Sept 30 -- Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome Sept 30

Dawn, Suzy, and me

I met Dawn, John, Miles, and Suzy in the lobby at 8:00 AM and we cabbed to the colosseum. Once there, we climbed to it's top and gazed into the excavated walkways and storage areas below the floor.




Much of the marble and metal had been stripped from the colosseum and other Roman monuments to use to build St Peter's and other catholic edifices during the 16th century. Remains of elaborate marble statuary sit next to brick walls where one has to imagine how they appeared two thousand years ago.





The colosseum was built about 80 AD. It was shortly after the Roman's had defeated the province of Judaea and because the Jews refused to worship the Roman Emperor as a god, 50,000 Jews were were forced into labor to build the colosseum and later, the arch of Constantine.




We spent the next couple of hours hiking through the rest of ancient Rome, Dawn reading from Rick Steve's guide. We ate lunch in the catacombs, in a place where the wine cellar was a sequence of catacomb rooms filled with dusty bottles and candelabras.

The afternoon was spent visiting the oldest church in Rome. Dating to 200AD, it is in the working section of town and it's occupants were the catholic faithful rather than tourists.

I spent the evening on my own walking around Rome visiting some of the places I had missed--the Spanish Steps and the Treve fountain.




Not having anyone to experience the romantic setting, I tossed two coins over my shoulder into the marble pool, bought a gelato, and people-watched. Four hours after leaving the hotel, I found it again and collapsed in satisfied exhaustion.