Roma!

Birthday cake!

Last weekend was Hayley’s birthday. Originally we had planned on going and celebrating in Rome for the weekend, but it was significantly cheaper for us to wait a week. We bought our plane tickets and started planning out our trip. For her actual birthday, we went out and had a nice dinner in Cannes and walked around Le Suquet, which is kind of part of the fancier area of town. It was really pretty at night, as it is a small, extremely old street with tons of fancy restaurants, flowers, and candlelight. It was a beautiful night to usher in her 21^st. Also, the ladies who work in our school's cafeteria surprised Hayley with a birthday cake to celebrate at lunch!

We booked our flights to Rome for Thursday evening so that we would be able to maximize our time in the city, since we were only able to take of time for the weekend. We don’t really get long breaks from class here like we do back in the United States, so we planned out our trip to get the most out of a few short days. We skipped our afternoon classes and took the train from Cannes to Nice. Getting from the train station to the airport was a really long walk and really confusing. We were worried about missing our flight, but we eventually managed to find a shuttle that took us to our terminal, which just happened to be the farthest away from the train station. Security was surprisingly easy. All we had to do was walk through one little metal detector. It took less than five minutes to get from the front door of the airport to our gate. The flight took a little less than an hour, and we were in Rome!

Getting to our hotel was a total disaster. We had checked google maps before we left to make sure we would be able to get there without a problem. What we had not anticipated, however, was that the metro station near our hotel had two exits on different sides of a highway. We got off and started walking down the sidewalk towards where we were certain our hotel would be. It was kind of scary because we weren’t walking through the best area of town (our hotel was on the outskirts of Rome, near the last possible metro stop) and it was late at night. The sidewalk cut in and out and at times we were walking along the GRA highway with cars whipping right past us at 70 mph. The ironic part is that just when we thought we were finally getting close, we noticed a metro station. It was the one before our stop. We had just spent twenty minutes or so walking in the complete opposite direction! A little discouraged, we paid for another set of tickets to take the fast way back. We eventually found our hotel, but the problem was that it was on the opposite side of the aforementioned highway, with no apparent way across. Thinking that this hotel had the worst possible location, we sprinted pell-mell across the highway, and finally settled in to safety. 

Outside of the Baths of Caracalla

We started off the next day strong with a visit to the Baths of Caracalla. These were a giant structure built by the ancient Romans to serve as a community bathing establishment. It was massive. It took 6000 workers 5 years to finish and is still in remarkably good condition today. The baths were divided into three main areas. There was the central (Olympic sized) cold water bath in the main complex, a warm water pool on the outside in the sunlight, and a medium temperature pool between the two in recesses in the walls. The ancient Romans would often use these pools for Hydrotherapy, going from warm water to neutral, to cold. Caracalla also had giant changing rooms, a library, and a huge courtyard for exercising with javelins, wrestling, boxing, etc. To quote Hayley’s summary, the Baths of Caracalla were essentially the YMCA of ancient Rome. It was supplied tons of water every day by an aqueduct leading to a giant cistern. The water was heated underground by various fuel sources, heating up the tiles in the pools. Thousands of people would come here every day to bathe, but baths in ancient Rome served more than just sanitary purposes. They were also an important part of the social culture of the time. Emperors and other influential figures would often create bathes and allow free or extremely cheap admission in order to gain public favor. After exploring the gardens around Caracalla, we headed out to our next stop, the Coliseum.

The seats and sands are gone, it remains impressive!

While after our trip to Provence we were no strangers to impressive Roman architecture, the Coliseum might just take the cake for the most incredible we have seen. Despite an incredible fire that destroyed much of the original façade, it was still very easy to imagine what this place would have looked like in all its splendor. The arena was built to hold 60,000 excited Romans. As with baths, games in the Coliseum were put on by emperors and politicians to gain favor from the populace and to glorify the host, often after a military victory or conquest. While the Coliseum is famous for its gladiatorial fights, was also very popular for its animal fighting, where hosts would attempt to recreate the habitat of the captured animals (rhinos, elephants, lions, hippos, etc.) in order to provide a more exciting atmosphere for the viewers, who were allowed to enter for free. Much of the original seating and the actual gladiatorial sands have since been destroyed, but it still provides an awe-inspiring site.

