Day 8 - Mediterranean Cruise - Rome Part 2

 Day 8 - Mediterranean Cruise - Rome Part 2

Our guide brought us back to the Colosseum for our Underground Tour!  And because we had bought tickets already and had a guide, we waltzed past all the people waiting in lines. HA!

The outer ring around the place reminded me a lot of the college stadium back home except less vendors selling beer.  You could imagine the ancient Romans walking through excited for whatever show, gladiator, hunting expeditions or ship battles (yes ship battles) were going on that day!

Although it sounds like they averaged one gladiator event a month.

The stairs leading up to various seats.  Our tour didn't go there though.

We stopped here for a minute getting a history lesson and looking both ways at places we could have gone as a Roman.

Straight ahead a cross had been built by an 18th century pope to honor the fallen Christians who were believed to have been killed here.

Then we went back to the outer ring to get to the underground stairs.

Check out all the pocks and dings on the walls!  Either from wars or ornaments being torn off over the last 2000 years.

Down the stairs and now in the underground, this is one of the last intact halls where the gladiators would come to get upstairs to the fight.  The screen played a short video on what it may have looked like for the gladiator and any other entourage that might have accompanied him.  Very well done reenactment! I may need to watch the movie Gladiator now.

Lots of information about the gladiators and the animals they fought. It wasn't just all lions and tigers, there were bears, ostriches and just a ton of other animals involved.  Not all necessarily with gladiators, sometimes just each other and hunting parties.  And there may have been women gladiators but not all historians believe that.

He explained what vestal virgins were and that they were highly revered.  If one of them snuck away and failed to keep their vow of chastity, instead of feeding them to the lions in front of people, they walled them up into the wall with food and water and left them to die.  Yikes!  They thought that the vestal virgins were sacred and their blood should not be shed. 

Below, some ancient prisoner had documented the happenings on a stone.  How's THAT for morale?!

Way down the hall from our guide, there is a wooden elevator, invented by the Romans, to raise a wild animal to the stadium floor.  At the top, it could go in any direction so that the audience and gladiator would never know which direction it would be coming from.  

The wooden structure, of course, was recreated from historic information that was discovered.

Then the real underground, where all the prisoners were kept.  

A lot has degraded but some of the areas are intact.

Below is the water cistern area.  When the Emperor wanted a ship battle, the stadium floor was removed and the underground and basin area was filled with water from these pipes.  Then they brought in scaled down versions of battle ships and the crowds were entertained by ship battles!  Crazy!!  It was difficult to understand during the tour but I read up on it since. 

These halls were where the prison cells all branched off from.

I can't imagine how dark and dank they must have been.

He explained that the animals, like lions, would be kept in the cell on the top and the prisoner would be in the cell immediately below the lion.  The lion's floor was slanted in such a way that the feces and urine of the animal would run down onto the prisoner.  Yech!  If they had any hope to begin with, that would crush it even more.  Oh and the prisoner's cell is just short enough they couldn't stand up.

Or maybe they were all shorter back then.  But I don't think so!

The people above are most likely wondering how we lucked out with a tour like this! HA!

But then we were those people later when we got to explore up there too so maybe they went on the tour earlier. Who knows?!

Then some halls leading down to more information 

in little museums.

And even though I was totally prepared to translate this for everyone, it was already translated on the bottom half. Darn.  My work here is done.

In the drainage area of the Colosseum, they found animal remains of various types of animals used in the fights and hunting fights.  In addition to the exotic animals, they used local domestic animals like bulls, oxen, horses and dogs.  Then local wild ones like bears, wolves and wild boars.

Then we were up in the sun again and got to explore all around the arena.

We had to get pics in front of it and it's been my profile pic on FB for a while now.

The white seats area has been rebuilt a bit and shows how people would sit for a show.  I doubt they had bleacher seats to protect their backs.  I would have died!  Well, not IN the arena, just from the back pain.

Here is another view of that cross from the arena side.

And we thought it was great that the Colosseum is protected by this cat!  It looked pretty regal sitting there like "Get OUT of my home! you common ilk!"

My gang!

Then we went to the upper levels and found another museum with a cross section of the Colosseum.

The stairs we had to climb to get there.

A miniature model of the whole thing!

And check this out!  The stadium was initially built with retractable awnings to protect the viewers from rain, but even with these detailed pictures, no one has truly been able to explain how they did it.

and a final look at one of the seven wonders of the world.

I guess I can knock THAT off my list!

OOF!  There's more to Rome for us, so stay tuned for part 3.

Day 8 - Mediterranean Cruise - Rome Part 1

Mediterranean Cruise - ROME! 

part 1

Thursday!!!

We had breakfast in the buffet and enjoyed the views.

The sea was calm and weather was nice!  We did bring our coats but tied them around our waists later.

The bus ride to Rome from the port in Civitavecchia was around 1.5 hours.  

Teresa was concerned about us getting to the tour on time so as soon as the bus stopped in Rome at the Roma Ostiense station, we decided NOT to walk the 30 minutes (just over 2 kilometers) to the Colosseum. 

