Italy 11 - More of Rome!

First, since I skimmed over it yesterday, the apartment we have is amazing. I'm gonna guess 100 years old - it has steam radiators, a dumbwaiter (now turned into a closet), the elevator is an obvious retrofit, and the windows are big enough to stand up in - opening onto a classic 8" ledge that begs to be traversed. (Update: The buildings next door were built in 1912 and 1915). 10 foot ceilings, 3 bed 3 bath, a sitting room that blends into the dining room, and a dedicated (and partially stocked) kitchen.  And key: 4th floor (meaning 5th in American) views of the colosseum straight over a park. Not to mention, it's all decked out with snazzy chandeliers, bookshelves, random silver knickknacks, fancy area rugs over a herringbone parquet... I feel like exiled minor nobility. The only thing missing is shampoo... but hand soap is close enough, right? And now my hair smells lemony fresh.

Ancient Rome must have been amazing. The coliseum is still amazing today, and it's somewhat broken down, no longer clad in marble/plaster, lacking all it's paint, and missing it's statues. The most missing statue was the 100ft tall statue of Nero (later changed to be Sol, then Hercules) - a bronze monstrosity that was right outside the main entrance and gave the Coliseum it's name, which has been lost to history - presumably melted down for cookwares. The enormous football-field sized statue to Venus and Roma Aeterna (the Eternal Rome, personified into a God) is also almost entirely absent. A few pillars and a partial dome are all that remain, the rest has been stolen over the course of centuries. That's basically the default in Rome. Build something amazing, and then the next people that come along adopt it for their own purposes, disassemble it for parts, or just slap their names and Gods on it and call it a day, for better or worse.

For the coliseum itself, it started as a lake. That's how they managed to find empty room in the middle of the city - just filling in a lake. Also explains how they were able to flood it for the naval battles during it's inauguration (100 days of feasting that resulted in the deaths of 2000 men and 9000 animals). From ~100AD to ~500AD it hosted the lurid gladiatorial battles that all we all read about with macabre fascination. After that it was essentially abandoned, and merchants took over various portions to use a warehouses and stables, while scrappers pried out the iron reinforcements to melt down.  After that, a family of nobles fortified the semi-ruined structure, built a keep, and essentially used it as their private castle in the 1500s, leaving the inside to grow wild with vines and various botanicals. Soon after, the church decided to celebrate it, as they viewed themselves as the keepers of Rome, and drew up spectacular plans to turn it into a cathedral, before ultimately settling on installing 14 smaller shrines around the interior devoted to the stations of the cross. Now, these have been removed, archeologists have excavated the basements after 1600 years lying beneath the dirt, and restoration work is ongoing.

On the coliseum floor, I was most struck by how intimate the setting was. The emperor and nobles would be a few yards from the gladiators, slaves, and animals being slaughtered in front of them. And thinking deeper about it, the whole thing is so very roman. An empire based on (and funded by) conquest, the colosseum was a foremost a tremendous political tool. Celebrating and bankrolled by the sack of Jerusalem, the imported slaves spoke to the might of the Roman Empire. When Egypt was conquered, Egyptian set pieces were introduced - reminding everyone how powerful the Roman army was. Besides this, the "bread and circuses" was very much in effect. Free bread and entertainment for anyone who could vote. Today, that same concept still rules our government, only the circuses and battles are in the news and political campaigns, while stimulus checks play the role of bread. And instead of looting foreign countries, we raise taxes or increase the debt.

The Tower of Babel - Pieter Bruegel - 1563

The tunnels underneath were also impressive, featuring ramps, trap doors, elevators, and cages for both animals and humans, who would be snuck onto the arena (latin for sand - 9 inches of which covered the floor) behind various props or set-pieces, so that the crowds could laugh at the hunters misfortune - highly advanced stagecraft and direction for a production with serious consequences. And when in doubt? Use slave labor. Massive capstans ran all the ropes through hundreds of pulleys, which would have required massive coordination to get all the moving pieces in place at the right time. But for up to 50,000 fans (35k typical?), nobles, the vestal virgins, and the Emperor himself... nothing could be too over-the-top.

The upper level of the colosseum now holds a museum, showing bones from all the animals kept (or slaughtered) on site, from giant cats and boars to bears, ostriches, and chickens. Also present are models showing how the canvas awning would work (sailors took care of all the rigging), various configurations of the colosseum over the years, and artwork showing the colosseum as it looked in the past, or as medieval artists imagined it must have looked.  This alternate history of such an iconic landmark was one of my favorite parts, it was utterly fascinating to hear the legends based on the ruins of the colosseum written by those who had nothing else to go on. After taking in another round of views, snapping some pictures where things fortuitously lined up, and listening/reading the audioguide cover to cover we headed back to our apartment, only two blocks away.

