Visiting 2nd Century A.D.

We planned on tackling the Colosseum and Palatine Hill and the Forum on Sunday, but we decided to check out the Pantheon first on our way there.

Since it was Sunday, we were part of the growing crowd waiting outside for services to end so that we could check out the interior. Yup, it's still a working church! I thought the exterior itself was pretty nice...

We had some time to kill so we roamed the nearby streets and did some souvenir shopping at a fab paper shop nearby, Il Papiro, where all the paper is handmade and hand-painted!

We were eventually admitted into the church, and we got the chance to see the largest unsupported dome in the world. It was pretty damn cool, especially since I took an architecture class in college and never imagined that I'd be seeing the Pantheon in person someday. It's unbelievable that it's been standing since the 2nd century A.D.!

Afterwards, we walked to Piazza Navona to check out Bernini's famous fountains. Three of them reside in the piazza. There's the Fontana del Moro, and the Neptune Fountain at the north end.

The most famous is the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, which resides in the center of the piazza and represents the four great rivers known at the time.

Other than the fountains, there's loads of artists in the piazza all plying their trade, which reminded me a lot of Paris.

We were pretty tired from all the gawking we had done thus far and the day's heat was getting to us so we decided to break for lunch at Il Focaccio nearby. We were pretty hungry by then and the waitress had to convince us that we didn't need to order a pasta entree on top of the two pizzas we had already ordered.

A Roman friend had recommended the restaurant to us, and the pizzas were absolutely amazing and really reasonably priced! We were pretty sure that it was going to be good when we sat down since we were surrounded by obvious locals i.e. a flock of priests dressed in their church duds.

We still had a bit of room so we wandered down Vicolo Savelli to a small family-run pastry shop called La Deliziosa, where we bought the most delicious chocolate eclair we had ever tasted. The people who ran the shop were so charming and incredibly nice. We definitely got some jealous looks while we dug into our eclair.

Fed and watered, we decided that we were ready to tackle the Colosseum.

First, we had to fight the massive crowds that had turned out for the local Sports Day, but we could see the Colosseum from afar and headed in the general direction, and we could gauge how close we were by the many "gladiators" began to appear.

We managed to get there late enough to avoid most of the large tourist groups, but we still had to queue up for tickets in the internal corridors to go inside the Colosseum.

The inside was definitely worth waiting for!

We could see where the gladiators' entrance was and the complicated underbelly of the arena where the animals were kept before they popped out of the wooden floor for their dramatic entrance.

As gruesome as its history is, the stadium is pretty freaking impressive. And of course, I couldn't resist the chance to pose as a victorious gladiator. J just egged me on by reciting lines from the movie Gladiator - "You, who are about to fight, we salute you!"

After I was done acting the fool, we crossed the street to head over to Palatine Hill and the Forum.

Let me just say, Palatine Hill is sprawling and the paths are more like trails. J and I negotiated our way in our street shoes, but hiking boots probably would've been more appropriate. It was also a good thing that we visited rather late in the afternoon as there is no cover from the heat.

Palatine Hill seemed more like a huge park with a ton of ruins than like an archaeological site. It used to be where all the politicians and wealthy lived, kind of like the Beverly Hills of back-in-the-day. We saw the house of Augustus and Livia, which were pretty nondescript, and the Stadium (garden? racetrack? no one knows).

 

We moved on to the Forum, where we were pretty much surrounded by ruins. They weren't roped off or anything so you could pretty much touch them if you wanted to.

My favorite was the House of the Vestal Virgins. The virgins were charged with keeping alight the flame of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth. The virgins were always noblewoman, and they served for 30 years. If they ever lost their virginity during this time, they were buried alive. Talk about hard-core...

We were both pretty worn out by then, physically and mentally, and I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes, so we were pretty happy to beat a retreat back to the hotel as the sun went down. We were so tired and our feet were sore so we made the very wise decision to order room service and call it a night.