The Cursed Street: Ancient Rome's Murders and Executions

This walk sticks to antiquity, and it does not need to invent anything. The Romans wrote all of it down. The route starts at Largo Argentina, where Caesar was killed in 44 BCE, and takes in the Theatre of Marcellus and Livia, the empress accused of clearing the succession by poison, including her own stepson. From the terrace above the Forum, the Palatine and Caligula, whose reign ended with his own guard killing him in a corridor. Then the Tullianum, the state prison, where important enemies were strangled underground and denied burial, and the Gemonian Steps beside it, where the bodies of the condemned were thrown and left. Roman writers describe crowds coming to look. Domitian tried to outrun a prophecy that named the hour of his death and was murdered at it. The Senate then erased his name from every inscription in the empire. The Suburra was the crowded, violent quarter, and Messalina, the emperor's wife, is said to have worked its streets at night under another name. Near the Vicus Sceleratus, the wicked street, a king's daughter drove her chariot over her murdered father's body. Romans believed an act like that could contaminate the ground it happened on, and they renamed the street accordingly. The walk ends above the Colosseum, where killing was ticketed. Arrive ten minutes early; latecomers cannot be guaranteed.