The Basilica Iulia in the Forum in Rome, July 2012

The Basilica Julia (Italian: Basilica Giulia), is a structure that once stood in the Roman Forum. It was a large, ornate, public building used for meetings and other official business during the early Roman Empire. Its ruins have been excavated. What is left from its classical period are mostly foundations, floors, a small back corner wall with a few arches that are part of both the original building and later Imperial reconstructions and a single column from its first building phase.

The Basilica Julia was built on the site of the earlier Basilica Sempronia (170 BC) along the south side of the Forum, opposite the Basilica Aemilia. It was initially dedicated in 46 BC by Julius Caesar, with building costs paid from the spoils of the Gallic War, and was completed by Augustus, who named the building after his adoptive father.

The building burned shortly after its completion, but was repaired and rededicated in AD 12. The Basilica was again reconstructed by the Emperor Diocletian after the fire of AD 283.

The Basilica housed the civil law courts and tabernae (shops), and provided space for government offices and banking. In the first century, it also was used for sessions of the Centumviri (Court of the Hundred), who presided over matters of inheritance. In his Epistles, Pliny the Younger describes the scene as he pleaded for a woman whose 80-year-old husband had disinherited her within days of taking a new wife.

It was the favorite meeting place of the Roman people. This basilica houses public meeting places and shops, but it is used mainly as a law court. On the pavement of the portico, there are diagrams of games scratched into the white marble. One stone, on the upper tier of the side facing the Curia, is marked with an eight by eight square grid on which games similar to chess or checkers could have been played.

The building consists now only of a rectangular area, levelled off and raised about one metre above ground level, with jumbled blocks of stone lying within its area. A row of marble steps runs full length along the side of the basilica facing the Via Sacra, and there is also access from a taller flight of steps (the ground being lower here) at the end of the basilica facing the Temple of Castor and Pollux.

Archeology and excavation: The site was excavated by Pietro Rosa in 1850 who reconstructed a single marble column and travertine supports. In 1852 segments of concrete vaulting with stuccowork coffering was unearthed but later destroyed in 1872.

Text from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_Julia