One of the City’s most memorable public squares, Piazza Farnese, with its magnificent, elegant, and serene Renaissance features, rises in the ancient “Valle” (lowland) area of the City. The Valle once accommodated Agrippa’s artificial lake (stagnum), the backdrop to the Baths and the Pantheon he constructed in the Augustan Age.
From the earliest times, Romans inhabited areas of the City close to the Fora and the hills surrounding it, far away from the plain near the bend of the Tiber River, the Campo Marzio area. Floods frequently threatened these low-lying regions, such that during the monarchical age, king Tarquinius Superbus planted them with corn.
During the Republican era, victorious generals waited here for senatorial approval for a triumphal march. It began here, proceeded through the Forum, and climbed to the Capitoline Hill. In the middle of the fifth century BC, however, buildings gradually appeared in the area: the temple of Apollo, the first public building in Campo Marzio, and later, the much larger structure, the Circus Flaminius which provided games to amuse and entertain the Plebeians.