The Basilica Julia, named after Julius Caesar, who dedicated it in 46 BC from the spoils of the Gallic War, the Basilica Julia was completed by Augustus, but burned shortly afterward and was not rededicated for another twenty years, in 12 AD . It again was rebuilt by Diocletian after the fire of 283 AD .

The Basilica was a large, ornate, public building used for meetings and other official business, it housed the civil law courts and tabernae (shops), and provided space for government offices and banking. In the first century AD, 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 father has disinherited her within days of taking a new wife.