In Roman Minturnae, a colony in southern Latium, the first paving of the local forum with carefully cut limestone slabs during the early imperial period marked a new stage in the definition of this central civic locale. Preserved in large sections, this pavement offers remarkable insights into local strategies for dealing with this focal urban space of daily interaction.

Far from being just an empty plaza, traces of former installations and numerous monuments of different size and type erected during the subsequent centuries still indicate an increasingly cluttered local square. They allow for a close reading of the forum below the level of the monumental setting of its surrounding public architecture. Focusing on these remains and traces, the paper seeks to approach patterns of permeability, initiatives of distancing and controlled accessibility of the square as well as trajectories of the emergence of focal places and preferred locations within the forum's topography.

With its forum landscape, the case study of the forum of Minturnae offers insights into the complexity and dynamics of local topographies and proves that fora, even in smaller cities, were not only an increasingly enriched arena of urban interaction, but, above all, differentiated and nuanced urban spaces.