Day 14 - Rome

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It’s hot...very hot...it at least hit the old century today. The heat here is dry, so that even if you get in a draft there is little relief. The only relief comes from finding some shade in this city of stone.

We started the day at the famous Colosseum where we took a tour offered by people around the entry point. We were a little concerned as the tour guide took a while to turn up once a group of 12 or so people was assembled, but eventually he did and was very informative as to the history of this ancient building.

The Colosseum is an amazing place, given that only a third of the original building remains. Much of the original building was “recycled” to build other parts of Rome including St Peter’s Square. The stadium held 60000 people and could get everyone in or out within 8 minutes, which would be good effort for a modern stadium of the same size. The stewards of that time did have whips and sticks to provide encouragement, which would have helped.

Stories of the different events held in this arena showed that Rome was definitely a different world to today. It was a blood thirsty time, and the people bayed for blood on each day. The Romans were very creative in how they killed people and the producers of the show were continually thinking up ingenious ways to entertain the crowd.

Once our tour was complete and we had looked around on our own for a short while we chose to get back on the bus and head down to St Peter’s Square. We visit the Vatican Museums etc tomorrow, but wanted to see St Peter’s Square from this angle today.

It is a huge place, especially when you consider a million people can fill it. The sculptures atop the building surrounding the square are amazing. By this time the heat of the day drove us to shade and back on the bus until the Piazza Novana where we found a pizza and drinks for lunch in an air conditioned venue.

Following this we wandered through the Piazza and found a lovely set of 3 original water colour paintings. We found a Gelato at the end of the Piazza and wandered towards The Pantheon where with heaps of other people visited this amazing place. As with seemingly everyplace in Rome it was full of sculpture and art which is jaw dropping.

We continued east on the way to Trevi and walked by a simple church in a small Piazza. We decided to go inside hoping it might have been cooler and found an amazing church. The ceilings were painted with amazing pictures, the marble floors were amazing, the sculptures astounding. The church was the Church of St Ignazio. Most people walked by this church, but it was well worth heading inside.

Onward we followed the crowds and finally found the Trevi Fountain in all its wonder. The fountain was surrounded by hundreds of people so we chose to take a couple of pictures and not stand in the heat and the crowd. At this time we had had enough of the heat and headed back to the Hotel to try to cool off a little.

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