Wednesday, October 13th

We woke up on Wednesday to find a very damp city. A big rainstorm had passed during the night, but the skies looked like they were starting to clear. We ate breakfast at the hotel in a 4th story room that overlooked to Colosseum. The hotel we were staying at caters primarily to British travelers, so the breakfast was British continental. There were tasty chocolate pastries, scrambled eggs, funny little cocktail wieners, plates of cheese and deli meats, and American cereals. The most amusing part was that we were eating breakfast in Rome overlooking the Colosseum, and the music in the background was Rhianna and Ke$ha.

The plan for the day was a 4-hour walking tour followed by a trip to the Vatican Museum and St. Peters Basilica. We met our tour group on the other side of the Colosseum. We had arranged it through a company called Context, which specializes in small group tours by highly educated guides. There were three couples on the tour, and it turned out that two were from Seattle and one was from Portland. I guess it’s the time of the year to escape the Pacific Northwest! Our tour guide was a French woman with a Masters degree in Art History who had lived in San Francisco for 3 years before moving to Rome. She provided a great narrative as we wandered through the historical sites.

Our first stop was the Colosseum. We walked around the outside and she described the ingenious system that the Romans used to build a retractable awning that could protect the crowd of 50,000 people from the harsh summer rays. We entered the site and got some great views of the inside of the arena. One of the most interesting lessons was that the name “Colosseum” comes from the fact that the building was constructed next to a huge statue of the emperor Nero, which was later defaced and re-faced as the god Colossus. The building was referred to as “next to Colossus”, which later morphed into Colosseum. The name stuck and now we call all sorts of stadiums “Coliseums”, while the name really has nothing to do with sports or circular arenas. The type of building was called an Amphitheatre.

We next headed to the Roman Forum, a collection of ruins that was the heart of Ancient Rome. It was amazing to see all the different levels of the buildings. As the civilization grew, new buildings were constructed on the ruins of old ones and the whole city grew vertically. By the 5th century AD, the city level was almost 20 feet taller than it had begun. Now that may of the sites have been excavated down to the original levels, you see a lot of doors and entryways that are suspended 20 feet in the air. It’s like digging a house down to its basement and looking up from the hole.

The last stop on the tour was Palentine Hill, where the Roman civilization was started by Romulus in about 750 B.C. The hill was the site of giant compounds for the emperors and senators, and the houses on Palentine eventually were called palaces. The hill provided great view of the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. One of the highlights was the palace of emperor Domitian which was nearly a quarter mile long on each side. It also had a great view of Circus Maximus, where the Roman chariot races were observed by more than 200,000 people many years ago. This concluded our walking tour, and we bid goodbye to our friends from the Northwest.

After a brief stop at the hotel, we boarded the Metro and headed to Vatican City. We ate a quick pizza lunch and entered the Vatican Museum. I had no idea that the Vatican had such a vast assortment of art, statues, and tapestries that made the National Museum look like an amateur collection. It was amazing to see some of the Egyptian artifacts that were stolen by various Popes throughout the century. There were also almost endless hallways with extravagant artwork on the walls and ceiling. The highlight of the museum is the Sistine Chapel, with Michelangelo’s famous artwork depicting the entirety of Christian history. We sat and listened to pod casts describing the paintings and the incredible amount of work that it took to create them. I didn’t realize that the paint could only be applied to wet plaster, so Michelangelo had to have the walls plastered each day and just enough area that he could finish painting in a day. If there were any mistakes, the area would have to be re-plastered. I can’t imagine doing that for nearly four years!

From the chapel, we walked out to St. Peter’s Square and took pictures of St. Peter’s Basilica. By that time we were getting pretty tired, so we decided to skip the tour of St. Peter’s and head back to the hotel.

Dinner on Wednesday was our first chance to sit down and experience a true Italian meal. We ate at Urbana 47, a restaurant that specializes in creating dishes from locally available food. I had a wonderful chicken dish, and Christina had lamb and potatoes that was to-die-for. Although we only had a two-course meal, we still took about two hours to savor the food. We got back to the hotel around 11:00 and were asleep before we hit the pillow.