ROME !!!

We had an easy gettaway, the drive from Charlottesville was uneventful, traffic manageable. The flight was the usual necessary evil, 8.5 hrs., fortunately it was only half full so we both could lay down, me across three seats in the center row, Peggy in two seats by a window. We left on Wednesday evening in Virginia but it was 3:30 AM Thursday in Rome. We arrived about 12:30 PM Rome time but it took us too long to decide how to get to the hotel. We finally picked taxi, the line for one was easily a city block long. We ate at La Famiglia a super crowded, super noisy, totally Italian place. And learned a few things about ordering and eating out in Italy (mentioned later)

The next day, Friday, was our day for official tours. AM was vatican, Sistine chapel and St Peter’s Basilica, PM was the coliseum and forum.

The vatican is a walled city state, its own country, visited by 30,000 people a day. Here are pictures of the old entrance and the new one:

We payed a little more for the “VIP skip the lines tour”, well worth it. 12 people is all there were in our tour and the guide was really good. She cares deeply about art, and knew so much. She was bossing us and total strangers around the whole tour “don’t stand there you’re blocking the aisle”, “there is a time limit here you must move on”. And she herded us like we were sheep and she a border collie. We sped through the vatican museum first. Her theme was to show us Michaelangelo’s influences. The greek statues of Apollo are his models for Jesus, Hercules is God the father, a statue of Glaucus is the model for the face of agony (hell). Here are some pictures:

We sped through the vatican museum, there was so much to see it could have taken days. It’s kind of a blur in my memory already. We were taken to the door to the Sistine Chapel and told we had 12 minutes, to be quiet, take no pictures and meet her at the opposite end. Peggy and I were so into studying the images on the walls and ceiling that 10 minutes into it we were still just inside the door when a priest came to offer a prayer. We couldn’t walk to the back of the Chapel meeting place while he prayed, – we were late. From there we walked through St Peter’s square and then to the Basilica. The Pieta is there:

After lunch at Osteria delle Comare we took a cab to The Coliseum and Roman Forum. We were to meet at the Arch of Constantine at 3:00. At 2:54 I started to panic when one minute later a woman with a yellow flag showed up and 10 other people instantly congregated around her. Our guide was a 45 yo former professor who had a PhD in anthropology. Originally from Rome, he lived in England, Columbia, Peru and Brazil. The latter two countries were as part of his phd work. He lived with an indigenous tribe in the Amazon for a year, knows that language as well as being fluent in Italian, English and Portuguese. The four hour 15 minute tour was 3hrs 55min on the colisseum, 20 min forum. The coliseum could seat 70,000, was free and bread was handed out free. Built between 70 and 80 AD by Vespasian and his son Titus, it was used as entertainment for the people of Rome, entertainment that usually included death of many animals and people. The seats were marble or brick, it had a retractable canvas roof. Here are some pictures and recreations of the original as it is really hard to imagine how it was from the ruins:

The tunnel-like archways you see above our heads would not have been visible from this position inside. There was a solid row of seats in a nearly continuous circle broken only by a few entrances. Each of the arches you see above us had a statue in it visible from outside (see the model at the end)

The marble on top was the original height, it no longer extends entirely around. Wooden posts like telephone poles stood vertically on top of that marble and ropes from those posts holding a retractable canvas roof extended out to nearly the middle of the circle

The white marble just to the right of the emperor’s entrance is all that remains of the original marble seats. But what’s going on with the floor??? You are looking at the remains of support for the wooden planks that were covered with sand to create the “playing field”. Gladiators and animals in cages stayed in the tunnels and hallways under the floor. The sand was to soak up the blood. Wood covered with blood would be slippery and the blood difficult to remove. Bloody sand could be shoveled up, removed and easily replaced. The latin word for sand is arena, thus the nickname “the arena”. It stuck around.

A Recreation of a 50 50 fight animals vs men, a common event. Notice the coliseum seats are a continuous circle of marble and brick, the wooden floor covered with sand. The gladiators were not allowed to turn their backs on the emperor so must fight the animals facing him or be punished. A referee wearing a white shirt with blue stripes called fouls and decided the punishment

The forum was a large gathering/meeting place on the palatine hill adjacent to the colosseum. Rectangular, it stretched roughly half a mile and had government buildings on one side, religious temples on another, and market places on a third. The residential city spread out from all sides of it. Unfortunately the forum was not well preserved.

Ruins of once impressive buildings are all that is left of the forum today.