So we took a taxi.  

The driver was very nice and gave us lots of info about the areas that we were driving past.

And the closest he could without getting stuck in the traffic around the Colosseum was to take us to a road under construction.

What a view! huh?! 

So we walked past all the construction, down some stairs 

and all the way around it.

I must have 100 pictures of just the structure!  Just kidding.  But not by much.

and then we walked past it. Waittt....  guys!  

The tour company was just past here on the right.  We got there in time to use a restroom and get a pop at a convenience store next to their meeting spot.

Check out the ceiling in this building!  Zoom in if you can.  I guess it helped with acoustics but isn't it cool?!  It's the Clivo Di Venere Felice.

Below:

Someone's house with a beautiful view of history!

and more residential areas that come out right across the street from the colosseum!

Wouldn't it be fantastic to live there?!

waiting for the tour to start.

Our tour guide is in the jacket below.  Everyone made sure we had our passports and tickets with us and off we went with the guide talking to us all with the ear buds again so we could hear him talk.  Wow was he knowledgeable!  

We walked back to the colosseum and then off to the right of it.  Here is the Triumphal Arch of Constantine, which stands right next to the Colosseum itself.

I'm glad we did the tour because we got to walk past everyone and go through a special security.

On on to more Arches!  This one is the Arch of Titus.

The pictures show the story of the construction of the Colosseum

As well as the captives brought here as slaves from Jerusalem.  You can see the menorah as well as an ark, possibly of the covenant.  Don't know.  The Romans pawned these treasures to fund the construction of the Colosseum.  

We continued walked around the Palatine Hill, which is the start of Rome.

Remember this pic from my visit to Pisa?  The origin is actually the legend of the beginning of Rome.

Legend is that twins Remus and Romulus were raised by a She-Wolf.  One killed the other and if you can guess which one won, the city was named after him.

Our guide said that the original text said Lupa in that language and besides "wolf" also translates to "prostitute" so the legend might have been tweaked a little for more color. :)

At one point, the others told me later that a group of 3 young guys tried to talk to me but with my hearing and concentrating on our guide didn't hear them.  So they went up to our guide and he was chatting away telling us history.  They asked him to repeat something and he said sharply, "I'm not talking to you! I've got a tour group."  lol!

They hung around on the walk anyway and listened in.

The grounds here were gorgeous and a bit sad.  For several hundreds of years after the fall of Rome, dirt and silt settled over all of this with only some of the remains sticking up in the grass and cows grazed here.  It was in the 1400s and up when the excavations took off uncovering all this history.

This palace was a beautiful love story.  An arranged marriage, but Emperor Antonius and his wife Faustina fell in love.  When she died, he was distraught and built a palace for her body, put her in it and then burned it down.  In that time and their culture, if you cremated someone, it made them a deity.

And then he had it rebuilt in her honor.

There is a statue of her at the top of the steps but it's hard to see here as she's in shadows.

As we listen intently!  There were about 10-14 in our group.

This is the Arch of Septimius Severus to honor his military success of the first Severan Emperor.

JUST over that hill behind it, is the place where Julius Caesar was murdered.

Et tu Brute?

His friends brought his body down to the center of the ancient city and even though he was cremated (again - because of the cremation, now he's a deity) people still put flowers on this spot.  

These are the remains of the temple of Castor and Pollux in the same grounds.

The story behind the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.  There were 40 Roman soldiers around 320AD who were martyred for their Christian faith by being forced onto a frozen lake naked.  One of the soldiers changed his mind and wanted to live instead, so he walked off the lake.  One of the guards watching this, declared his own faith in Christ, took off his uniform and took the place of the one who left.

Tradition holds that as soon as the one who left the lake stepped into the warm water they had for him, he died instantly.

The 40 on the lake were dead by morning and then they were burned.

One of the Roman rulers wives was moved by the story and had this fresco painted to honor the 40.

Then he led through some of the more modern palaces that still stand there.

more stories about their lives and deaths

Murderers in the families

There is the story of Livia Drusilla, an ex-wife of the Emperor Augustus.  She poisoned him as well as a lot of the heirs until her son, by another man, became Emperor Tiberius.  Actually it may have been Agrippina and Emperor Claudius.  

They both used poison to get their kids on the throne.  And yeah, probably Agrippina as she was the 4th wife of Claudius, who had been having trouble getting an heir.  Her son was Nero.

If you look closely and zoom in, there are two parrots in the holes!

More of the palace.

I could see myself living there!  Well, maybe with more fireplaces and a roof.

The pavement was so cool and original.  Rulers of the past rode their horses into the palaces this way.

Then the most modern palace in the Palatine city.

This fountain led to the roof top maze garden surrounded by orange trees.

It was so beautiful up there!  And there was a bench for a little break from all the walking.

Argh!  I can't find the pic of us on the bench. Oh well.

The orange trees smelled divine!

and then the trek back to the entrance

It took some googling but the pillars below are from the temple of Venus.

Ok - enough for today.

Come back tomorrow for part 2 and the actual Colosseum tour!