DESTINATION #6: Rome, Italy (Days 1 - 4)
The Eternal City, the starting point for the study of Western history, and a city of legendary proportions: one can only be talking about Rome. Our visit to this monumental city lasted for several days, but we will give you the highlights so that you can traverse the whole with us without getting bored.
We started off our tour where everyone probably does: at the Colosseum, Rome’s most famous monument. Because we were visiting it on the weekend and because we arrived relatively early, we were able to get in within twenty minutes (many people wait as long as two hours!). The Colosseum was definitely a wonder of ancient architecture. It was designed in such a fashion as to be able to seat 50,000 spectators within 10 minutes! Even cooler was the fact that it was designed with a retractable sun covering, powered by 1,000 Roman naval soldiers.
We also took a walk through the Roman Forum, the area beside the Colosseum where life in ancient Rome took place. It was here where the majority of temples were, as well as the Senate, the marketplace and in later times, the palaces of the emperors. Because of the amount of restoration going on, many of the sites were closed to the public.
Kind of by accident we stumbled across the Mamertine prison, Rome’s first maximum security prison. It was a subterranean prison that prisoners were lowered into. It also happened to be a well, so many prisoners did not stay long (sleeping is a bit difficult in water, unless you’re a fish, I guess). The Mamertine held some of Rome’s most notorious enemies, namely Vercigentorix, king of the Gauls, and the apostles Peter and Paul. It was a neat tour.
Rome can be summed up as consisting of three things: restaurants, plazas and churches. We visited all three because they exist there in abundance. Two churches stick out from our visit there. The first was the Jesuit mother church called Il Gesu. If anything is apparent about the Jesuit order it is that their members came from wealthy families. Il Gesu is probably the most lavish church we have seen, decorated in the Baroque style and laden with jewels and precious metals (the Jesuit emblem above the altar is made out of one solid piece of lapis lazuli).The ceiling is also incredible, adorned with a painting entitled, “Triumph of the Name of Jesus,” by Giovanni Battista Gaulli. It tells the story of the Last Judgment as recorded in the Bible, with the faithful ascending to heaven and the wicked being cast down into hell. The painting has a 3-D effect, making one feel that they can see the bodies being hurtled to the ground. Though the painting is perhaps unsettling, it is still beautiful.
The second church was home to a strange emblem, the Bocca della Verita (literally, “the mouth of truth”), a round stone face on an exterior wall of the church (you may know of its existence because of Audrey Hepburn’s movie, Roman Holiday or a Robert Downey Jr. movie Only You). A legend began in the Middle Ages that if one lied while having one’s hand in the sculpture’s mouth, they would be struck dead. To further propagate this legend, the parish priest of the time kept a live scorpion in the mouth of the sculpture. Debra and I did however find one loophole to this form of a lie detector test: simply lie to someone without your hand in the Bocca’s mouth.
No visit to Rome can be complete without a visit to the Fontana di Trevi, a lovely fountain in a lovely shopping district. This is the legendary fountain where one is supposed to throw in coins in order to come back to Rome sooner. However, with the conversion cost of the Euro, we figured we’d best hasten our return by not throwing our money in the water. We did however capture a few pics before heading on our way.
A lovely little surprise we encountered was an exhibit of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions. We were actually on our way somewhere else when we found this little gem of a stop. Da Vinci truly was brilliant! Beyond inspiring a Hollywood movie or two, his keen interest in mechanics, robotics, fashion, astronomy, geometry, military science, art and medicine were before his time. It is also beautifully ironic that his works have returned to this city that so long ago rejected him as heretical and forced him to renounce his ideas. If I can only remember the words to that Alanis Morrisette song…
We were fortunate enough to visit many other stops while in Rome, but these are the ones that stick out the most and probably are the most interesting. The reality is that one can’t really see all of Rome in four days. However, we felt that we did a pretty good job at seeing the things that struck us as interesting and worthwhile. So we hope you’ve enjoyed this little update on our time in this amazing city.
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