Travels with Alyx: Return to Rome

July 10

What must it be like to walk through history everyday? Do you lose appreciation for the magnitude of what you are seeing? I posed this question to our group of eight as we made our way from the port in Civitavecchia to the Airbnb in Rome. We are nearing the end of our trip. Josh and Tim will be leaving tomorrow, Charisse, Ross, Haily and Jay the day after, and lastly Lindsay and I on the 13th. The question came because I am astounded at the beauty of even the everyday buildings here. The churches are beautiful, the government buildings as well. There are palaces in the middle of the city. Modern buildings sit next to ancient ruins.

Palazzo Venetzia

We dropped our luggage off at the Airbnb but couldn’t move in until check-in, so we went out into the city to find food, ending up at a restaurant called Vos that was in the center of the city, not too far from Trevi Fountain.

This focaccia was really good

Lindsay and I had a tour of the Colosseum scheduled for the afternoon. It is massive. Pictures honestly don’t do justice to the size of this structure, and you just have to marvel at the ingenuity and skill of the Romans that built it. We upgraded from the regular “skip the line” tickets and opted for the guided tour, which was very good. During the tour I learned that the Colosseum is over 2700 years old and that it was constructed from Travertine marble that came from a quarry in Tivoli. The construction is arch based because that was thought to be the strongest architectural shape. There are various levels for each of the social classes that attended events there, as it was used for more than just the bloody sport pitting men against animals and each other. The ground floor was for the VIPs. The next two floors were for average citizens, and the top floor, which has the square windows, was for slaves and originally for women as well. The emperor had his own, very large, entrance, and the gladiators had two particular gates that they used to enter the arena. The events held there were known as “pane e census” or bread and entertainment. We learn that it only took eight years to build the Colosseum, and that the original colosseum had a segmented fabric roof that could be opened and closed with long ropes from the outside.

Our tour takes us down to the floor level where we get an excellent view of the underground chambers of the Colosseum. It is a maze of rooms and hallways where slaves would open doors to lead men and animals into the arena for competition to the death. The arena was covered in sand in order to soak up the blood from the people and the animals. The last competition was held in AD 527 and the Colosseum was abandoned as Christianity took hold in Rome. Over one million gladiators died in the 450 years that the competitions were held.