Advertisement
Published: April 3rd 2009
Edit Blog Post
Temple of Saturn
Columns on the left are what remains. Its the oldest surviving structure at around 500BC The last of our tours with Jerry was the Ancient Rome tour, which included the Roman Forum and Colosseum. The tour was first thing in the morning, so after breakfast the 4 of us walked down to the Colosseum (20 minutes from the hotel) for the meeting point, in the rain of course. It was looking to be a pretty dreary day for a tour, but luckily once we actually got into the Forum to start the tour, it stopped raining for us.
There is not much left intact from the Forum, so it is generally recommended to have a guide, or guidebook or something like it. The Forum was the central area of ancient Roman life. It contained the major temples to various gods, the inital royal residency, and was the centre of government, most notably where the Senate sat. It also has the fame of being the location where Julius Caesar was assinated by the Senate, where Caesar was cremated, and where Marc Antony gave his eulogy to Caesar. Shakespeare's version of "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears" has no historical truth, but Antony's actual eulogy did a good job to turn the citizens against the Senate.
Temple of Castor and Pollux
Served as a meeting place for the Senate during the Republic, and also a speaker's platform Some of the highlight remains is the Temple of Saturn, the Temple of Vesta (and the house of the Vestal Virgins), and the multiple Arches, which are actually quite well maintained.
The Forum is pretty cool to walk through, and Jerry's little flipbook of pictures of what the buildings are thought to have looked like, really helped visualize the place. We also did some lazyman research before we went, and watched the two seasons of HBO's "Rome". We found that it actually really helped us as the series seemed fairly good at recreating Roman life, and generally was historically accurate, with a few exceptions.
From the Forum, we went over to the Colosseum. Pretty much everybody on earth has a general idea of the history of the Colosseum. A few things I didn't know was the fact that the arena was actually called the Flavian Amphitheatre, from the family names of Vespasian and Titus, the emperors who were in reign during its construction from 70 AD to 80 AD. It was the largest amphitheatre built during the Roman era, with seating for 50,000 spectators. The name is thought to be derived from a nearby colossal statue of Nero,
Temple of Antoninus and Faustina
Only the columns in front and the staircase is the original temple. Attached to it is the 17th century church. which was a gold statue that stood higher than the amphitheatre.
The best known use of the Colosseum is the gladiatorial fights. Contrary to popular belief though, apparently only about 10% of these matches were to the death. If a gladiator was killed in battle, the owner of the victorious gladiator had to reimburse the other owner, so it was too expensive to have too many death matches. The arena was also used to show off exotic animals imported from the reaches of the Roman empire, sometimes hunting and killing them. Executions of criminals and recreation of famous battles (before the underground portion was excavated, they could flood the arena and recreate sea battles) were also quite popular.
Today, the Coliseum also acts as a symbol against capital punishment, after Italy abolished its laws in 1948. Whenever somebody anywhere in the world gets their death sentence commuted or released, the Italians change the nightime lighting from white to gold.
We said our goodbye's to our tour guide Jerry (Mom took a picture with him as she spent most of the 3 days bombarding him with questions and I think had grown quite fond), and the 4 of
us split up for the afternoon. Melissa and I went back to the hotel for a sock change as her shoes were not quite waterproof, before heading out again for the afternoon.
We toured around the Pantheon and Piazza Navona again, this time in daylight, and popped by Campo de Fiori, Palazza Farnese and into the church St Ignatius of Loyola. We didn't know anything about the church other than seeing it on the map, but it nearly rivals St Peter's in the inside. We also walked by the Torre Argentina "cat sanctuary", essentially some ancient Roman ruins in the middle of town where they take care of Rome's stray cats with donations. It brought a little home sickness from Melissa as we were reaching 3 weeks away from our cat...
We met up with Mom and Dad for supper, and went back to an area Melissa and I had found in the afternoon. We had an excellent supper at the Copelle tavern, which quickly become Mom's favorite restaurant (and therefore where she wanted to go for every meal) in Rome. It was a nice little place frequented mostly by locals, and although they had an English menu,
our waitress spoke no English. The only hiccup we had was when I thought I ordered a half litre of white wine, and got a full litre of red, but I'm not going to complain too much about that. On the way back, we stopped at an awesome gelato place that had at least 100 flavors. It also became Mom's favorite gelato place, and we did go back there multiple times.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.133s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0879s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb