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Rome Antics (part 1)

The Eternal City, the birthplace of seemingly everything, one of the most history-rich places on the planet, and a hell of a place to spend four days. We planned to visit Rome for a while but we needed a long-weekend to make it work. We found that long weekend in February (normally the worst month of the year, but it wasn't bad in Italy) and headed out Thursday morning with a return train Sunday night.

The train to Rome took us farther south in Italy than we'd previously been, so that was cool. We got to see more countryside from the train than before and even spotted a few hill-towns off in the distance.

The difficult thing with writing about Rome, and the reason I've been putting this off for months, is that everything in Rome deserves your attention. Everything that we took a photo of has a story, and those stories are slightly more familiar than they are in other places. Everything is so grand, so incredible, so ostentatious, so brilliant, or so classically lovely, that it makes you want to know everything about it.

The first thing we saw upon leaving the train station was remnants of the Baths of Diocletian. You should probably Wiki everything I mention The remains were spread out over what seemed like 8 city blocks, and formally were (allegedly) set to take up about 120,000 square *meters* of space. That's about 30 acres.

We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and walked down Via Nazionale past some very official-looking building and came up on the back of Trajan's Market (and the adjacent forum), which some of you would recognize as the thing painted on Mr. Prueter's wall in high school. This made my heart skip a beat. Seeing the things you've only heard about and seen photos of is an experience that I wish upon any/everyone. As we strolled down the stairs and past the building, we came to Trajan's Column with a backdrop of the Vittorio Emanuele memorial, which is gigantic.

More importantly, the main street here is the Via dei Fori Imperiali - the Street of the Imperial Forums - and it's the coolest place in the world. On one side is the main forum area with Caesar's forum and the official Roman Forum, and on the other side is Trajan's Forum with the Form of Augustus at its side. And then in front of you...

The view down the street

We quickly bought tickets that were good for the Forum and the Colosseum over two days and began marching around the Forum. What an experience. I know that millions of people visit it every year, so I'm no more special than any of them, but what an unbelievable, unfathomable, incredible place. Temples, arches, columns, facades, remnants, ruins, and plans all stare at you from 2000+ years ago. It's nearly impossible to comprehend the size and scale of everything, and when you get on top of the Palatine Hill, it starts to feel a little more real.



From up there we wandered and looked and saw St. Peter's off in the distance (technically another country), we explored the outside of the Palatine Hill Museum area - replete with ground-mosaics from two millennia ago - and tried to picture the way things used to be, we looked into exercise yards, fountains, and living quarters, and we exited the park near the Arch of Constantine and remains of an old aqueduct. 

How do you top that??

You walk the length of the Circus Maximus and make your way toward the Pantheon, of course.

Like I said, the problem with Rome is that everything is something. We passed a four-way arch. No idea what that was. We then passed some small temple-like buildings that were clearly ancient, but no explanation of them because they're not the big stuff. And then over by the Pantheon we found Torre Argentina. This is allegedly where Julius Caesar was murdered. But now? It's a cat-shelter. Talk to my better-half about this: We bought a keychain and she took about 80 photos.

Finally, we reached the Pantheon. It was awesome. And kinda crowded, but not as crowded as you might expect.



In the quest to put in 20 miles of walking, we strolled Piazza Navona and its fountains, although there was nothing much happening in the square at the time, so we carried on for some gelato. We found ourselves near Sant'Angelo as the sun was going down and got some nice photos, then took a long walk back toward our hotel, detouring to see the Colosseum at night.

At risk of writing 1500 words and 10 photos about one day in Rome (out of 4), I'm trying to cut myself off and leave some pics here. Enjoy.






Oh, there was also some slight work being done to Trevi Fountain.


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