Rome Reborn: The Roman Forum

The Roman Forum was the civic center of ancient Rome and the single most admired quarter of the Eternal City. Here were located the Senate House, law courts, important temples, and historic monuments. Today, the Forum is in ruins, and even those able to visit have a difficult time understanding it. This app offers you the chance to take an interactive, self-guided tour of over 30 features in the Forum, which have been digitally reconstructed by archaeologists to show you how they appeared in the year AD 320. At many stops, you can fade between the Forum as it appears today and the way it looked in antiquity. Along the way, you may listen to commentary about the sites given by distinguished experts from Bryn Mawr College, Cornell University, Indiana University, the University of Florence, and the University of Pennsylvania. When you are finished with your tour, go to our website (www.romereborn.org), register, and gauge your level of expertise. Earn medals for your achievements and share them with your friends on social media.

This app is the first in a series that will take you to places such as the Colosseum, the imperial palace, the Pantheon, the imperial fora, and a typical residential street. The next app to appear will let you fly in a hot air balloon over the entire city covering some 14 square kilometers, which the Rome Reborn team has painstakingly reconstructed over the past 22 years. Think of Rome Reborn as an interactive guidebook, and each app is a chapter dedicated to a specific site or theme. Before long, you will achieve expert status and understand in detail why ancient Rome has long been considered one of the most remarkable cities in history.