We had to pause for a moment for a cinematographic production (with screens, reflectors, tents, trucks, generators, sounds men, cameras, and security blocking the paths during the scenes), but we have no idea what it was. If anyone sees a movie set in a park with the colosseum in the background come out in late 2023 or 2024... LMK. Anyways, lunch, I think another round of naps... some blogging... and some very polite arguing as everyone fails to make plans for the rest of the day.

There were not much naps. Just a bit off food and a bit of rest, and then back into the fray.  It was bad. A complete breakdown of planning, direction finding, etc. We wanted to do palatine hill and the Forum. A palace, the old senate building, it shouldn't take but an hour or something. But it was hot, sunny, and the caffeine wasn't working. We spent far too long debating over which entrance was correct, finally got past the ticket booth, and fell into further debate over what turns to take, what paths went where, and eventually we wandered apart and chose separate routes. I'm fine with this, I've done a hundred palaces and ruins, I know how this flows, so I just started walking a modified left-hand-rule maze strategy and wandering about on my own. The palace was Massive. It was like 5 palaces, all built on the ruins of the palaces and senatorial homes and nobility before them. Highlights IMO were the horsenasium (I think technically they call it the Hippodrome), courtyards, the baths, and the amazing views. I guess when you're Emperor you just put your palace on the top of the hill because you can. Might as well look out over all the baller monuments you and your forbearers built, which probably inspires you bankroll another and leave your mark on the amazing canvas spread out in front of your palace. There was so much stuff. Slabs of marble from all over the ancient world, including Africa (to flex on your neighbor's Italian marble, of course. What sort of peasant uses local marble?), ruins everywhere you looked in various levels of falling-down, churches built on the ruins, it was a little overwhelming. 

And that was only the first half. After an hour of solo-wandering I cut through the gardens to the main overlook, and then it became very overwhelming. The whole of the forum, what we thought was going to be the second half hour, was  spread out beneath me. The ruins of dozens of temples and monuments stretched across the ancient city center. I called my parents to check on where they were so I could try to spot them down there, and they were in the gardens only a few minutes behind me. So I waited for them and my brother/wife showed up too! We took in the views, and then headed down into the mess. By now it had cooled off a bit, there was more shade, and the caffeine had kicked in.

It was wild. Every 20 feet was another temple. Minerva (technically across the street), Jupiter, Artemis, Callisto and cafdasfdsaf, dozens of gods even a bookworm like myself had never even heard. Another temple to Roma Aeterna, and monuments to a dozen victories in wars, dead sons and fathers, and various government buildings behind, on top of, and under them. The entire region was filled up around 500BC, and then rebuilt again 60-120AD as the Jerusalem money poured in. Plus tons of restorations in antiquity as temples burned down or earthquakes hit.  There were a few hangers-on, as later emperors wanted to be included in the field of glory up to ~500 AD, but after that it basically died out. The valley was slowly filled in with dirt, and the same rich family that had turned the colosseum into their personal house in the middle ages remodeled the upper half of the Arch of Titus into a fort, going to far as to cut a door into the massive inscriptions across the top. Sheer balls, kind of sad to see it defiled in such a way, but it also protected the arch since nobody was gonna steal bits off a fort for their garden or cement, as happened to so many other buildings. That's the main secret into how so much survived so long, it all spent ~1300 years buried and protected.  Our last stop was the house and courtyard of the vestal virgins, the 14???? virgins who served the temple of Vesta from the ages of 10-40, from whose area all men were banned, save the high priest, who just happened to be the emperor. Their quarters were adjacent to their temple where they attended the eternal flame.

Then we went to the exit... which was closed and was actually just a cool overview of the valley. Then we went to the exit.... but we'd missed the senate building itself, so we had to backtrack to check that out... but there was a rope across the entrance. Sign said it should be open at this time, we found a staffer. "Is the curia open?" "Oh Yes, yes of course" <looks over> "But may-be not today." By that time we'd entered a new region full of ruins of old administrative buildings, and we continued down this path, under the main modern road in a collection of ancient catacombs, and came out on the other side where we wound around to the tower of Trajan! So we got another look at that, and then headed back to the hotel.

At the hotel I wrote all this up, set up a timelapse, and we watched the sun set from our window. Amazing views. Then we went out to dinner (and I swung by a pharmacy to pick up some naeostro atletico - aka ankle tape - for tomorrow's trip to Pompeii which I'm sure will be even heavier on the joints.  I went to grab a pic of the sunset and saw some guy lining up the same shot on his wife and complimented him on his shot - "nice" - and then I realized he was taking a video. Lol.  For dinner we had pizza, and beer, and wine, and desert. We adventurously chose the potatoes and wurst pizza.... which it turns out means french fries and hotdogs. Very promising, but sausages and pan-fried diced potatoes would be kick it from decent to amazing. We added on some gelato afterwards and quick trip to the supermarket to round off the night, and home by 10.30.