Ancient Rome Day

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This morning we will explore the Forum and this afternoon we’ll tour the  Colosseum .

On the way to our first attraction, our local guide told us that Rome has no skyscrapers because no building is allowed to be taller than St. Peter’s Basilica.    We drove by the home of the President of Italy which has 500 rooms.  This “house” was donated to the country by the Vatican.

Random trivia fact---Italy has more Egyptian obelisks than Egypt has.

The tour provided “radios” for our use to hear the guide, Elidia (not the correct spelling) and they worked amazingly well.   We heard everything and could control our own volume.  I wish we’d had this improvement when we toured the Kremlin and various other places. 

We first heard the word Andiamo  for the first time this morning and heard it 30 or so times each day.  It means “Let’s go”.  Another word that was used over and over was  alora  a “throw away” word which could mean “well, now, so,  or then”  Highly useful when thinking of what to say next.

Rome was founded 2800 years ago and the colosseum was built 1937 years ago.  We explored the Forum first, seeing the place where Julius Caesar was assassinated.

Shrine to Julius Caesar

  We heard the whole story especially about his funeral and cremation.    We heard about Octsvian Agustus and the Triumvirate who ruled Roman Empire after Caesar’s death.

We heard lots about EmperiorsTiberious, Caligula, Claudio, Nero, Vespacian, Titas, Domitian, Commodus

The Forum was the meeting place for everyone who was anyone in Ancient Rome. It is a rectangular area surrounded by the ruins of several important ancient government buildings in the center of the city of Rome. 

Domitian, who ruled for 5 years and was one of the most autocratic rulers, shifted the power from the Forum (senators) to his palace (his personal power)   While he was a controlling ruler, he created a huge library of scrolls.  Interestingly, he had roads in the city polished to a gloss like a mirror so he could see who was behind him  He was not careful enough, since he was eventually stabbed.

Lunch was on our own and we shared a really good turkey sandwich  (panini) and had gelato after.  Interesting prices—panini- 7 eruo,  2 gelatos
9,5 euro each, bottle of water 3 euro.

The Colosseum (one of the highlights of the tour for me) was our project for afternoon.  As we all knew, this Colosseum was the place of gladiatorial contests, executions, and entertainments.  Built by emperors to keep the populace “happy” and to keep them from thinking about governmental problems.   Gladiators fought there for over 700 years- statistics showed that only about 10% of them fought to the death, with the crowd suggesting to the Emperor the final outcome.  What we see in the movies, thumb up or down, was not accurate.    Some of the gladiators were given rock star status, even though they were technically slaves or prisoners.

The Colosseum is fairly well intact, although it has been renovated over the years. 

After bus ride back to hotel, we looked around for additional hearing aide batteries (no luck)  ordered pizzas for supper.  Nick had sausage and I ordered prosciutto on mine.  American pizza is what I’m used to and the Italian style seems  strange to me.  Not as much meat, not as much cheese and the Italian pies were not cut.   

A tomato sauce and cheese from later in the trip

We were given a table knife to cut the pie on the plate. We ate about half our pizza and went out looking.  


 We tried to use the Collette app to find our way and it would have been helpful, if it had stayed on.  Every time we got to an intersection, the app would cause the phone to go to sleep and it sucked the battery down very quickly. Maybe Collette could work on that.