Ancient Roma

We are now approaching Rome. Over the next few days, our travels will become very cultural, very touristic. We will visit lots of museums, lots of ruins. There will be lots of wandering around the big city…Could we cope with that?

We have planned to spend three days in Rome. The first day we will sleep in Tivoli. We have found a free aire close to the train station, very convenient to get the train to Rome the next day.

The following two nights we will sleep in Rome, in an aire on the outskirts, this one chargeable but we won’t be travelling that long. For €15 this aire includes: water, chemical disposal and, more importantly, electricity. Not driving Dora for three days won’t give us a chance to charge our computers to update the blog and we will have so much to talk about Rome! So the electricity is therefore essential, but will also give us the chance to recharge all the other gadgets, phones, cameras etc.

Our drive to Tivoli has been smooth, the train station is on the outskirts so the aire has been easy to find. We have got here at 19.00. The aire is packed with cars, probably commuters.

Before setting in, we go to the train station to get the ticket to Rome for tomorrow. Nice and easy, no queues, no people, it has only cost £5.20. Trains to Rome depart every fifteen minutes. Great. We will make an early start. We want to make the most of our day in Rome.

We walk back, through the foot bridge and head off to the town centre to see a bit of Tivoli.

s

According to our guide, there are a  couple of historic sites to visit here: Villa Adriana and Villa d’Este. The first, five kilometres drive. The second, in the hilltop centre, of course. Tivoli seem also to have wanted to join the hilltop town club. It is almost like “Oh, we have something old, which has been built high, let’s make it a hilltop town. Otherwise, we will feel we have missed out of something”.

Tivoli seems to be a commuters town. We are starting to get the feeling of the big city: congested with traffic, highly populated, buzzy, noisy, chaotic…

We find a sign pointing out to Villa d’Este. We follow it and get to this square below.

We are not sure if this is Villa d’Este. There seems to be an illuminated castle, which is close.

Anyway, time to get back to Dora. We will have enough ruins to see tomorrow. We just wanted to stretch our legs before we settle in for the night.

 

The next morning, we take the train at 10.00 am. The train is very quiet, only students are on it. Workers would have taken the earlier morning trains. We have almost forgotten how that feels.

The weather is quite warm. It is a clear sky, perfect day for outdoor sightseeing.

The plan today: visiting ancient Rome. The three main sites: the Colosseum, the Palatino and the Roman Forum. A Roman pass for €14 will cover them all. Very good value but there is lots to see, we may need to leave something for tomorrow.

The train from Tivoli to Rome takes us to Roma Tiburtina station. We have not bought travel card yet, so we will walk to the roman ruins, it should take only an hour. Also, it would allow us to see a bit of the city.

First ruins after 30 minutes walk, in the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele. We sit  here for a sip of water.

Lost of people seem to have come out and are having a lunch in the sun. They seem quite chilled out. They remind me of my working time in London. When it was sunny, parks used to get inundated by Londoners in their lunch hour, making the most of the warm weather as it doesn’t happen very often in London.

“Don’t get too excited with old sculptures. You will get sick of them by the end of your visit to Rome” Gary warns.

Trams. We love them. I am sure we will use them later on. We get quite tired of walking around the city. However, give us some mountains and we can walk for days!

We need to get the tickets to see the sites. Our guide recommends to go to the Palatino, to avoid long queues. On our way, we find a motorhome dressed up like a clown . Quite sad. As if it wasn’t already tricky to handle such a big vehicle through the cities, you just put lots of crap around it to make it even bigger. I tell you, the owner must be such a prat!

The Palatino is just across this big avenue. No zebra crossing. Even if there was one, it wouldn’t be respected by the crazy Italian drivers. So we don’t have the choice, we risk our lives and run to the other side.

The purchase of the ticket, easy and quick. The smallest site seems to be the Roman Forum, next to the Palatino. It is already 13.00. Realistically, we are going to have to leave the Coliseum for tomorrow.

We have got an audio guide for the two of us. We do this occasionally. A bit of history helps us appreciate a bit more of what we see and keep us entertained.

The weather has got worst, miserable, misty and drizzling. We have chosen outdoors sites today. Well planned!

As expected, the ruins are packed with guided tours and lots of people wandering around. We struggle to find a quiet space to have some lunch. We need some energy to absorb Roman history for the next four hours.

We finish our lunch and start the tour. On the way to the Forum, works are still being undertaking. It is amazing that they are still excavating and finding more stuff.

