Colonial Forum — Local Government Below the Imperial Terraces
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Transcript
Tarraco had more than one monumental political space. The colonial forum served local civic administration, law, religion and public representation, while the later provincial complex on the upper terraces expressed power on a much larger imperial scale.
Separating those levels helps avoid the vague idea that every Roman column belonged to “the forum.” Roman cities contained multiple institutions with different jurisdictions.
The surviving fragments are incomplete because later Tarragona occupied the same ground. That incompleteness is useful evidence: local government was woven into the everyday city, not isolated in a ceremonial archaeological zone.