ROMA – Day Four

Sunday confirmed that in some ways the gods conspire against me. The previous night I swung by the basilica of San Clemente to see if I could get into the archaeological site. My ancient history professor, Jay Bregman, told me that below the church was a Mithraeum, a shrine to the sun god Mithras, whose cult gained wide popularity in the second and third centuries CE. It was closed, so I decided to go there first thing the next morning. I forgot it was Sunday. The site didn’t open till noon. So after a nice rest in the Parco Traiano, I made my way to the edge of the old city and to the church of St. John Lateran, the seat of the bishopric of Rome (while the Vatican is the seat of the whole world).
Again, it was Sunday morning. I walked in on the middle of a church service, conducted in Latin! The music was also very nice, with a male choir. Like the Vatican, the interior was richly decorated.
From there it was getting toward noon and I finally got into San Clemente, only to discover that photography is forbidden in the whole place. It makes sense because the excavation also includes a fourth-century church with delicate paintings, but the Mithraeum had no paint. I had to hide my camera to sneak a couple shots of the cult shrine. This was especially difficult because there was an electric fence in front of the gated entrance which detected any cameras trying to peer between the bars. When the threshold was crossed, a large buzzing noise went off. Why???
After that, I grabbed more pizza and beer by the Colosseum, then crossed the Tiber to Trastevere, the charming district across the river. From there was a somewhat arduous climb up the Janiculum Hill. The monument to Giuseppe Garibaldi provided a spectacular view of the whole city.
Climbing back down the hill put me in Vatican territory yet again, so I made another swing by the Castel St. Angelo and the angel bridge, where I got a better shot straight out of Angels & Demons.
From that point I had only one more place on the map I hadn’t seen, the Campo di Fiore, which turned out to be a large piazza where it was market day. I took this opportunity to sample numerous Italian cheeses. I had done it. I had seen all of Rome in four days, thanks to non-stop walking and the determination to make the most of the best vacation ever. Before I tell of the nightmare of Day 5, here’s my best shot of the Vittoriano, a monster piece of architecture dedicated to Victor Emanuele II, the first king of a united Italy.
The next day was long and insane. I was misinformed about when my train left and how much it cost, which was later and more expensive. I got to the airport 45 minutes before my flight, and only got my boarding pass because I wasn’t checking any luggage. I got to the gate just as it started boarding. The flight was pleasant, and when I got to Boston, I ran to the curb just in time to catch a bus up to Maine. I was very lucky that day. So here I am back in the states, and so concludes my story. Hopefully I’ll travel again soon, to Istanbul or Athens, or even back to Rome. I can’t wait to go back.

ROMA – Day Three

The next morning was rather rough. You would expect, me having walked everywhere, that my feet and legs would be sore and blistered. Well this was never the case. However, I did do a number on both my Achilles tendons. However, I felt more like Hector, after Achilles pierced leather thongs through his ankles and dragged him around Troy behind his chariot. Well it wasn’t that bad, but it took a while to loosen them up so that walking was no longer a chore. I wasn’t slowed down much in the long run. On the way out I went by the Colosseum once again and noticed one of the many stray cats that frequent the city sites.
Anyway, Day 3 was a gorgeous day, so I decided to hop on a train to Ostia, the ancient seaport of Rome at the mouth of the Tiber. However, 2000 years of sediment buildup covered the abandoned city, preserving much of it, and locating it a mile inland from the modern seacoast. As the first colony of Rome, the city is planned out like a military camp, with a main road called the Decumanus Maximus.

Ostia Antica is very extensive, but mostly the first floors of buildings remain. However, there were all the essentials of a Roman city: apartment blocks, temples of the gods, public baths, and military barracks. In addition, the city had a stone theater where the comedies of Plautus and Terrence must have been staged.

As Rome’s seaport, Ostia was full of grain merchants’ and sailors’ guilds. This fact is reflected in the myriad mosaics that pave the city’s floors. They even had a lighthouse modeled after the Pharos of Alexandria.

After several hours exploring Ostia, I hopped on the train back to Rome and trekked to the Forum Boarium where I gazed on the temples of Hercules and Portunus while enjoying a typical lunch of pizza and Italian beer. Not bad.