The Roman Forum was the social, political and commercial heart of ancient Rome. Don’t worry, we won’t tell you anything you can find yourself in any history book. We will just simply display some photos and tell you our impressions of it.

We start listening to the audio guide. First site, number 1, press play.

We cannot really hear very well. The volume doesn’t go much further up. Pretty crap. We put our heads close to the machine, trying to grasp a word to make sense of the narration. We are so close we cannot really walk. Not sure if hiring the audio was such a good idea.

We keep trying at the next site. The same.

We decide one of us listens to the audio guide and tells the other about it.

Gary is not particularly into history so, by default, I am the one who listens to the audio.

I am not impressed. The descriptions focus only on art, style, and features of the buildings. Features that I can no longer see as they are just ruins.

However, I don’t give up. I continue to walk around, stop on each site and listen to the whole description. The same stuff. I cannot find any of the narration interesting. What is wrong with it? What am I missing here? What would I like to know about this place?

I would like to know what this place looked like at the time.

I would like to know how each building was used and by who.

I would like to know how buildings transformed over time, throughout the middle ages and renaissance.

I would like to know how the entire place worked. How the residents lived. How did they used to earn their living. What was the social class system in this place.

In essence, I would like to know the relationship between people and the place. There is none of that here. Only art. This doesn’t mean anything to anybody who is not very knowledgeable on the subject, probably the majority of us. Sad. We are not expert but we are still interesting in history.

So, the audio guide is not going to get very good reviews on Trip Advisor.

We give up on the guide and continue our tour.

A photo of one of the temples. The buildings that have been better preserved.

This is where Caesar was buried after he was assassinated.

We find a drawing of the place. We guess they are trying to display what the cluster of buildings in front of us looked like. However, the buildings are so poorly sketched, so badly referenced back to the ruins… I just cannot get it. “Am I being too thick?” I ask Gary. “Don’t worry, I can’t get it either”. That comment comforts me, coming from an architect.

Anyway, enough of Roman Forum. It is already 16.00, one hour before closing so we move on to the Palatino. The Palatino is the most ancient Roma’s neighbourhood, so more ruins. But there is also a museum so we hope we get more explanations here.

To get to the Palatino we have to go high up the stairs. On our way, we go through a garden. From where we get a view of the Roman Forum. Now is when we get the scale of the place!

The size of the place is so impressive. It is so big it just isn’t possible to take it all in. You get ruin fatigue. Such a shame, but how can the bystander imagine what a place is like from the barest of descriptions. This is one of the world’s most important archaeological finds and the curating is so disappointing. GDR

I don’t quite remember very well but It think this square is the footprint of the Curia, where the senators met.

They used to build temples everywhere at that time. Temples close to houses, close to political buildings, close to therms… (baths)

We arrive at the Palatino. We walk though the ruins quickly, partly because they will close soon, partly because our brains are getting overloaded.

So we didn’t take that many photos here. However, we now reach an interesting site. Here, there was a mini-hippodrome, where Augustus used to delight himself watching horseracing.

This is Circus Maximus, remember Spartacus, is that the one with the chariot racing, just imagine Charlton Heston, perhaps not…anyway…I’m Spartacus. Now it is used as a place for the dogs to shit and an overspill car park. I love archaeology! GDR

Here, another building destined to his entertainment. Apparently, it was used for parades and theatre performances.

At the other side of this building there used to be a fountain. Now, the footprint, quite large. It must have been quite impressive.

This is where Augustus used to preside these performances. In the shade, to prevent sun blindness.

We go through the museum quickly. Here, there are some drawings of the Roman Forum, which we so much needed earlier. These diagrams display all places clearly marked, with numbers referencing back to the places listed on the right hand site.

There are also models of both the Palatino and the Roman Forum. Should we have come here first and then gone to see the ruins? Would it have made any difference? We wouldn’t have remembered any of them over there. They are simply displayed in the wrong place. And anyone who didn’t have time to visit the museum would have just missed them. Really bad planning.

The ruins are amazing, but as you can see, there are left over bits all over the place. They must be significant. What is the story? Why not tell it, and if you don’t know….fine. This is really poor for such an important site, but perhaps it doesn’t matter. People will come anyway, most of them don’t care about the story, what is true, the facts. Tick it off the list, paste it to Facebook and move on. GDR

There is a video we took so you can better get the yeast of it.

17.00 time to leave, get back to Dora and give our brains a rest.

Tomorrow, the Coliseum. We are looking forward to it.

SM