Palatine Hill, Roman Forum, and Colosseum

We started out another lovely day in Rome with a walk towards the Colosseum and Roman Forum. On the way we passed the Altare della Patria:

We looked into hiring a tour guide, but in the end decided it would be too expensive. Instead we purchased a guidebook called "Everyday Life in Imperial Rome" that had photographs of the ruins as they are today, with pages where you could flip and see a superimposed reconstruction of how things looked in ancient times. It was really helpful to have a guide like that, because there is very little information posted to tell you what you are looking at. If we go back again when the kids are older, I think we will spend the money and hire a guide though - I love that sort of thing! But with little kids it was nice to go at our own pace, stopping to read a little from the guidebook and looking at pictures with reconstructions here and there. We started at the Palatine Hill entrance.

Aqueducts!

Here's some info about Palatine Hill I copied and pasted from another website: 

"The significance of Palatine Hill is that it was here that Rome (and hence the whole of the Roman Empire) was founded under the direction of Romulus. The Palatine Hill is the site of the Lupercal Cave; where folklore says the twins Romulus and Remus were found by the she-wolf Lupa (symbol of Rome) who then raised them.

In later years, the hill became a residential district attracting the nobility. It was also believed that the air was cleaner at the top of the hill, and the nobility were less likely to catch the diseases of the poorer classes at the bottom. In time, however, the area gave way to imperial palaces and drew the famous such as Caligula (murdered here by members of his Praetorian Guard) and Nero."

There was some kind of modern art installation gallery throughout the ruins. It was really distracting and I didn't like it at all. Here you can see the word "LOSER" installed in the distance. Not my kind of art.

The weather really did feel tropical!

We were all walking around enjoying the gardens and ruins, when suddenly Lily ran over and said, "I fell, and I have a little smudge of dirt." I didn't think it would be too bad, but then she turned to the side and revealed this "little smudge":

Covered in mud, armpit to ankle! This was one of many situations where our "emergency towel" (a microfiber towel purchased at the dollar store) came in handy. Using water from one of many public fountains, Joe scrubbed her off as best we could. She was very wet, but thank goodness it was a hot day! Carrying on...views from the top of Palatine Hill!

Kids, as usual, amusing themselves with dirt and water:

Arch of Titus

Roman wildlife

Ancient Roman road, with track marks from heavy use by chariots!

Roman Lunch

Fun with Ruins

After lunch, we headed over to the Colosseum. In retrospect, we should have done this first thing in the morning instead of the Roman Forum - the line was super long. We got in line at 2:30pm, and didn't get through the metal detector to enter the Colosseum until 3:31. There were several people walking up and down the line, trying to sell you higher priced special tour tickets that would allow you to skip the line, but in the end we decided to just wait.

The Colosseum was impressive. Here's a little bit of history copied from another website:

"The emperors of Rome built this large amphitheatre for gladiatorial shows and hunts of wild animals which became the symbol of the Eternal City.

In 80 A.D. there was a magnificent inauguration with games that lasted one hundred days during which five thousand beasts were killed. The shows were free of charge and the seats were assigned according to the class of spectators.

The Colosseum was built primarily to entertain the masses in brutal and barbaric games. Some were beast on beast combat to the death. Others were people fighting animals to the death, while the most popular was the human on human combat. Gladiators were slaves, often captured in war, that were trained in special schools to fight each other to the death.

The gladiatorial games were over by the year 438 A.D. while the shows with hunts of wild beasts continued until 523."

It's hard to believe such horrible things were viewed as entertainment by thousands of people. We held a moment of silence while inside as a memorial to the many lives lost in this place.

The original floor is no longer existent. They have partially rebuilt some of it, in the lower right corner of this photograph. What you see in the remaining section is the ruins of a complex underground network of chambers and tunnels used to house the gladiators and beasts and all that was necessary for the combats and hunts. There was also a large system of water piping used to wash out the arena, and also to flood it for amazing mock sea battles.

Tickets to attend shows were free, but there was a complex system of steps, tunnels, and passageways for the public masses to orderly enter the stadium and find their seats.  You had to enter through the correct archway according to your numbered ticket. Seats were also numbered, and in tiers according to social rank and sex. This photo shows a small section of original marble step seating at a premier level reserved for senators. The next tier was in masonry, and the upper tiers were made of wood and for lower class women. 

In this next photo you can see a Christian cross which stands in the Colosseum, with a plaque stating:

"The amphitheater, one consecrated to triumphs, entertainments, and the impious worship of pagan gods, is now dedicated to the sufferings of the martyrs purified from impious superstitions."

Back outside again, we walked around Rome some more. I thought it was really cool that there were sections of ruins all around the city. I love that there is so much history here.

Cobblestone Streets!

Whenever we saw interesting looking churches as we were walking, if we had time, we would go inside. There were so many great churches all over Rome. This one is the Basilica di San Giovanni dei Fiorentini.