Thence I made my way into the heart of modern Rome, and found myself on the Via del Corso, which is Rome’s equivalent of the Champs Elysee, a crowded vista all the way from the Vittoriano to the Piazza del Popolo. Along the way, I ducked off the trail to check out more antiquities, such as the Column of Marcus Aurelius in the aptly named Piazza Colonna. I was rather indignant at learning from the Latin inscription below the column that a pope had replaced the statue of Aeneas atop the column with one of St. Paul. The rechristening of pagan monuments and adorning them with crosses and saints is a common theme throughout Rome: the cost of preserving the ancient past.
I managed by sunset to get to the Spanish Steps while there was still sunlight, and from the top watched the sun go down over the beautiful city.
Getting dark I made my last notable stop at the Trevi Fountain, which I now believe is the greatest example of Baroque fountain sculpture in the world, especially when it’s lit up at night.
It was about this time I did my souvenir shopping. Having already been in Prague, I wasn’t surprised to see that the thousands of gift shops throughout the city were all the same, selling the same tacky merchandise. My father joked that he wanted a Colosseum snowglobe. Every gift shop had them, so I bought one to follow through on the jest. For my nephew I bought a t-shirt featuring Asterix & Obelix, and for my girlfriend I finally found a shop that was selling something different, Murano glass jewelry. I bought her a royal blue heart pendant necklace. She loves it.

ROMA – Day Two

Youth hostels weren’t meant for us scholarly types. Dance music is blasted from 10 to midnight. People are loud and obnoxious, and my room is full of girls getting ready for a night on the town. Still managed to sleep 12 hours the first night, having not slept in two days.

Anyways, Day Two had much better weather than I expected, so I declared it my day to do the Vatican. To get there I walked, as I did to any place in the city. Taking the Metro would have made me miss a ton of cool stuff (again, there’s Latin written EVERYWHERE). So my route over to St. Peter’s took me by the Pantheon, a temple to all the gods built by Agrippa, Augustus’ right-hand man, then rebuilt by Hadrian (who rebuilt pretty much everything), and then converted into a Christian basilica, which explains why it’s in such good shape, and decked out in all splendor in accordance with apostolic poverty…

So began my day in Dan Brown country. It was hard to keep Angels & Demons out of my head when I stared up into the oculus.
A couple blocks hence was the beautiful Piazza Navona. Little known fact is that the piazza conforms to the shape of what used to be there, the Hippodrome of Domitian. The highlight of this spot are the two beautifully sculpted fountains on either end.
After resting there I approached the Tiber River. It was a spiritual experience to walk down the steps from one of the bridges and to wash my hands in the sacred river. I crossed it over a bridge full of angel statues and ended up at the Castel St. Angelo, Hadrian’s tomb, but was converted into a medieval fortress (I’ll have pictures of it in a later post since I returned to it on Day Four). From there was a short walk to St. Peter’s Basilica, which by the way is MASSIVE.
I waited in a line a short while since they have airport-style security at the entrance. First thing I did was to climb to the top of the dome (tickets for stairs were cheaper than the elevator). The ascent seemed endless, but the view at the top was well worth the exertion.
From there I got to walk around the roof, to discover that there is a GIFT SHOP on top of the holiest church in all of Christendom. It was run by nuns, and I bought a rosary for my sister. She wanted one blessed by the pope, but since they didn’t smell like sauerkraut, I assumed he was nowhere near them. The fact that it was daily hanging over  His Holiness’ head is sufficient to say it’s worth more than the plastic rosaries they make in China.
From the roof was a descent into the interior of the church. The place is as massive as it is magnificent. Latin written all over, endless statuary and shiny ornamentation. Only drawback was that it lacked in the pipe organ department. However, my father is a pipe organist and he said that St. Peter’s, if you can believe it, is too big an acoustic space for such instrument!
St. Peter’s is a shining example of the belittling effect a cathedral is designed to have on a tiny, insignificant human being who needs the fear of God struck into him. When I left the place, I discovered a convenient little place called the Vatican post office, where I could buy stamps and postcards and mail them out all in the same spot. I sent a postcard to my girlfriend Stephanie and to Julie Goell, my roommate’s mother who went to school in Italy and gave me copious advice on how to make the most of my stay in Rome. Multe grazie, Giulia!
The next logical thing to do at the Vatican is to see its spectacular museums. There I saw countless antiquities and Renaissance art, including my favorite painting of all time, Raphael’s “School of Athens.” I took longer staring at this very large mural than I did at the Sistine Chapel ceiling (partly because the guard in the latter place kept yelling at everybody to keep quiet and to not take pictures).
The museum took most of the day to get through, and not a single part of the place isn’t worth checking out. This was by far the best museum I’ve ever seen, and may stay that way.
It was getting dark when I exited Vatican City and made my way back into the middle of town, where I stumbled across the Theater of Marcellus and a brightly lit up Temple of Apollo the Healer. From there it was dinner time (8 PM in Italy) so I found a little Sicilian trattoria tucked away near Trajan’s Column. I got Pasta alla Salmone and it was multo bene. So ended Day Two, which because I wasn’t sleep-deprived and cranky, I’d say was my favorite day.

