A Tale from Rome....

[haraldo]

Just back after 10 days in Rome, and here are some memories.
10 image limitation makes it impossible to show everything......

This is Rome, as it probably was ... 2000 years ago

St. Peter's Church

Pantheon, built more than 2000 years ago and kept incredibly well, almost 100% intact, at the top an opening in the ceiling where sun comes in and at midsummer makes a great striong sunray onto ceiling

The great palace and church at Piazza Navola

Roman Forum, birthplace of the city, mostly nothing is intact

Colosseum, a great theatre of death where they made a showcase of people and animals being killed

Cirus Massimo, a 700 metre long ractrack for horses, once upon a time there were tribuenes here with seatings for 300.000 people !
The only rule here was to be first.....

It's been a great trip to Rome with my Fiancee, very enjoyable....
There are many great places, nice food nice people but a chaotic and noisy city.

One thing breaks the image though....

We've been shocked to learn about the violent history of the city, and especially about what happened in Colosseum... where they made fights between life and death into a show where up to 80.000 spectators could watch this game. The show went on all day, firstly with gladiators fighting smaller animals, at midday they had the executions where people sentenced to death were sent in without weapons facing lions, tigers or gladiators armed from top to toe; the highlight was the end of the day where gladiators fought each other to death or gladiators fought against lions and tigers....
When two went in... only one would leave alive.
No animals would leave Colosseum alive.

If a gladiator would be hurt so much that he couldn't rise, then it was up to the emperor, giving his thumbs up means that people would rush in to rescue him and put him into hospital; thumbs down means, leave him for the lions and tigers.

we thought of Rome as a very romantic city.... now we more think of the city as a place with a history of half broken buildings and an extremely violent history

When you go around Rome what you see is not about the present but the past a few thousand years ago.

 

[tonygeno]

Did you see the movie Gladiator? That was the Rome then. I'm not sure why something that happened 2000 years ago, would break the image of today.

 

[gholt]

Nice pics. That is one of the places I would like to visit in my lifetime.

 

[dkane360]

I was in Rome a few weeks ago! I'll share some pics I took when I finish my econ homework lol. It was a very nice city, although my mom didn't care too much for it. We only spent 2 days in Rome, which was kind of a bummer. The trip was more like a sampler of Europe. We went to Rome, then on a cruise which took us to Genoa, then Toulon France, then Barcelona, then Palma de Mallora, then Sardinia, then back to Rome. After that we took the train to Florence, Pisa, then we ended the trip in Venice. Venice was a beautiful city, and definitely needs to be in anyone's itinerary if they travel to Italy.

 

[rnatalli]

Every nation has a history of violence. What always impresses me about Rome is how much was achieved so long ago. And the fact that many of their structures still stand whereas we have tunnels collapsing on people here in Boston impresses me.

 

[res6jya6]

haraldo! awesome pictures... how you been?

 

[haraldo]

There's something called sarcasm.....
And if you think that movie Gladiator shows anything close to the truth, I would suggest to think again....

Thanks for the nice feedback guys, I do have a bunchload more of pics and 30GB of highdef video mostly shot by my fiancee... no way to post even a fraction of this here....

We can definitely recommend Italy as a country to go to, very nice people and very nice places... but extremely noisy and busy...

Rome is a nice city but for us it seems to be a place where everything is in constant disorder and everything is noisy and traffic goes at a tempo from another planet.... try to grab a taxi and you'll see

By accident we were suddenly in the middle of an Italian wedding so we spent some time in a church to see how things were going on there, quite interesting....

But still surprised that the biggest showcase that they're so proud of is this building........