Rome

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After the wedding and the fun in Florence I got on a train, supremley hungover, and headed for Rome. As the train left Florence I got to see some of the famous rolling Tuscan countryside, which was incredible. Spent the rest of the journery trying not to throw up so didn't see much else.

Got to Rome in the evening so dropped my stuff off and went exploring. I wasn't sure what I was expecting of Rome but already I've been blown away with how amazing some of this stuff is. Visited the Vittoriano, which to be honest I've never heard of before, but it is impressive. So much of it is carved marble and the place is massive. I believe it was built as a monument to the Italian king, there's also something about it called the tomb of the unknown soldier. Not sure what that's about but sounds good.

Walking along the road to the colosseum and couldn't quite believe I was there looking at it. It's hard to put in words what an incredible sight it is. They were closing the entrance gates just as I got here so ran and just made it, didn't have to queue at all but couldn't buy an audio guide as there's only an hour left till close. I actually got chills when I walked through and saw the inside, the place is huge! There's quite a few things that they'd recovered which was cool to see. Like the skeletons of loads of different types of animals that were killed there.

Staying at the Alessandro palace and bar hostel, pretty random name but really cool place. Smaller than the last hostel, much comfier beds though. Friendliest staff here that I think i've ever come across. There were loads of walking tours available through the hostel so decided to do that with roommates. Far too much history to read up on, much easier for someone to just explain it to you. Was just a little bit nerdy and sat down after the tour to write down a few things I learned. I shall now impart my wisdom onto you;

So, the Colosseum. little is left standing because most of it was destroyed during earthquakes. It was also extensively plundered for the marble which made up all of the seats, and all of the iron and bronze that held the outer wall and the inner walls together. The metal was taken during a war and was used to make cannons etc. It was built in 8 years, commissioned by some rich family to show off I think. It could hold over 50,000 peeps and they claim is only took 15 minutes to fill up and empty. There was something called the vomitorium which made me laugh. Taken from the word vomit it basically described an entrance that so many people poured out of. Or something like that. The Colosseum was pretty much abandoned as romes population shrank to only 30,000 people at one point, so people set up houses and stuff in there. Then some pope came along and claimed that Christians had been martyred there so it was declared a holy site. Thing is there is no proof any of them did so according to Steve, the guide, it was a mistake, but a very fortunate one that it was preserved.

Aqueducts. The Romans built aqueducts that provided the city with nuff water. By itself the city couldn't survive without these. They covered many kilometres from the hills and brought water to the city. There are loads of fountains all over the city that are still connected to these and people use them to fill up their water bottles which is really cool.

Circus maximus. If I remember correctly this was the largest sports stadium ever built. It's where they had chariot races and could seat 150,000 people. They built it out of wood and it burnt down, twice. This seemed to happen a lot in Rome. There was a massive fire at one point that destroyed around 70% of the city. There is almost nothing to be seen here, you can only see from the geography of the land there was once something there. Apparently all the ruins are still beneath it and may one day be excavated, but since it's expensive it's not currently a priority.

Palantine hill. Emperors lived here. The word palace derived from this. That's all I can really remember.

Roman forum. This is a huge set of ruins that's also linked to some palace that I can't remember the name of. It was the Political centre of Rome and the Senate house built here. There once was a Large column that was said to be the exact centre of the world, so obviously they called it the Belly button of the world. Sadly not there any more. They had the distances of all major cities from Rome written on there.

Rome was apparently built on seven hills.

We went to the Jewish ghetto. They were pretty much walled in and they weren't allowed to expand their area, even though the population grew. Then when Mousillini ran away and the Germans took over they were all shipped off to the concentration camps. Of the tens of thousands that left only 16 ever returned, scary thought. A German artist who's made it a life time project of placing a commemorative tile in front of houses for each Jew that was taken and killed. I believe this is across many different countries. Really interesting.

Largo argentina. Erm something about temples here. They were going to build here then found the ruins so just excavated instead. Funnily it's also a Cat sanctuary. They take in strays here then look after them, and most end up staying so there is a shit load just lounging amongst the ruins.

Pantheon - largest freestanding dome. The Romans were terrified to go in because they didn't believe a dome that size wouldn't just collapse on their heads. The First king of Italy is buried here, so is Raphael (the painter, not the turtle) and a few other people.

We finished outside the Pantheon, so from there I went to the Piazza navona, full of street artists selling their stuff. It's a really long area with 3 fountains and pretty open, so got some pizza and sat watching people for a while.

Sitting on some ruins in the roman forum writing this bit. This is the part where the had the senate house and was the political centre of Rome. You have to pay to get in here but I hadn't realised the ticket I got for the colessium yesterday let's me in most of these places. Going in search for this belly button column that they once had. My camera is now broken 😞. It doesn't focus any more and is making a strange whirring sound. So all the photos look like they are through drunk vision. It works now you'll be happy to know. I smacked it and it's fine.

