Digitales Forum Romanum

The ancient Roman Forum is one of the main attractions of any visit to Rome. Every day, hundreds of visitors explore the Roman Forum and are fascinated by the atmospheric landscape of ruins and the historical significance of this place: This was the public-political centre of the ancient metropolis, where politics were made and history was written - and accordingly, the past of ancient Rome pulsates here for us today with a very special intensity. But in view of the idyllic landscape of ruins that the excavation site presents itself as today, it is difficult to get a real picture of this ancient place: How did people in antiquity experience it, how did it present itself as a stage for political action and social communication, and how did it actually function concretely as the public centre of this unique ancient metropolis? These are the questions with which the excavation site often leaves its visitors alone. And they are the questions to which classical archaeology, in turn, has always tried to provide answers with the help of reconstructions.

The research & teaching project 'digitales forum romanum' pursues the goal of reconstructing the lost appearance of the ancient Forum Romanum with the help of a digital model - and above all: to make it understandable again. Since 2011, teachers and students of the Winckelmann Institute of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin have been working on a scientific and critical 3D reconstruction of the Forum in cooperation with the Cluster of Excellence TOPOI: The Formation and Transformation of Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilizations and the architecture department of the German Archaeological Institute Berlin. The emphasis is primarily on the transformation of the Forum, which has been repeatedly redesigned over the course of time and reinvented as a space for public communication and political representation. Only the visualisation of this constant change opens up the chance to understand the Forum in its historical significance, and thus to open up today's excavation site, which has solidified into a ruin.

The digital reconstruction of the forum is based on intensive scientific research and examination of all sources and data accessible to us (construction findings on site, excavation documentation, literary, epigraphic and pictorial evidence). While working on the reconstructions of individual buildings or topographical contexts, new insights were gained again and again, new answers to existing problems or hitherto little-known problems were revealed. The model is thus not only a visualisation of the current state of knowledge. Rather, it is also intended to highlight open questions and problems - as a visualisation of the research discussion on the Forum Romanum (actively promoted by the model).

This dynamic knowledge is to be made usable for various interests: for research, for teaching, for the interested discussion of the Roman Forum and its excavation site in Rome. Accordingly, the results of our project should always be freely accessible on the internet. However, we want to make this internet platform open in another respect, namely that it should also be accessible for extensions and corrections from outside. For research on the Forum Romanum will never be completed. The digital forum model should also be able to react to the expected expansions and corrections in the future - and ideally develop into an international platform that serves the exchange and open discussion about the reconstruction of the Forum Romanum and thus continues the work begun by the project in a broader scientific horizon.