Next, we visited the adjacent Palatine Hill, which is one of the seven main hills in Rome. It is considered the heart of the city, as it is where archeologists have dated the earliest life in the area to 1000 B.C. According to legend, this is where the famous she-wolf found rescued the twins Romulus and Remus, who would later challenge each other to create the greatest empire on the banks of the Tiber River. One day, in a fit of rage, Romulus killed his brother, and thus the city is named after him. Later, Palatine Hill (Palatine is the origin for the English word "palace" and the French word "palais")

One chunk of the massive Basilica

became the site of the palace of Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, and later Septimus Severus, who created many of the gardens. The view from up here was gorgeous, with huge courtyards and a view of the giant Circus Maximus below, a sort of football field length arena build for chariot and foot races. We then proceeded down to the Forum Romanum or Roman Forum, which was the center of the ancient Roman government. It was here that laws were passed, commercial policies were enacted, and where some of the most important temples to the gods of the Roman pantheon were created. One of the basilicas in the Forum was still in remarkably good condition and was so massive that it dwarfed all of the other buildings. After walking around the ruins of ancient civilizations all day, we finally decided to wrap up our day. We had dinner to a gorgeous sunset between the Coliseum and the Forum in a restaurant enclosed by vine leaves.  We made it back to the hotel that night with sore feet and aching muscles.

St. Peter's Basilica

School of Athens, Raphael

The next day we stepped out of the ancient and into the semi-ancient. Our first stop in the morning was to the Vatican City, where we hoped to be able to see the Pope. Sadly, he wasn’t performing mass, but we still got to soak in the splendor of St. Peter’s square. There were gigantic marble pillars circling the square with beautiful statues on top. St. Peter’s Basilica stood at the end. Originally, we had hoped to go inside, but by the time we got there the line was so long it almost wrapped around the entire square. It would have taken us at least 4 hours in the hot sun (even though it is the end of October, Rome still felt like Minnesota in July) just to go inside. We instead appreciated the bastion of Catholicism from the outside before heading to the Vatican Museums. The line here was short and we were soon surrounded by rooms and rooms of relics from Rome’s past- from statues of the gods to Egyptian artifacts. We made our way up to the chambers dedicated to the works of Raphael, one of the most famous painters of all time. After searching around for a bit, we came upon one of my favorite parts of our time in Rome. I will admit that I had a little bit of a geek-out in this room, as we came upon Raphael’s famous mural School of Athens. The painting is a brilliant work, combining portraits of all of the greatest minds of science, philosophy, art, and religion. As I was familiar with the paining already, I excitedly pointed out to Hayley the representations of Michelangelo, Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Pythagoras, and a few others. I took a few pictures, but could not really get a good one of the whole thing, so to the right you can see one I pulled from Google. We proceeded through rooms of art until we finally came upon the reason for us coming to the Vatican Museum- the Sistine Chapel. It was smaller than we had expected, but impressive nonetheless. Every inch of the chapel was covered in beautiful paintings. I can only imagine the colossal effort that must have gone into the creation of the ceiling. In the center of it, we were able to catch a glimpse of the famous image of God reaching out to Adam. The ceiling was so high up that I actually struggled to see clearly (naturally I had forgotten my glasses in our room) but it was still a remarkable sight. There were men stationed every few feet snapping at tourists to be quiet and to not take pictures, but we managed to snap a few when they weren’t looking. 

Hadrian's Mausoleum

We next made our way to Hadrian’s Mausoleum, also known as Castel Sant’Angelo (St. Michael). This was probably the coolest part of our trip. This giant structure was originally commissioned by the Emperor Hadrian to house his remains. Unfortunately for him, he died a year before its completion and his body was made to wait before being burned and eventually entered in this building. It was created to be viewed and admired by the structure and would have originally housed a statue of the emperor in the main entrance. Hadrian wanted to build this mausoleum to echo the one built by Augustus just on the other side of the Tiber River, which courses through Rome. This giant edifice was not only for one man, however. If you have ever seen the famous film Gladiator, you might be familiar with the names Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, and Lucius Farris whose burial urns once were held here. We passed through the chambers were the burial urns were held, a room that was, for a short period of time, converted into a prison (it was essentially a pit that they lowered prisoners into and didn’t feed them), and up into a small courtyard. In the center was a giant statue of St. Michael made out of marble. Originally we had thought that the statue was as old as the mausoleum itself, but such was not the case. The statue that we saw was the sixth of its kind, and used to stand on top of the mausoleum. It turns out that St. Michael statues serve as wonderful lightening conductors when they are adorned with bronze and other precious metals and that being struck by lightning tends to ruin them. They have since learned to put a giant metal rod near the current statue on the roof. The reason that the Italians now call it Castel Sant’Angelo instead of Hadrian’s Mausoleum is that one day, a Pope (I can’t remember which) had a dream that St. Michael landed on top of the mausoleum and sheathed his sword. Naturally, this meant that the plague that was raging through Rome at the time was now over, and so the structure was renamed in his honor. I am sure that Emperor Hadrian is pleased with that! Because of the beautiful view looking over the Vatican/Rome, we decided to eat dinner in the fancy restaurant on the parapets (during the Renaissance, the mausoleum was repurposed and fortified to become a fortress) and profit from the atmosphere. Sadly, when we finally got our food, it was cold and disappointing, which was not the first time (more on this later). 

