Foro Olitorio in Rome

You're standing on the Forum Holitorium, at the foot of the Capitoline Hill and close to the Tiber. In Roman times this was the city's vegetable market. Traders sold vegetables, herbs and oil here. Just next door, on the Forum Boarium, it was all about meat. The square lay just outside the Carmental Gate in the old city wall. In the second century BC it was paved, and back then it measured roughly 125 by 50 metres.