We arrived in Rome about 5:30. After picking up our luggage and making our way to the train that takes you into town, we bought our tickets for the train. No one told us these had to be further validated, nor were the boxes very prominent, nor were there signs advising this, and so we ended up paying a 100 Euro fine by the very nasty conductor - who then let off all the other travellers who also didn't know they needed to validate the tickets further. There went our planned trip to Pompeii, between that fine and the extra tickets for the Eurostar, it blew any money I'd planned to use to get to Pompeii. Nice little racket, the Italian train system has going there. And not a pleasant welcome to Rome.
We made it to our rented apartment not far from the Termini train station. I'd heard this wasn't the best part of Rome to be in, but really, the only issue I saw was that it was an ethnic area. Our apartment was nice and cool and we were pretty central to everything.
We managed to find some dinner that night and tucked into bed early for our first day of sightseeing.
I'm not going to go day by day here, as quite frankly, I don't remember the chronological order of sites. I remember our first day, and then, after that, it's just a blur of archaeological sites, museums and walking, walking, walking!
We started the next day deciding to do one of the walking tours in my Lonely Planets guide of Ancient Rome. We set out with a detour to Santa Maria Maggiore, one of the 4 official churches of Rome. It has beautiful mosaics and the tomb of Bernini, which is very understated for such an important figure in Roman art and architecture. The decoration was primarily Baroque and really lovely.
Next we stopped for our first ice cream on the way down towards what is called Ancient Rome. We eneded walking past this building behind an old wall, and realized it was a museum. We decided to go in and then realized it was the museum and site of the archaeological ruins of the Imperial Forums. Not "the" Roman Forum, that came later. Click this url to read more about the imperial forums... http://www.aviewoncities.com/rome/imperialforums.htm
What fascinated me about this site is that apparently, it was used as housing for people into well past WWII. There was an accompanying photo exhibit that showed kids playing soccer amongst the ruins, on ancient marble floors. All I could think was what people thought living amongst the ruins.
From there we walked around the corner and Ta-da! There is Trajan's column. Oh, there is main road to the Colosseum! Oh, there's the Roman Forums! And that was pretty much how the rest of our trip went. We essentially threw out the guide books after that, because we knew that in the heart of Rome, we were going to find something of interest at almost every turn.
The funny thing is, we didn't miss what we didn't see, because we came across such little gems along the way. One of our favorites was on our way to the Pantheon. We saw this pit with ruins in it, which was clearly still being execavated, and in it were several cats lounging around. There were (typically, I'm sad to say) no signs stating what this site was, and then another tourist told us that attached to the ruins was a cat sanctuary that was open to the public. So, R. & I had to go! We go down the stairs to a narrow area filled with plants and flowers and trellis' to offer shade. And CATS everywhere! R. had fun taking photos of the cats, and I sat on a bench under the shade - and within two minutes, a small cat came and sat on my lap, eventually settling in for a snooze. We realized this place ran on donations, and so decided that since we had enjoyed our time, we had to donate something, buying t-shirts to commerate the occasion. We ended up getting a tour of the facility, which accepts all cats, no matter what their condition. Some of the cats which are not allowed out have neurological problems, or have had amputations, or are blind. Rome has a "No-Kill" law, but sadly, this doesn't mean you have to care for the cats. The care and love these cats - all these cats - receive from the volunteers is amazing, and I have to say, in a city that often seems not to care, it was heartening to see this softer side.
The official website for Gatti di Roma (Cats of Rome) is here http://www.romancats.com/ . The diary is quite cute to read, as they talk about the cats and some of their habits.
As a matter of interest to those of you who enjoy Roman history - the ruins in which the Torre de Argentina cat sanctaury is next to is the site on which Brutus had Julius Cesaer killed. Sadly, they weren't running tours that day, but I would have liked to learn more about this site.
So in a nutshell, what did we see?
- The Imperial Forums - one of my fav's, I have to say
- The Colosseum- It was intersting, but I preferred the iconic exterior architecture to the interior site.
- The Roman Forums - disaapointing, we didn't get audio guides, but from a friend who went just a few weeks earlier, it apparently wouldn't have mattered. The site is a just a jumble of stones with no explanation of what you are seeing - very little in Italian, even!
- The Pantheon - I was astounded at how big it was and that it is open air. Too bad some much of it's original interior decoration was removed to be used in other sites....still cool to see, though
- The Capitoline Museum - where the big bronze statute of the She-Wolf feeding the baby twins, Romulus and Remus is. And the Palazzo du Nuovo in front of the museum was designed by Michelangelo
- Trevi Fountain - ok, nice, but...is that it???? Yes, I did throw in one coin, to assure I'll come back to Rome one day. Two would have meant I fell in love and three woud have meant I fell in love with an Italian and moved to Rome - wasn't sure Colin would appreciate that, though, so hence, just the one.
- Santa Maria Maggiore
- The Vatican Museums
- St. Peter's Basicilica
- Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli
- San Callisto Catacombs
I'll post about the Vaican City and Hadrian's Villa in separate posts.
Our last day we went back to Trevi fountain so R. could take some more pictures, then we decided to go visit one of the Catacombs along the Appian Way. We found one of the hop on/hop off buses, called the Archeo-bus, which took you to some of the archaeological sites and along the Appian Way. It was hot that day, so perfect not to walk. The catacombs were interesting, but not really much to see. What was interesting was that the oldest tombs were at the top...as each layer was filled, they dug deeper for the next grouping. The bus ride took us up and down the Appian Way, and it was pleasant to see the reletive quietness of Rome. It also took us past the Circus Maximus, which I am glad we didn't go out of our way for, as all that is there now is a grassy field.
No comments:
Post a Comment