Forum Boarium

The Forum Boarium was Rome's oldest marketplace, set directly on the Tiber at the former river ford between Palatine and Aventine. Its name comes from Latin bos, ox - cattle, salt and river imports were traded here long before the Forum Romanum arose. From the late Republic two of the antique world's best preserved small temples survive on the square: the rectangular Temple of Portunus from the first century BC and the round Temple of Hercules Victor, both saved only by their reuse as Christian churches in the early Middle Ages. Beside them stands the Bocca della Verita, the medieval Mouth of Truth said to bite off the hand of liars. Today the square sits trapped in traffic, yet between the temples you still feel Rome's earliest urban story.