Rome - Day Three

This morning when we woke up it was pretty cloudy out and the weather forecast was predicting rain so we planned on walking around to different churches and places where we could be inside most of the day. But when we walked outside it was cloudy but not raining so we decided to take advantage of it and head over to the Colosseum. We walked around the outside a little bit and over to the entrance before it started to drizzle so we got in line to go inside. As we were waiting it started to pour but we were inside of the Colosseum at this point so we just had to wait out the rain before walking around the interior. After spending some time in the gift shop and walking around the covered area the rain started to slow down so we could go check out the interior of the arena. We walked out onto the top level of the Colosseum and from there you could see all the way around. The floor of the arena was no longer intact and the network of passages underneath was exposed. The structure looked bigger on the inside than I thought it would from the outside and although the seating was no longer intact either you could see the slope of were it once was it was cool to imagine the place filled with spectators watching gladiators fight each other and animals on the arena floor.

After spending some time inside of the Colosseum we headed out and took some time to walk around the Arch of Constantine before heading to Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum. Palatine Hill is said to be the hill where the twin brothers Romulus and Remus were taken care of by a shewolf before they grew up and Romulus killed his brother before founding the city of Rome. There were lots of ruins on the hill including the House of Augustus which we walked through. From the Hill we headed over to the Roman Forum which was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip. The forum is a large area filled with the remains of different temples and churches. There were several temples that still had a few of their columns intact and you could begin to make out what they may have once looked like. The floor of the forum was filled with fallen walls and pieces of columns that had once been part of those temples. We happened to come upon a tour guide who was giving a free English tour of the Forum who we followed around for a while. One of the most interesting things that he pointed out was the Column of Phocus that was still standing that he explained the Pope at the time traded to the emperor Phocus in exchange for the Pantheon, turning the Pantheon from a pagan temple into a Catholic Church and explaining why it is still in such great condition today.

When we reached the end of the Forum it started to rain harder so we started to head over to the Campigdolio, a public square designed by Michelangelo. The space was smaller than I had expected and there was a 12 pointed star designed into the floor of the trapezoid shaped piazza and a statue of Marcus Aurelius in the center. Unfortunately it was raining pretty hard at this point so we couldn't spend much time here and headed down the ramped stair from the piazza. Walking down from the piazza it was hard to miss the enormous Monument of Vittorio Emanuele II to the right. The huge white monument seemed a little out of place and almost overbearing although it was cool to the see the Italian flags blowing in the stormy weather. We walked past the huge monument and over to Trajan's Forum next door where we hung out under some trees while the rain slowed down. With the weather being lousy we spent the rest of the day doing some souvenir shopping and stopping in to see some churches. We saw one church, Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, designed by Bernini, the architect and sculptor who designed the piazza at the Vatican and whose tomb we saw in the Santa Maria Maggiore. The interior had large marble columns and was heavily ornamented with sculpture. Another church that we stopped in that I really liked, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontana named for the four fountains at the corners of the intersection where the church sits, was designed by the architect Borromini. It had a small, simple white interior and an oval dome in the ceiling ornamented with a geometric pattern. One symbol that repeated throughout the church was a blue and red equal armed cross. The last church we stopped at was Santa Maria della Vittoria, which housed the famous Bernini sculpture the Ecstasy of St. Theresa.

Our hostel offered a free pasta dinner on weekdays so we decided to get some red wine and take advantage of that for dinner. We hung out at the hostel for a while before going out to the Julius Caesar Pub, a bar recommended by the receptionist at our hostel.