Vini, vidi, vici - we came, we saw a whole lot of stuff, we conquered the tourist map.Today's highlights:
• Santa Maria Maggiore church, built in 432 A.D. Magnificent mosaic work above the altar. Beautiful marble floors.
• Colliseum. This is culture week in Rome, which means (apparently) that admissions are free. We still had to queue up to get our free ticket, but hey, it was free. From now until September, there is a special exhibit on the top floor of the colliseum. It explains the history of the building, what Rome looked like before the great fire, and Nero, using a combination of displays, artifacts, and text. Did you know that the floor of the colliseum was covered in sand to absorb the blood from the fighting, and that the ancient word for sand was arena?
•Palatine and the Roman Forum. This is the archaeological gardens beside the Colliseum. It is massive (!) and would have been a great place for a picnic if I had thought to pack one. The whole place smelled wonderful because of the wisteria and the orange trees.
• Bocca della Verita. The mouth of truth is a stone mounted on the wall at Santa Maria in Cosmedin church. It is featured in 2 movies, Roman Holiday (Audrey Hepburn) and Only You (Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey Jr) and I really wanted to see it. Legend has it that if you put your hand in the statue's mouth, only the pure of heart will pull their hand back out intact. My hand is still attached.
• Circus Maximus. Nowadays it's a big grassy field, but the track is still visible where chariots used to race in front of 300,000 spectators.
• The cat sanctuary at Torre Argentina. In an among the sunken ruins of 3 very ancient temples, live roman pussycats. We tripped across them because the site is separate from the other ruins, encircled on all sides by busy streets.
We liked Rome. In spite of its size, it doesn't have the bustle that Paris, Berlin, or London have. Everywhere you turn, there's an ancient something - corinthian pillars just standing in the middle of nowhere, a detailed portico on a wall, half a wall in a park which, upon closer inspection, turns out to be a remnant of ancient roman baths. We wondered if the people who lived here get blasé about it, being surrounded by all that history all the time. This will sound dumb, but I got such a kick out of all the nuns everywhere. Think about it, if I was a nun tourist, where else would I want to go?
Tomorrow: Firenze
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