Even though we were tired from getting in late, we had to get up and out to make it to our tour of the Forum & Coliseum. The picture below was our view from our kitchen window. That is the Vatican wall and Museum. I’m going to do this post in 2 parts to get in a bunch of pictures. Marty’s first.
Thanks to Mark we figured out the metro and transferring and we got off at the Coloseo stop. Wow! Look what we saw right when we got out!
We met up with Alexander, our tour guide, and his assistant Ellianna and went into the Forum. It was wild to think that we were walking on cobblestones that Julius Caesar, Cicero, Marc Antony, St. Peter, St. Paul, etc. walked on! The ruins of the Forum had been covered up with dirt and debris and only when Napoleon came through did people start excavating and re-discovering it all.
Churches were built on top of temples and then other churches on top of them. Fascinating.
The Triumphal Arch—The Arch of Titus that celebrates the sack of Jerusalem. Charlie translated Senatus Populusque Romanus for us. That is one of the things he’d learned in Latin this year. (The Senate and the People of Rome—SPQR, which you see all over Rome on man-hole covers and things like that.)
Inside the Coliseum. Alexander told us a lot about gladiators and where they would go in and where people sat depending on how important they were. You had tickets that told what gate and arch you would go in. If you were lucky, it also told you what seat. Women had to sit at the top. Gladiators were major celebrities and women would try to steal their clothes or wipe sweat off their bodies with the woman’s own clothes. Yuck!
After the tour, Alexander took us to this restaurant. Eddie & Marty are eating Grichia, which they liked very much. Mark & I had carbanara, which is a Roman specialty. We had a lot of it on the trip and we were glad!
We’re not in Baltimore! The neighborhoods have their own look.
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