rome. The Forum Iulium was the first of the five fora in the Imperial Fora complex and is considered among the most significant as it symbolized the start of imperial building projects being used for political legitimization and a show of power.

Compared to my last forum build, the Forum of Trajan, the Forum of Caesar is relatively simple. It had a primary temple dedicated to the matron goddess of the Julii house, Venus Genetrix, a peristyle main courtyard, and a front gate. The Temple of Venus Genetrix was very unique as it contained a double podium with the top one used for orations to the public. In addition, the interior of the temple had an apse with a barrel vaulted ceiling. In other words, no temple like this one was seen prior to its completion in Roman history.

As I inferred above, Caesar used the completion of his Forum Iulium to both advance his political agenda and legitimize his reign. He placed his forum adjacent to the Forum Romanum -- of which all other imperial fora followed suit -- and under the shadow of the elevated Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus resting atop Capitoline Hill. In order to not disrupt the recovering Senate treasury from recent civil war resulting in the defeat of Pompey at Pharsalus, it is believed that Caesar himself funded the building project in honor of his house, in dedication to Venus, and for the people of Rome.

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Hope you enjoy exploring this forum map! I know a lot of you seem to have enjoyed the Forum of Trajan map, so I'll keep up with making the rest of the imperial fora.

In the end, my goal is to make the Imperial Fora in its entirety. This includes the five fora themselves along with the other minor buildings that were considered a part of the complex. Whether this will be on a downloadable map or on a server is yet to be determined, but I do plan on making the final product available to the public in some capacity in the future.

In the meantime, the final three fora -- the Forum of Augustus, the Forum of Peace (Temple of Peace), and the Forum Transitorium (Forum of Nerva) -- will be published independently in separated world downloads and PMC posts, like what I did with the Forum of Trajan and this post.

If you would like to see more of this type of content or have a request to what you might want to see (within reason haha), please don't hesitate to comment or message me on PMC! You can also reach out via my socials on my profile page.