Roman Forum & Palatine Hill

For roughly a thousand years, the Roman Forum was the functional centre of the Roman world: the site of elections, public speeches, criminal trials, triumphal processions and the everyday business of running first a republic and then an empire. What survives is a valley of broken columns, foundation platforms and partial arches that requires genuine effort to read — unlike the Colosseum, which announces its former function instantly, the Forum rewards visitors who've done a little homework or have a guide, and can feel like a field of rubble to those who haven't.

Key standing structures include the Arch of Titus, commemorating the 70 AD sack of Jerusalem and famous for its relief carving of Roman soldiers carrying off the temple's menorah; the three surviving columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux; the Curia Julia, the Senate house, whose brick shell survives largely intact because it was converted into a church in the 7th century; and the Temple of Vesta, where Vestal Virgins tended Rome's sacred eternal flame for over a thousand years.