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The Forum We arrived in the Italian port of Civitavecchia about 7:30 AM, May 1, 2009. It is the port that serves Rome. The name of the city means Old Town - Civita which means “town or city” and vecchia which means “old” . Tomorrow in Florence, we will see Ponte Vecchio, the “old bridge”. It is the port that served Rome and the surrounding area.
Today is May 1, Labor Day, a Holiday in Italy and I think all over Europe, which is a good thing since there will be less traffic; bad because the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel and shops are closed. I can only give you highlights as I really need to Google some of the things we saw today to get details. I was in information-overload most of the day. We were totally in awe and were that way all day long.
We rode a bus into Rome, about 50-60 minutes, with no traffic. All the buses we have been on have been fairly new and very comfortable - tourism is a huge part of the economy of many of the cities we have visited. We had a beautiful sunny day with temperatures about 70 in the afternoon, but
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Arch of Titus it was only 60 when we got up and started out. We drove past Circus Maximus and several other old Roman ruins to the site of the Forum. You know the phrase, “on any day in history, something important happened at this spot”? Well that could be said of every single place in Rome, I think.
As per usual we walked several miles to get to sights, not counting the miles at the sights and then back to the bus. The first place we went to was San Pietro in Vincola os the church of St. Peter in Chains. It houses Michelangelo’s “Moses”, an amazing sculpture - Moses looks so life-like that you think he should talk to you. Legend says that Michelangelo thought so too, and struck the statue on the knee with a hammer and commanded it to speak. Moses is strangly “horned”, or as our family joke goes, he has sharps. It has to do with an early mistranslation from Aramaic to Greek of the part of the Old Testament, where Moses comes down with the 10 Commandments with rays of light shining. Anyway, the sculpture is magnificent, and was supposed to be part of the tomb
Roman History
Michaelangelo's Moses of Pope Julius II,eho died long before the tomb was completed. The church, originally built in the 4th century, also houses the chains used to bind St. Peter in prison in Rome.
Then we walked to the Roman Forum. The Forum area was so huge - several temples, basilicas, and buildings were built on the area before, during or after the Roman times; part was even an open air market. It was started originally about 3000 years ago on the site of an area that was often flooded by the Tiber River. Things we saw at the Forum included: the Arch of Septimius Severus, the Temple of Vesta and the House of the Vestal Virgins, the Temple of Castor and Polux, the Arch of Titus and the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina. That was originally started by Antoninus in honor of his wife but since he died before it was done, it was dedicated to him also; it is very well preserved considering it was built in about 40 AD. Some of the ruins of the Roman Forum are about 30-35 feet below current ground level. You can tell that because there is a huge church built on the sight
of the original Temple of Antoninus and Faustina and the door to that church is now 30-35 feet above the excavated floor of the Forum. Many of the areas at the Forum are still active archeological dig sites. We saw where Julius Caesar was cremated after being murdered on the Ides of March in 44 BC - we also drove past the place where he was murdered. It wasn’t at the Forum as it had burned the year before and was undergoing reconstruction at the time Caesar was murdered.
I will add more when I can match pictures to actual structures after we get home, but now you get an overview.
By the way, we had originally signed up for a tour that included the Coliseum but not the Forum, so when we found out that they had substituted the Catacombs for the Sistine Chapel (closed for holiday), we changed tours. I am so glad we did because the Forum was amazing - Ken loved the history. I can’t even tell you all ancient structures that were there, just to tell you it has to be seen to be believed, than you still pinch yourself and say, “Is this really
where Julius Caesar and other Roman Emperors walked?”
Then we walked to the Coliseum. It is an amphitheater - which means that is has two sets of walls - the outer wall was once covered by marble which was scavenged for use on later buildings after the fall of the Roman Empire. Most of the Coliseum has been excavated - even down to the very lowest level where the animals and prisoners were kept. They had a system of pulleys and elevators used to bring people and things to the wooden floor of the arena. By the way the Coliseum had a sand floor some of the time, hence the name arena, the Latin word for sand. We saw a display of what the Coliseum looked like in Roman times, including a canvas cover that was manipulated with pulleys by Roman sailors, from a school nearby, i.e., the original domed stadium. When they had games there, the first set was often “hunting games” where they would bring trees and plants up from the lowest level and the Gladiators would hunt wild animals in the staged forest. We thought that was amazing.
Each section of the Coliseum was numbered - with Roman numerals, of course. They have restored a section of the seats to the original marble. The steps we walked on were also the original marble steps. In Roman times, as many as 60,000 people could attend at one time, always free of charge, but you were assigned an seat and given a ticket with the number on it - the tickets were ceramic or metal; an early example of assigned seating. Can you imagine: first come, first serve for the next gladiator clash or Christian execution? Wonder if you had to go through TicketMaximus or if there were scalpers - with swords? There were so many people visiting it today - many more than the Forum. It costs about 12 Euros to see the Coliseum, don’t know how much for the Forum.
Next blog about St. Peter’s.
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