The Great Continental Gallivant, Part the Second: The First Three Days in Rome

We left Florence with the intention to go to Siena for the day, and then arrive in Rome in the evening. However, the train we were planning on taking disappeared, leaving us with no option but to head to Rome early. Our train rolled down through the beautiful Tuscan countryside, passing fields which in spring would have been filled with grain, grapes, and olives, but which now lay fallow. The ride was beautiful, if somewhat slow, and we arrived in Rome around 2:30. We disembarked and boarded the metro for our ride to the hostel. There we checked in and promptly went to sleep. We woke up around 7, and went for a walk, buying gelato on our way to St. Peter’s Square. The square still contained a large nativity scene, built around the massive obelisk in the square’s center. We walked around, admiring the floodlit facade of St. Peter’s Basilica, before walking down the Via della Consolazione to the River Tiber. Our meandering way took us up the river to Castel Sant’Angelo, an ugly fortress which functioned for centuries as the papal residence. The building, now a museum like many of Rome’s old edifices, is still surrounded by the trenches and breastworks built during the 16th century to fend off the warring French and Spanish armies which used Italy as battleground for their conflicts.
The next day we took on Ancient Rome, which lies in the southeast of the city. Our first stop was, naturally, the Colosseum. The Colosseum was built between 72 and 80 AD, and was begun by the emperor Flavius Vespasianus, and it was known to the ancient Romans not as the Colosseum but as the Flavian Amphitheater, a name which belied the slaughter that took place within. The Colosseum usually hosted games for a certain period of time, usually 100 days, twice per year, with an off-season in between to recruit and train new gladiators. Contrary to popular belief, Christians were not thrown to the lions here; that happened in the Circus Maximus. The Colosseum was a place for combat, between gladiators, between animals, or between hunters and their prey. The Roman Empire spared no expense in stocking the Colosseum, and beasts from every corner of the known world were butchered there: tigers and elephants from India; lions, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, giraffes, zebras and hyenas from Africa; wolves, boars, and wild elk from Germany and Gaul.
The structure gradually fell into disrepair after the fall of the Roman Empire. Citizens of Rome removed its marble and limestone for their houses and churches and, more importantly, the iron clamps build into the pillars to prevent collapse due to earthquake, which they melted down to forge into weapons. The Colosseum is basically built of bricks, with marble or limestone cladding to give it the appearance of being far grander. With only its brick and mortar remaining, the structure collapsed into its current state due to earthquake. We entered the Colosseum below the area where the emperor and his guests would have sat during the games, then traversing one quarter of the elliptical perimeter before climbing to the second floor, where we walked around the entirety of the building.
After we left the Colosseum, we walked north a bit, trying to get to the Church of St. Peter in Chains. The church has two claims to fame: it possesses what are supposedly the chains worn by Peter during his imprisonment, and also the tomb of Pope Julius II [check this, and add a bit of history], which has Michelangelo’s famous statue of Moses. The church was closed when we arrived, so we turned around and headed for the Forum.
We entered the Forum at the base of the Palatine Hill, upon which the Palace of Domitian resided (and still resides today, if in ruins). Domitian, a somewhat unbalanced emperor with a tendency toward obsession and paranoia, built the palace in 92, 4 years before his assassination. The palace was according to contemporary accounts a masterpiece of architecture:

“Awesome and vast is the edifice, distinguished not by a hundred columns but by as many as could shoulder the gods and the sky if Atlas were let off. The Thunderer’s [quite possibly a reference to Augustus] palace next door gapes at it and the gods rejoice that you are lodged in a like abode […]: so great extends the structure and the sweep of the far-flung hall, more expansive than that of an open plain, embracing much enclosed sky and lesser only than its master.”

Thus spoke the poet Statius of the palace.
The entire Palatine Hill is covered in buildings, both above and below ground, and the Palace of Domitian is only the topmost. Archeologists have discovered and excavated the palaces of Augustus and Tiberius as well, and are currently preparing for another excavation campaign. After walking through the ruins of the dwellings of both Domitian and Augustus (the latter being far better preserved due to being underground for a long period of time, we walked down, past the Arch of Titus, and into the Forum proper. Several buildings of the Forum are particularly well-preserved: the Courts of Maxentius built shortly before the reign of Constantine in the 4th century AD and whose roofs aided Michelangelo in his design of St. Peter’s Basilica; a temple to Romulus and Remus which possesses the original bronze doors and locks it was built with in the ; and a crematorium where the body of Julius Caesar was burned. Of the reconstructions, the Curia (the building where the Roman senate met) is perhaps the best, as it contains nearly all of the original material. We left the forum by passing near, if not quite under, the Arch of Septimus Severus, one of the last of the Roman emperors.
The next day we set to the Vatican Museums in quite the same fashion with which we accomplished the Uffizi. Of the many galleries that we walked through, the best in my opinion were the art galleries, both antique and modern, which contain among other things Raphael’s massive Transfiguration, paintings of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier, and several works by Matisse and Dali; the old papal apartments which contain Raphael’s School of Athens and other famous frescoes; and of course the Sistine chapel, which was very crowded and not very visitor-friendly (no photographs of any kind allowed). Regrettably, the galleries containing the Museums’ collection of Roman sculpture (including well-known works such as the Discus Thrower by Myron, the Laocoon, and the statue of the she-wolf nursing the infant Romulus and Remus) were closed.
After the Vatican Museums, our next stop was naturally St. Peter’s Basilica. This building is huge. The interior is easily massive enough to contain several modern-day churches insides its walls adorned with sculpture, gold, and painting. While entry to the basilica was free, entry to the treasury and old sacristy, which contain a goodly deal of treasures and artifacts, as well as the dome (which can be ascended in a manner similar to the Florentine Duomo), was not thus cutting our visit much shorter than it might have been. After a brief journey through the crypt below we left and crossed the Tiber, our goal now being to see some of the sights in central Rome.
Our first stop was the Pantheon. Originally built as a temple to all of the Roman gods in 126 AD (hence the name) it was later converted into a church. In it are buried Italian heroes such as the kings Victor Emmanuel II (the first king of the unified Italian state) and Umberto I (his son and successor), as well as famous painters such as Raphael and Carracci, as well as the composer Corelli. The building is famous for its dome, which is half a meter longer in diameter than the dome of St. Peter’s, and which inspired the Renaissance obsession with domes. The height from the floor to the oculus in the top of the dome is 43.2 meters, the same as the dome’s diameter, thus allowing the interior chamber to accommodate a perfect sphere. After the Pantheon we proceeded to the Trevi Fountain. The fountain was built in 1453 on the site of an ancient intersection of 3 aqueducts (today only one remains), and embellished heavily from 1751-62. The massive facade depicts the Tritons (Roman sea-spirits) guiding the chariot of Oceanus (the god of the seas and oceans).
As we left it began to rain, which was followed by dozens of street merchants emerging to try and sell us umbrellas. We walked to the Spanish Steps, an large and elaborately adorned staircase which used to lead to the Spanish Embassy (now a library) and which are now a popular location for pictures, con artists, and vendors. As the rain began to come down more heavily we made our way to the Piazza del Populo, a large square in the northern area of downtown Rome. It is know for the two church which flank the Via del Corso as it enters the Piazza, churches which are also nearly exact copies of one another, with only small differences in dome and bell-tower to tell them apart. As the rain began to let up and the street merchants exchanged their umbrellas for postcards (“20 postcards 1 Euro please”) and trinkets, we walked back to our hostel.