Ancient Rome

Monday, April 11th---Ancient Rome

Today was our first real day in Rome. First, let me start out by saying that we totally lucked out with our trip here. It is cultural week here and almost all of the attractions are free! The other great thing about this is that it makes the lines much shorter as no one has to buy tickets.

So our first stop was the Colosseum or Coliseum in English. I really enjoyed it. There was a lot more to it than I had thought there would be. I had expected more of just a shell, but we went in and up the stairs to be able to look down on the different levels. At the ground level were the seats for important people and as you went up, the seats were cheaper. Expensive seats had your family name engraved in the marble.

There was a canvas awning that covered about 1/3 of the seats, the cheap seats actually. So the common man sat comfortably in the shade while the emperor roasted in the sun.

Speaking of which, we are having lovely weather on our trip. A couple a cool mornings, some hot afternoons, but overall, very nice. I would NOT want to come here in the summer. I have heard so many people say that they were here last time in the summer and how miserable it was. One lady will not go back to Venice because she was so miserable. It is not hard to see though, as air-conditioning is rare here. So are dryers. People have washers, but no dryers. The laundry just hangs out the windows.

Back to the Colosseum.... They are building a floor right now over part of the arena to give people an idea of what it looked like back then. The rest is open to the elements but you can see the maze of tunnels that held animals, prisoners, and gladiators.

They had about 80 trap doors in the floor allowing them to use elevators to bring people and animals up to the stadium at almost any point. You were never sure where your threat was coming from. They used these games to execute their prisoners. Often the prisoner would have to act out a play in which the death of the character was their own death.

Next we climbed to the top of Palatine Hill where the emperor's palace used to be. This is one of the seven hills that Rome was founded on. The ruins were interesting to see but what I thought was the most interesting is that basically where we stood, was about 25 ft. above ground level at that time. That is true of most of the city. As parts got old, they just built on top of it. Another interesting fact to me was that the ceiling of the throne room was seven stories tall. That must have been quite impressive!

After Palatine HIll was the Roman Forum. The Forum was the political, economical, and religious center of the city. We saw the ruins of temples, triumphal arches, and even the place where Julius Caesar was cremated and Marc Anthony gave his speech. Generals would return from victorious battle and parade through this area. What astounded me the most is that there is SO much marble just laying around that people are free to use it as a bench to sit upon. Somehow it felt a little wrong to me, but as I was hot and tired, that cool marble under the tree felt very nice. :~)

After the forum, we decided we need a cold drink and a bite to eat. After looking around a bit and seeing there were no other options, we got 3 sandwiches and 4 sodas from a vending cart. Imagine our surprise when the man said we owed him 33 euro (about $50). While feeling like I just got robbed, I had to admire his entrepreneurship! The good news is that we have been grocery shopping and eating fairly cheaply AND we had just saved 48 euro on tickets, so we did not take it very hard. ;~)

Feeling refreshed, we climbed up to Capitoline Hill, another of the 7 hills of Rome and the center of government for 2,500 years. We saw a replica of the wolf with Romulus and Remus, and the ancient equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius. Michelangelo was responsible for giving this area a face lift and making it more modern. He did a great job. :~)

Next was the Victor Emmanuel Monument. All I can say is WOW! It was built for the 50th anniversary of the unification of Italy and it is magnificent.

We continued on to see the Pantheon, which has been constantly in use since ancient times. Once honoring all of the gods, it now only worships the Christian God. It is a magnificent building. It is all marble and the dome of the ceiling if continued down as in a globe would fit perfectly so that the bottom of the sphere just touched the bottom of the floor. A perfect circle within a perfect square and you have the perfection of the universe.

Next were a couple of minor stops in churches to see art. First was Michelangelo's Christ Baring The Cross and the other was a false dome painted on the ceiling of a church. Apparently they ran out of the money that they needed to build the dome, so instead, they painted an optical illusion to look like the dome. It does to some degree, but it was dark, and with our modern lighting, it did not look quite right.

We had dinner in Campo de Fiori, a market square, and then took an evening walking tour. First was the Four Rivers fountain. It was designed by Bernini, one of my favorite sculptors and it depicts four of the major rivers known at that time. One thing neat about it is that the river Nile's head is covered as they did not know yet where the head of that river was.

The next stop was Trevi Fountain. It is absolutely AMAZING. I truly loved it.. It had 27 different fountains of water pouring out of it in all different directions. The fountain is the width of the building behind it. Our last stop was the Spanish Steps--not so much to look at in my opinion, but then after Trevi, it would have been hard to impress me.

It was a long, long day, but it was great to do Ancient Rome today