August 19th : Rome, Italy
The Coliseum – At Night
Well, our second day in Rome started off a little later than we might have otherwise expected. For one thing, we didn’t resume “exploring” until 1:30pm despite waking up and eating breakfast at 9:45am.
Why? Well… We had domestic flights between Rome and Venice, and Venice and Paris. Our second flight was on RyanAir and they have a max 15kgs per bag policy for checked luggage. It turns out we were 9 kgs (combined) above that limit.
So we did what all rational people do in this situation: we shipped surplus clothing and books back home. The catch? Trying to do so with “limited” understanding of Italian.
We hit the first Post Office, but realised the staff there wouldn’t be able to understand us. So we spent half an hour searching for a bookstore.
There we bought Italian phrasebooks. Looking good. We visited another post office where the gentleman who served us spoke excellent English, but he had no boxes.
So we returned to the first post office (where they spoke no English). Breaking the language barrier we managed to buy a box, and returned to the hotel to pack it. We then dropped it off at the second post office for the start of its journey to Australia. Phew!
So we officially started the day at Palatine Hill, which is behind the Coliseum (or south). It wraps around a large hill which would have overlooked the Roman Forum back in the day.
Today it is entirely ruins, with a couple of refurbished buildings onsite (e.g a museum). They are also very large ruins, especially some of the domus (palaces) such as the Emporor’s palace, though we weren’t able to grasp the full size until later when we saw Palatine Hill from the site of the Circus Maximus (addressed in later posts).
Besides the various Roman buildings, we also discovered what is rumoured to be the huts of Romulus and Remus who, legend has it, founded Rome originally. There were also some nice gardens where we took refuge from the unbearable heat.
In all, we spent about two hours walking through all the old remnants. We unfortunately missed one of the arches, but the Forum made up for that omission. Some of the marble remains on site, although anything of value is long gone.
What is interesting is how many “parts” of columns are just lying on the ground, there are pieces all over the place. The same applied to inside the Coliseum where columns lay on the ground (smartly repurposed by visitors as handy seats).
Anyhow, we made our way down into the ruins of the Roman Forum which I found to be far more interesting than the hill. The arch of Septimus Severus is still in one piece and is the obvious showpiece.
What you can’t imagine is just how big the buildings must have been. You can tell by what is left (columns which still stand) just how large and impressive the Forum must have been, it would dwarf even the tallest NBA player.
We left the Forum and walked around the Campidoglio and Capitoline Hill. Then we made our way down to the banks of the Tiber river and crossed it at Isola Tiberina, a small island in the middle. We stopped to eat gelato before continuing on to Trastevere, on the south western side of central Rome.
Walking south, we traced our path to the original walls of ancient Rome before re-crossing the Tiber at Ponte Sublicio. We walked inland a bit before turning north uphill until we reached the Basilica of Santa Sabina. This church features an original set of wooden doors dating back the the 5th century AD.
We spent a little bit of time inspecting the inside of the Basilica and the aforementioned wooden doors before heading down to the site of the Circus Maximus.
As we approached, we made walked the tricky path down into what is left of the famous racetrack’s center. We walked to the east end (which is being restored/excavated) and then north up via de San Gregorio and around the eastern side of the Coliseum.
At 6pm we had returned to the hotel, freshened up and then went to eat dinner. We eventually took a recommendation from the Hotel and the resulting meal was excellent, capped by gelato in fruit (lemon and pineapple sorbet). I’m fairly certain we ate at Ristorante il peperoncino d’oro, down the street from Hotel Artorius.
After dinner we went back out into Rome to capture some of the famous attractions by night. We first went to the Coliseum, then via Piazza Venezia to the Pantheon, to the Trevi Fountain (still heaps of people at 1am in the morning!) and then back to the Hotel using via Nazionale.
A very full day indeed. Done under 40’C heat as well.