Rome I

Not inhibited by the rain and thunderstorms that plagued our entire weekend, we set out on Friday morning for the Colosseum and to wander around the Palatine and old Roman Forum. Rome is neat in that there are ruins there that are thousands of years old ... in the middle of a big city with traffic driving around them and modern buildings built around them.

As you will notice, some pictures are quite dark and stormy and some have blue skies and sunshine. The weather was quite variable and yes the pictures below are in the order they were taken.

Some rush hour traffic outside of the Colosseum:



The Arch of Constantine, right next to the Colosseum:



A cross inside the Colosseum:



Some pictures from the inside:



As you can see, some of the floor of the arena has been restored so you get an idea of the level where the gladiators would fight. The floor was apparently also retractable so that the arena could be filled with water for naval battles. Fun.



After the Colosseum we wandered down the road a bit and then wandered around the Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum. These two places are basically large areas of ruins that used to be important buildings. The Palatine Hill is where the emperor of Rome and all of the rich people lived. So below are some pictures of all the different ruins there.



This was the stadium:



Not sure what this is, but possibly another church (it's hard to tell all the ruins apart and we didn't have a map or tour guide):



My next house:



This used to be a church. It's huge.



Another church. No shortage of churches, both ruined and still in use, in Rome.



Another church, and another arch:



After seeing the Palatine Hill and Roman Forum ruins we wandered over to the Trevi Fountain. Supposedly, if you throw a coin into this fountain, it ensures that you will return to Rome. I did not feel like spending the money.

I managed to take a seriously crooked picture of the fountain. Wish I'd paid more attention or taken a better one when we were back at it the next day but I didn't. It was raining and I was trying to huddle under our shared 5-Euro umbrella and not get the camera lens wet.



I actually just put the above picture in to make you all dizzy looking at it. This one's better:



The Trevi Fountain is huge ... I didn't take a picture that got the entire thing in but it extends out further on both sides than you can see in the above pictures.

After the Trevi Fountain we headed over to the Pantheon which is like Martin's favorite building, ever. It was used as a place to worship many different gods for awhile but then it was decided that that was paganism and it was converted to a church where you could only worship the one god that was allowed. It has a big hole in its dome to let in light:



Martin says that even Saint Peter's dome is smaller than the Pantheon's dome, out of respect for the great architectural feat that is the Pantheon.

Raphael's tomb is also inside:



Lucky us, the front of it was covered in scaffolding:



And there's a fun fountain in the square in front of the Pantheon:



And that's it for day one in Rome. We went back to our hotel and ended up having dinner around the corner from it at a great little Italian place. We stayed at a B&B right next to the Vatican and there were priests everywhere. Moreso near our hotel than in the rest of Rome but there were priests everywhere we went, at tourist spots, in restaurants, etc.