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Day 6 - Rome

Whew! Lots of time to… reflect, yeah… on the honeymoon. When last we left our heroic couple, Lacie and I had just arrived in Rome. For our first full day in the city, we planned (with the help of our Rough Guide to Italy) to hit the highlights of ancient Rome.

We set out from the hotel fairly early, and before we even crossed the Tiber we’d had one of those quintessentially Roman moments. See, the thing I’ve always heard about Rome is that it’s so full of neat things (architecture, art, public spaces, etc.) that you’re bound to run across some of the most fantastic things out of sheer luck. Our first such serendipitous encounter was the Palace of Justice, a gigantic building standing at one end of a bridge over the Tiber. The front of the Palace is adorned with carvings and sculptures, and a number of imposing statues (presumably of historic lawmakers) stand guard outside. It was, to say the least, surprising to come out of a narrow alley to a view of the river and this huge marble building.

After leaving the Palace of Justice and crossing the river, we headed south until we came to the Piazza Navona. This is one of the largest piazze in Rome, and is the most unusually-shaped as it was built on the site of an old stadium. Over the years, three ornate fountains have been built in the Piazza - one depicting Neptune fighting a sea monster, one with a Moor holding a dolphin (don’t get me started on the iconography of dolphins in the Renaissance period), and the third representing the four great rivers of the ancient world. This last fountain was designed by Bernini, one of Italy’s most famous architects and sculptors (we saw his work all over the place). It also shows another trademark of Rome - it’s topped by an obelisk that was ‘acquired’ during Rome’s domination of Egypt. Like Bernini’s work, there are obelisks all over the place in the city.

From the Piazza Navona, we walked on to the Pantheon - originally a temple to all the gods, it was repurposed (ooh, business speak. I’ve clearly been back at work too long) when the Empire was Christianized. It now serves as a chapel of sorts, and has the tomb of the painter Raphael. Over the years, some of the grandeur of the building has been reduced - the dome, for instance, was originally covered in bronze, but that was removed by one of the Popes for use in St. Peter’s basilica.

The next big site we saw was Trajan’s forum, one of the extensions to the main Imperial Forum built by various emperors as Rome grew beyond the capacity of the original site. Tons of ruins, and (oddly enough) an exhibition of modern sculpture influenced by classical design. We walked through Trajan’s forum for a while and looked into the other ‘extra’ fora (Caesar’s, Augustus’, and one other whose name escapes me at the moment (darn this long lag between honeymoon and writeup!)).

Finally, we made it to the main Imperial forum. We walked under a triumphal arch dedicated to Septimius Severus, examined the ruins of numerous temples, saw the graves of Romulus and Julius Caesar, and basically had a grand (though dusty) time. As we wandered through the Forum, we kept getting glimpses of the Colosseum, though, which drew us onward.

The Colosseum is, in a word, astounding. It must’ve been amazing when it was first built, but despite the ravages of time it’s still a remarkable building. You can go inside and walk around on two levels; the floor is gone, so you can see into the tunnels underneath where people and animals were kept for the games.

On the second story, there was an exhibition of the history of the rediscovery of the Imperial forum. Tons of statuary, old photographs projected onto hanging screens - all in all, a very nicely designed project.

By this time, however, both Lacie and I were getting a little tired, so we started back towards the hotel. Along the way, we saw Mussolini’s maps (four giant relief maps of the state of the Roman empire at various points in its history - very cool), a demonstration against the war in Iraq (this was just after the Italian citizens had been kidnapped, though we didn’t know it at the time), and some more columns and obelisks. Woohoo, first day in Rome!

Day 6 pictures taken: 93
Total pictures taken: 390