I’m calling this Day 2, but really we took about a 3 hour power nap and headed out again to see what we could before we passed out from exhaustion. We weren’t too far away from the Colosseum, so we decided to make the trek down there and stop at a couple interesting churches along the way. First, Becky had to stop and try out the gelato – it was as good as advertised.
Our first stop was the Santa Maria Maggiore church – a huge church a couple blocks from our hotel. It is said to be the church with the longest daily mass – people have taken mass here since the 5th century. When we walked in, there were priests up and down the sides of the church offering confession in multiple languages. There was a service going on as well in one of the chapels inside. The church was very ornate – the ceiling was lined with gold murals and the walls were covered with paintings and sculptures. Here are a few pictures from this church.
Stop 2 was another church – San Pietro in Vincoli – which was famous for its sculpture of Moses done by Michelangelo. The church itself wasn’t terribly impressive from the outside, but the inside (while not nearly as ornate as the Maggiore church) was interesting. Here are some pictures from there including the picture of Moses:
I’ve been looking forward to visiting the Colosseum since I can remember. To me there’s something magical and interesting about a 2000 year old structure and the fact that Roman’s used to entertain themselves in a big stadium just like we do today watching soccer or baseball, etc. Of course, the games were a little different back then, but it was cool to see the structure where this all went down. Becky and I got audio tours to get a little more background on the place. They started construction in 72 AD, so it’s easily the oldest standing structure that she or I had ever visited. They exposed the area underneath the floor so you could see all the little compartments that were used to store animals and gladiators before they entered the main stage. It is thought that the Colosseum could hold between 45,000 and 70,000 people at its peak. The emperor and the senators sat down closest to the floor and the higher you sat meant the lower your social status. The Colosseum fell into many years of disrepair after the fall of Rome in 476. Other building projects after that period actually harvested stone and bricks from the Colosseum, so that plus earthquakes left the stadium in the kind of shape it’s still in today.
Just outside the Colosseum are an Arch – the Arco Di Constantine – and the Roman Forum. The Forum is mostly in shambles, but you can see parts of the surviving structure. We couldn’t go in the park itself, since it was closed by the time we got there, but here are a few pictures from outside:
By this point we were starving, but luckily we found a nice restaurant pretty much across the street from the last picture there. It had outside seating underneath some vines and looked reasonably priced, we went for it. Becky had a pasta and I had a filet that came with pasta and we split some bruschetta. It was very good and only 33 Euro, so not too expensive. From there we headed back to our hotel where Becky passed out in about 2 minutes from all the flying and the walking.
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