The stadium is close to the forum and in some sort of palace grounds. It's basically a huge garden. They had loads of sculptures made of marble that were on columns going down both side of it which must have looked amazing. They moved what was left of the sculptures into a museum next door.

Went on a pub crawl arranged by the hostel. Was good fun and met some really fun people. We got free pizza in the hostel bar and played flip cup. They took us to a pretty expensive bar and an even more expensive club. Wasn't really on the budget to pay 10 euros a drink. Also the club was pretty much a shack with sheet metal roof. But good fun nonetheless, and a bunch of us decided to do the Vatican tour together.

So didn't get half as much information from the Vatican tour as I did with the Rome one. The tour guide was a little nuts and quite hard to follow. There were loads of us so we had headphones on and were listening to her talk. Didn't help that many of us were a little rough from the night before. Yesterday there was only a few of us so we just crowded round the guy and asked loads of questions. But basically the Vatican is amazing. It was a bit hard to take it all in because it was so busy.

The Vatican. Smallest state in the world covering only 44 acres. So going through the Vatican you basically start at one end, go through about 5 connected museums then through the Sistine chapel and then right into st peters. The first bit was full of really old sculptures. There's one of a two headed god called Janus, who's the god of passage or travellers or something, because he can see forwards and backwards, future and present etc. that's why its called January because it's the end of one year and going into another.


Apparently the Vatican was the first museum in the world. Doesn't sound quite right though. There were some really amazing looking sculptures made of red granite, which can only be found it Egypt and if I remember correctly the Romans used almost all of it that was ever found. Theres a room called the Vatican zoo which is just full sculptures of animals.

We then went into the muse room. There was the Belvedere torso there which is very famous. It was cut from a single block of marble. I didn't really understand it though! We went into another room with quite a few large statues of the gods. There was a large bronze statue of Hercules which is the only bronze statue remaining there as everything else was melted down and used to make other things. There were some statues if Roman emperors, all of which somewhere have an eagle on the sculpture as that is the symbol of war, or the army, probably both actually. We walked past the Egypt gallery but that was off to the side so we didn't go in. Next was the tapestry gallery. There were, yes you guessed it, huge tapestries hung up on the walls. The rooms smelt pretty musty. The tapestries were pretty cool but not mind blowing. After that came the maps gallery. I thought these were pretty cool actually. They were really large drawn maps of the roman empire and looked quite impressive. They were drawn obviously to show were shit was, but most importantly so they could tax people!
We then ended up at the Sistine chapel. It wasn't quite what I was expecting. Well none of it was really as I didn't realise it was all just one long museum that you just walk through. So towards the end you end up at the Sistine chapel which was really cool. I was expecting a stand alone chapel that would be very impressive. This was basically just walking down some stairs and suddenly you're inside it. It was incredible though. It was quite dark in there and it was incredibly packed. The tour guide had explained a lot about the paintings before we went in because you had to be quiet in there. It was incredible to see the scale of paintings paints because they are huge. That on top of the fact that the ceiling was so high up. It was really quite breathtaking. Because of all the candles that has burned in there over the years that was a shit load of soot that had blackened the walls and the ceiling. They cleaned it and it looks totally normal, but they left a square in the corner uncleaned so that you could see the difference. You couldn't really make out anything under the black, so quite a good thing they had a clean up! The Sistine chapel was named after pope Sistus who wanted his own private chapel, so had that shit built. She told us all about the paintings but the earphone kept cutting out so I missed quite a bit of it. Heard a funny story from a roommate, saying that the guide he had was a super atheist and kept saying things like, 'yeah this sculpture of the virgin Mary and Jesus captured the scene and emotions really well. If it actually happened'.


After that you end up outside for the first time, then right next to st peters. Now this was impressive. In the front of the chapel there is the Jubilee gate, that will only be opened again in 2025. The ceiling was so high and everything in there was so decorated. It is just so huge in there! All along the top of the wall where it meets the ceiling there were these huge inscriptions in gold that went all the way around. I didn't get to find out what it said but I was really impressed. There were about to start mass so we had to hurry around there before they closed a part of it off. The tour finished and then decided to head up the cupola. We came out on the inside of the dome at one point and I looked down onto the mass that they were holding. I was really not doing so well with the height there so moved on! I made it up though and headed back down.

This bit comes to you from the top of the copula on st peters. Its raining and I'm shtting myself. The walk up the some was insane. Got really, really tight and then you had to lean into the wall with the curve of the building because there wasn't enough space. It was worth it though so glad I did it, but at the time all I could think of was what a ridiculous idea it was to go up there.

Food in Rome was pretty much the same as Florence, which was rather good. All in all Rome was an incredible experience. That being said I did prefer Florence, was a much more chilled out place and did have much more character.

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Photos

The Stadium
Not really a stadium, just some dudes garden.