Ancient Rome Tour

(...continuation of Italy trip pictures)
See the first posts here: 1, 2

After visiting the Pantheon, we headed towards the Colosseum to catch our walking tour of Ancient Rome. First off, I have to mention that someone that day mentioned that it reached 42 degrees Celsius while we were out walking. We had NO idea what the conversion was, so we were like, "Yeah. It's really hot." We had no idea until later when we Google'd it that we were in 107.6 degrees Fahrenheit weather! No wonder we practically melted. The tour was supposed to last four hours, but because we had to stop for water so often, it lasted five hours. We were extremely thankful for Rome's water fountains, which were everywhere and very cold.

We started at the Colosseum, which we just walked around (we went back later to go inside) and I can't even begin to tell you all the fascinating things we learned about it. I can't believe the things that were achieved in that thing 2000 years ago. Mind boggling.



I especially like the lower right hand corner of this picture...


This was a shot of one of the triumphal arches built next to the Colosseum...with the Colosseum in the background....um....obviously.


Here's a view of the ancient Roman Forum. The center of the city. The fascinating thing about Rome is that it is a city built on top of a city on top of a city...etc. The level of the ancient city is noticeable lower then the modern day city, as you can see in this picture. We had to go quite a ways down to go walk on the ancient streets.


This picture is hilarious to me. This is an ancient temple built by a Roman emperor in honor of his wife that died. Well, it was quite expensive since the marble columns were all one piece and they were imported from Greece. That fact is probably also why they were never plundered and stolen from the temple. They were freakin' heavy. Well, hundreds of years later, the Christians thought the temple was still beautiful, so they built a church inside of it. But, by that time, the level of the soil had risen significantly and had buried the temple's steps and about a fourth of the columns. When the forum was excavated, they dug down to the ancient streets and now you can see the door of the church way up in the air with no apparent way to get in. It is a great illustration of the differences in the level of the ground.


Here is a view from the center of the forum. I was actually standing in front of the ruins of Julius Cesare's temple. In. sane.




Here are some more views of the Roman forum from the opposite side. Our tour guide showed us pictures of what they believed it to look like at the height of the Roman empire and it was just crazy to compare. It must've been beautiful.

Tomorrow, I will post pictures from the rest of the walking tour. Arrivederci!!