Rome 3: Colosseum and the Roman Forum

I woke up on Easter Sunday refreshed and happy in my new hotel room.  I had a free breakfast to look forward to, and since I had no schedule, I actually slept in a little bit, which just started my day off so much better than I could have hoped.  Apparently, every Easter Sunday in Rome it torrentially downpours.  Even this could not dampen my spirits!  I knew that this was my last day, and since the Vatican took my entire first day, I wanted to see all that I could of the rest of Rome.

So I set out, waterproof jacket on and map in hand.  I figured out the metro system all by myself, even in Italian, and made my way to my first destination, the Colosseum!!!  I had tried to find tours online for the Colosseum, but since it was Easter Sunday, there were none available.  That was totally fine, but I just find that I learn more from other people showing me things.  Once I got there, the rain really started coming down, and people kept coming up to me saying "do you speak English? do you want an English tour?" which of course sounds like a complete ripoff.  But as I continued to circle around, I saw that other people were falling for it too, so I decided to go for it.  It was not that much money and at the worst, we got to skip all of the lines!  It turned out, it was not a ripoff at all, and it was worth every penny!  Our tour-guides were both amazing, and I learned so much.

We started out in the Colosseum, and it was just as impressive as it seems in pictures and documentaries.  Did you know, that the reason arenas are called arenas, is because "arena" in both Italian/Spanish is the word for sand, what was put down to soak up the blood of the gladiators/animals.  Cool, right?

Inside the Collo, can you see our tourguide on the bottom right hand corner?

It is a much different view, with everyone's umbrellas haha. 

Note how it changes from older stone to new bricks.  The Colosseum was split in half during a more recent earthquake and part of it had to be rebuilt. 

Part of the Colosseum was also "recycled" and used in the front of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican city.  Romans were really big on "recycling" materials, since there was only so much marble and stone readily available.  But it is also kind of cool, because that means parts of the Vatican were physically built using Pagan building materials.

Next we headed to the Roman Forum, which is full of tons of old Roman Imperial ruins, too numerous to list here, but just overwhelming in person.  I heard and learned tons of stories about all of them, and I even saw the place where Romulus and Remus supposedly landed after being sent down the river.  The Roman Forum is sandwiched in between Palatine Hill (home to more fantastic ruins), and Circus Maximus, which is still to date the largest stadium in the world (although it is a little worse for wear now...mostly just grass).  Most stadiums today hold about 80,000 people, but Circus Maximus held up to 300,000 people in its better days.

Palatine Hill

Roman Forum:  One of the buildings down there was the house of the vestal virgins, who had two jobs: 1) to keep the eternal flame aflame, and the 2) is pretty much implied with their title.  However, one of them, Rhea Silvia, got pregnant yet claimed that it was the god Mars who had seduced her.  Naturally, no one wanted to anger him, so they let her give birth, but decided to send her twin babies, Romulus and Remus, down the river bank and let the fates decide.  And that, is how we get the birth of Rome! (Ok there are more details, but I feel like I am boring you with all of this legend/history stuff!)

You can barely make it out here, but there is a green door in between all of the columns.  It is really high up on the building, almost halfway.  Apparently, the river flooded, and the silt was all the way up to this point.  So people were just walking around on feet and feet of silt, like it was no big deal.  

This path is where the heroes of tournaments or the winners of contests would be paraded through the city.  I walked down it, the hero of conquering the rain haha :)

These columns were attempted to be "recycled" but were too buried in silt, so they were saved.  You can still see the chain marks however, where they were pulled on to get them down. 

You can ALMOST picture, the magnificent buildings that stood here.  Truly breathtaking, to think of the ground that I walked on.  I was really dorking out! 

 Well I think this blog is too long again, so we will have to wait until tomorrow for the plazas and fountains of Rome!