We were often surprised to find some pretty amazing relics and bodies of saints inside. This one had the footSt. Mary Magdalene… the first foot that entered the Empty Tomb on Easter morning.

At the end of the day we headed back to our little Rome Airbnb apartment for our last night in Rome - tomorrow we are headed to Naples!

For a good time, strap on a baby

We hit the Vatican Museum today.  We thought, at the last minute, we might want to book a tour guide to tell us more about the different things on display, but our emails were bringing back news that the guide services were either all booked or the cost was astronomical.  And we had missed the opportunity to pre-purchase skip-the-line tickets ahead of time, they were all sold out.  So we were going to have to do things the old fashioned way and queue with all the other dummies that didn't pre-book tickets or guides.

After researching what we wanted to see and different things about the museum until 2am, Katie woke up at 6 (so Melissa was too), and the rest of the kids were up at 7:30.  The ticket office opened at 9, so we needed to leave by 8:15 at the latest so we could get there early.  We thought we were going to the right location, but we got to the back of the line (super far from the museum entrance even though we were 10-15 minutes early) where an information guy told us we needed tickets elsewhere, and the basilica was closing at 1pm today.  We said we only wanted the museum and he said "then [we] could buy them inside the museum. Okay well lets stand in line I guess.  Another guy at that line pointed to Katie, in the carrier on my front, and said "with baby quick line" and pointed right.  Nice, we can save some time at least.  Well we skipped past literally hundreds and hundreds of those dummies, but got to another checkpoint.  He said that we shouldn't be there and that it was only for pre-booked ticket holders or groups.  Well I just flashed my baby and he said "ok you can go here" and we skipped a bunch more people and got up close to the entrance.  Yeah, we had to wait then, since the museums weren't quite open yet, and then get through actual security.  But instead of what I can imagine was hours of standing in the sun, we were buying our tickets in less than 20 minutes.  And that, friends, is why you always want to know where your baby is and carry it with you.

Melissa's (and a little of my) planning really turned out to be helpful.  We used our new guidebook and walked pretty much all 4+ miles of museum gallery halls.  At least we think we read that number somewhere. From leaving to arriving back at our apartment, we were gone for probably 5 1/2 hours.  The collections were distributed mainly by era and not by quality, so it was easier to compare between master works and those done by a less-skilled hand. And we saw LOTS of art, mostly very good, some not so much. Some of Melissa's favorite rooms were painted by Raphael, some finished by his students after his sudden death at 37. There was a very large collection of Etruscan works, which even the Ancient Romans thought was ancient (double ancient).  The Sistine Chapel was amazing, and even though photos and video are prohibited, we (like everyone else) snuck a few. Some incredibly beautiful artwork went totally unnoticed by others - the mosaic tilework on the floors. I didn't see a single other person truly looking at the floors. With interest anyway.

Statues of Michelangelo and Raphael adorn the entrance

The navigators

Lily with Laocoon and his Sons

photobomb

Katie loved this animal room

Double-ancient jugs

Joey comparing differences between 2 similar containers 

Mary with an interactive Etruscan tomb tour

Hall of Maps

Raphael's School of Athens

Some of the less popular contemporary art

"A two year old could draw this!"

Yep, that's a mosaic

Zoomed in, see the tiles?

Kids enamored with some (I would guess ceremonial) picks and trowels

Raph Transfiguration - he died suddenly before finishing this painting,
and the lower portion was completed by two of his best pupils

Caravaggio

We rested at our apartment for a few hours, recovering from the Vatican mini-marathon. We bought some pizza and pasta from the joint around the corner, the Montecarlo, and supped around 5.  I decided, okay it's time to get out and about again, so we headed to a little play area over by Castel-Sant'Angelo. Only to find out from a police officer it closes at 6. Oh, well lets walk along the river down into Trastevere where another playground is hopefully still open. Well we get down there and it starts sprinkling. Then a little harder. Without our umbrellas we ducked into a church to avoid the rain, which happened to be Saint Cecilia convent. It houses the relics of St. Cecilia and her husband St Valerian, although we were there late and couldn't visit the crypt.  We were only there a short time, but the rain stopped by the time we were leaving. We stopped to get some gelato to reward the kids for walking so much today.  Well after gelato it started raining again, so we ran across the Tiber River to take cover under the trees on the other side.  On the bridge an umbrella pusher approached us, and we ended up bargaining for 3 umbrellas.  Just in time too, because it started downpouring about 5 minutes later. And then the pee-dancing started....

Found this stump carving along the Tiber

Beautiful Baroque sculpture of St Cecilia

We got back to the apartment just in time, and I kept the kids here while Melis ran out for some breakfast foods and to get some more contact solution.

Note from Melis: I took this while out shopping. I would never want to drive on these Italian streets. So narrow, and often crowded with people. See that bright light in the distance? That's an oncoming car!

At least one blog post here (maybe more, but it's already almost midnight), and some planning for our excursion tomorrow.  Hopefully a little less walking though :)