Restoration of the Forum of Aquileia is underway, specifically of the fourteen surviving columns from the ancient city in the province of Udine, one of the principal cities of the Roman Empire. The recovery is a delicate and complex operation, necessitated by long exposure to the elements: the columns have towered into the sky of Aquileia since 1937, after the monumental complex was discovered by accident in 1934. Excavations continued in the 1960s and 1980s only to be extended to the western sector, beyond the modern Udine-Grado Regional Road, in recent years. Since then these columns have been an undisputed iconic image of Aquileia. In addition to them are the numerous stone fragments now haphazardly accumulated on the square. These include sculptures with heads of Medusa and Jupiter Ammon. The study and classification is helping to reconstruct the architectural articulation of the arcades and workshops. At the conclusion of the ongoing restoration process, what the poet Ausonius considered “the ninth city of the Empire” will come back to life.