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around the main temple and finally framed by a cryptoporticus and
a U-shaped portico with three wings, which reached its definitive
configuration some decades later. The central area was demarcated
by an ambulacrum with three sections, slightly raised and opening
onto the square by means of a large Ionic arcade. In the east, this ambulacrum
communicated with a large rectangular area interpreted
as a basilica, on one side of which there was a quadrangular raised
room which corresponded to the curia or Aedes Augusti tribunal
(Mar, Ruiz de Arbulo, 1988, p. 277-304). Finally, a series of commercial
premises to the south and the west of the square completed
the layout of the forum during the Augustan age. The square only
had three entrances, two at the convergence with the decumanus maximus
and a third, the main one, on the axis of the cardo maximus which
starts at the existing door in the southern wall of the city walls.
Dating from after the significant aedile activity done in the forum
during the Augustan age, several reforms carried out during the
first century should be mentioned, which involved the construction
of new shrines in the religious area and the definition of the large
portico/cryptoporticus that delimited it. The evolutionary sequence
of the forum ended with the gradual abandonment and falling into
ruin of its buildings, which started at the end of the first century AD
and intensified throughout the second century AD. Excavations
have enabled diverse changes in the function of the old forum area
to be documented for this period, until its definitive abandonment
during the last decades of the third century AD.
The project to restore, consolidate and adapt the Forum from a museographical
point of view
The project we are presenting contemplates the restoring, consolidating
and adapting, from a museographical point of view, the archaeological
remains of the forum of the Roman city of Empúries,
once the diverse excavation and research phases that have allowed its
historic evolution to be determined have been completed.
Despite the significant novelties offered by the most recent archaeological
excavations, once the research had been completed, the forum
area did not offer, as part of the itinerary of a visit, any significant
novelties with regard to the discourse or the route that had been
defined at the end of the 1980s. With regard to the preservation of
the archaeological remains, the area did not offer a very even aspect
due to the fact that consolidation and restoration work carried out
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