Those columns have stood for two thousand years!

Trevi Fountain at night!

Next, we made our way to the Pantheon. This is probably the best preserved structure of ancient Rome and definitely one of the most impressive. The Pantheon was originally the temple to all the gods of the Romans, but has since been appropriated by the Catholic Church. Although I was a little disappointed to be confronted with Christian statues and art rather than those of Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, etc, it was still great to marvel at the architectural miracle that is the Pantheon. Next, we made our way to the famous Trevi Fountain, which was beautifully lit (by this point it was roughly 7:30 and the sun had since set) and tossed our coins and wishes behind us. While we were there, we saw a couple taking their wedding pictures at the fountain, which was adorable. There were tons of people there and they were all cheering for the happy couple. Next, we made our way to the famous Spanish Steps, which were designed by Michelangelo. They were in a beautiful area of town that reminded me a lot of the Montmartre area of Paris, which I wrote about in one of my first blogs. The steps were very lively at the time of night we made it there. There were tons of young people just hanging around, sitting on the steps and talking. It was a shame that we couldn’t speak a word of Italian, or we could have blended in! 

As our flight was set to leave Rome at 3:20 in the afternoon, and the trip back to the airport takes a while, we really only had the morning on Sunday to say goodbye to Rome. We went to visit the Capuchin Crypt, which was one of the most beautifully haunting sights I have ever seen.  The crypt was underneath a church which was built on dirt that had been brought from Jerusalem. Naturally, this made the crypt a very popular burial site. Due to an incredibly high demand for burials at this church, resulting in too many bodies, individual burial coffins/rooms were no longer a luxury that could be afforded. There are a few myths regarding what happened next, one of which that states that a criminal artist came to the church and, in repentance, offered to design a burial chamber for the bodies. What this mysterious artist then did was to decorate the chamber with the bones. He separated the bones by chamber and adorned the walls, making intricate patterns and religious symbols all around the room, and arranging the complete skeletons of some of the Capuchin friars into poses that held various meanings. In the first room was one such friar at whose feet was a sign that said something to the effect of “As you are now, so we once were. As we are now, one day you shall be too.” Reading this surrounded by the bones of hundreds of bodies forced a shiver down our spines. Sadly, we were not allowed to take any pictures. As we walked back into the sunshine and the world of the living, we had a quick lunch before regretfully began the trek to the airport and home. 

Random notes about Rome:

• Most of the food we had was cold. It was very frustrating, as a lot of the time we picked out nice looking restaurants, which turned out to be kind of iffy.

•  Pizza in Rome, contrary to what you might think, it actually not very good. Apart from being cold, it was really sweet. Neither of us liked it overmuch, although we did have some pretty good lasagna and spaghetti.

• Italians make out in the streets all the time. I cannot even begin to count how many people we saw just going at it in the middle of the street or popular areas.

• We had several situations where we were caught between a few Italians who were yelling in loud, agitated voices in our restaurants. It turns out they weren’t even having an argument- that was just how a normal conversation works.

• Gelato is the most amazing thing ever in the history of forever. We had it a few times for desert after meals and it was worth it every time. Each place that we went heaped enormous amounts of the ice cream treat on a cone, for really cheap prices. I tried a few weird flavors that were incredibly good, although I have no clue what they were. Essentially, gelato is ice cream on steroids.

• Italian drivers are crazy. There were a number of occasions where we found ourselves wondering if we were going to die to some reckless Italian who didn’t care about traffic signs or signal lights. This, along with the fact that oftentimes sidewalks were nonexistent and crosswalks were not even usable, made for a rather nerve wracking experience.

• Unlike many other cities that we have been to, the metro system is not incredibly useful. We read somewhere that this is in part because it is difficult for them to build new metro stations, as whenever they try to build a new line, they come upon some archeological wonder in the digging process and are forced to abandon the construction. The result is that oftentimes the sites we wanted visit were often quite a distance from the closest metro station.