Roman Forum, Rome, Italy

A funny thing happened on the way to the creation of the Forum in ancient Rome: They built a sewer. This lowland was originally a marshy drainage between Capitoline Hill and Palatine Hill. But with the construction in the seventh century BCE of Cloaca Maxima, a large covered sewer system, the marshes were drained and this former wetland eventually became the unlikely center of Rome’s government and the architectural emblem of its vast power.

A natural meeting place between the two original settlements on the hills that frame it, the newly dried land was first used as an open market. But over the centuries, various leaders of Rome commissioned the construction of temples and halls and ultimately, the New Rostra, a public speaking platform where senators could address fellow politicians and the public at large. Mark Antony famously eulogized Julius Caesar while standing in the Forum, a speech dramatized by William Shakespeare.

Many of the Forum’s structures have crumbled to ruins, adding to the space’s mystique and allure for tourists eager to get a glimpse at what was once the beating heart of the Roman Empire.