ROMA – Day One

So begins my account of the most wonderful adventure upon which I ever embarked, a four-night odyssey to and through the eternal city of Rome. In less than a week I breezed through two-and-a-half millennia of history, from the ruins of the Roman Republic, to the fountains and churches of the high Baroque era, to the monuments of Italian nationalism.

More photos can be seen on Facebook. Here for ancient stuff – http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018166&id=1232460105
and here for the rest, stuff like churches and fountains – http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018168&id=1232460105

So here we go!

Alitalia is a nice airline, especially in that English is treated second class to Italian. Sleeping on international flights is always difficult, especially when the yahoo next to you is watching, out loud, the movie “2012″ on his portable DVD player. Just as I managed to fall asleep, he turns on the bloody reading light. Not much later, the crew literally shoves breakfast into my face. But I didn’t mind, because Italian coffee is AMAZING, and set things right.

Anyway, took the train in from the airport, and the first thing I see is part of an aqueduct. Bits of these arched water systems are all over the city.

Did I mention that I nearly cried when I saw the Mediterranean out the plane window? To think that was the legendary sea that Odysseus and Aeneas sailed. And then I saw land…

When I left the train station I got intentionally lost, and good thing because I stumbled upon the Arch of Gallienus, built in the 3rd century CE. It had the first Latin inscription I had ever read on a real Roman monument. It read “To Gallienus, the most merciful prince, whose unconquered valor is only surpassed by his piety.”

From there I made it through on-and-off rain to my hostel. Wasn’t there long because I was eager to get down to the Forum. But first I stopped for some pizza, and accidentally ordered a whole one that I couldn’t possibly eat in one sitting. So I proceeded to walk through the Imperial Fora with a box of pizza in my hands. This column capital made a nice dining surface.

Did I mention that there’s Latin written EVERYWHERE. Every monument, church and temple has Latin written all over it, and thanks to Mussolini, the letters SPQR are also ubiquitous.

First thing was to walk through the Imperial Fora, those of Trajan, Augustus and Julius Caesar. All had ruins of temples, but Trajan’s forum had the remains of a marketplace and of course his perfectly-preserved column.
Then I walked into the Forum Romanum. I was absolutely spellbound. Photography doesn’t do justice in giving you a sense of how HUGE these monuments are. The Temple of Saturn and the Arch of Septimius Severus are monolithic to the extreme.

I spent forever in the forum. So much to see. But I eventually went over to the Palatine, the imperial palace complex, which is mostly brick ruins after most of the pretty stone and marble was recycled in the Middle Ages.
The Palatine complex is quite extensive, fit for a king (or at least a de facto king), with the Circus Maximus on one side, and a great view of the Forum on the other: a perfect vantage point to view one’s domain.

After a lengthy tour of the Palatine Hill, I descended to the Arch of Titus, built by Domitian in honor of his late brother (r. 79-81 CE) who was victorious in a war against the Jews, with the spoils to prove it.
Continuing down the Via Sacra landed me in front of the Flavian Amphitheater, now known as the Colosseum. Talk about massive!
After a tour through the Colosseum’s massive interior, I made a southerly trek to the largest bath complex in Rome, those of the emperor Caracalla (r. early 200′s). This is where Romans exercised in the palaestra, got massages, then got clean in a series of baths, starting at the caldarium (hot water),  tepidarium (warm water) and frigidarium (cold water) before swimming some laps in the natatio.

So concluded Day One, as I was so sleep-deprived and sore from so much walking that I crawled back to my hostel (after getting a big bowl of gelato!) and passed out.