In this place, the Roman Forum unfolds as a sequence of overlapping eras. At the bottom, the broken marble steps and podium fragments mark the remains of ancient platforms where speakers addressed crowds, magistrates held hearings, and processions passed through. On the right edge, you can see the base of the Column of Phocas, while the large white structure in the centre-left is the Arch of Septimius Severus. Behind it rises the baroque dome of Santi Luca e Martina, and further up the slope, on the Capitoline, a piece of the Vittoriano glows in white marble. Arch of Septimius Severus The triple arch dominates the frame, built in 203 CE to celebrate the victories of Septimius Severus and his sons Caracalla and Geta in the Parthian campaigns. Severus, originally from Lepcis Magna in North Africa, rose to power through civil war and founded the Severan dynasty, which reshaped imperial politics by placing the army at the centre of authority. The reliefs carved into the arch depict Roman sieges, captured cities and military parades returning from the East. The inscription once included Geta's name, but after Caracalla murdered his brother and imposed damnatio memoriae, Geta's name was chiselled out. The erased letters are still clearly visible today. In antiquity, the arch marked the symbolic transition from the Forum toward the Capitoline. In the Middle Ages, when the Forum sank into a landscape of farms and pastures, it became one of the few structures still visible above ground and served as an orientation point for the surrounding settlement. Column of Phocas To the right stands the base of the Column of Phocas, the last official monument ever erected on the Forum, dated to 608 CE. The column itself is a reused imperial shaft from an earlier period, repurposed by the Byzantine authorities. Phocas, the emperor honoured here, was widely despised — a ruler whose years in power were marked by political purges, heavy corruption and military failures. Yet this monument was not meant to celebrate him in Rome. It was a diplomatic gesture to Pope Boniface IV, carried out as part of negotiations that led to the Pantheon's conversion into a Christian church. Because this column was the last late-imperial installation on the Forum, it marks the moment when the ancient civic centre of Rome definitively slipped into the medieval world. Santi Luca e Martina The baroque church behind the arch, with its characteristic dome, occupies the area once known as the Secretarium Senatus — the hall used for Senate meetings during the final centuries of the Roman Empire. The current church was designed in the 17th century by Pietro da Cortona, one of the leading figures of Roman Baroque. He served as the head of the painters' guild, the Accademia di San Luca, and took personal responsibility for restoring and expanding the church. It is dedicated to St. Luke, patron of artists, and to the martyr Martina. Pietro da Cortona himself asked to be buried here, and his tomb still stands inside. Architecturally, the church sits exactly where the political chamber of late antiquity once operated, making its dome a visual marker between two worlds — the administrative Rome of the emperors and the artistic, ecclesiastical Rome of the Baroque age. The Capitoline and the Vittoriano On the left horizon is a fragment of the Vittoriano, the massive 19th-century monument to Victor Emmanuel II. Although separated from the Forum by more than a millennium, it aligns itself deliberately with Rome's ancient core, embodying the modern Italian state's desire to anchor its identity in the city's classical past.