The ancient Rome that the typical tourist sees today is primarily the Rome of the Principate (27 BC to 285 AD) and the Dominate (285-476 AD). Aside from the baths of Diocletian, the Basilica of Maxentius, and the Arch of Constantine there were no major secular buildings or monuments built after 312 AD. Rome had by this time become a regional city (still symbolically significant) and it’s not at all surprising that Constantine would move the capital of the empire 1,381 miles to the east where he and subsequent eastern emperors would build some magnificent structures of their own. The city went into a slow decline until it became a ghost town, its magnificent abandoned buildings used as quarries by a sadly diminished race of men living on the physical remains of their more accomplished ancestors.

The city’s fall from administrative and economic supremacy, however, was accompanied by its reinvention as the residence of the bishop of Rome. Along with that, Rome saw a spurt of building activity in the 5th and 6th centuries. These were sacral Christian buildings such as Santa Maria Majore and outside the scope of this essay.

The buildings of the Regal (753-509 BC) and Republican periods remain mostly invisible to us, destroyed by fire, earthquakes, flooding and barbarians or buried beneath the foundations of newer iterations of the originals. They might be found in the remnants of a podium or a wall, or their likeness might appear on a coin or be mentioned in a book.

Our essay will look at some of the defining structures of Archaic Rome (The Regia, the temple of Vesta, the Cloaca Maxima or the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus Capitolinus), of key Republican structures (the Aqueducts, the Via Appia Antica, the Comitium, the Tabularium), and of course, from the Principate (the basilica Julia, the theater of Marcellus, the Golden House of Nero, the Coliseum (Flavian amphitheater), the Pantheon as well as Trajan’s market and relate them to the builders (patrons) and their political actions and programs.