Siena

Duomo

After a packed day in Florence, we took a turn south and drove to the medieval city of Siena.  Siena sits atop three hills and some might consider it the ultimate hill town.  Siena was always a long time rival to Florence and was a major banking and trading center back in the 1200s and 1300s.  However, Florence conquered Siena back in the 1550s and Siena never recovered.  Its population remains

around 60,000 -- the same as it was centuries earlier.

Siena is a city of 17 contrade (districts), that survive to this day.  Each contrada has its own organization, its own colors and flag depicting a different animal.  As we walked through the narrow streets, you could tell you were leaving one district and entering another by the fact that the flags changed.  Even the street lights on the sides of buildings are painted in each contrada's color.  There's a friendly (fierce?) rivalry between contrade that culminates every July 2 and August 16 with the Palio -- a horse race through the main square, that crowns a champion contrada for the year.  They squeeze 60,000 people into the main square for a horse race that lasts about a minute or so.  Rather than come with all that frenzy, we visited two days before and saw all of the hype that is a precursor to the actual event.  This isn't some gimmick for tourists, but rather a tradition that has continued for centuries.

Il Campo

The two most visited sites in Siena are Il Campo, the main square, and the Duomo.  Il Campo is the heart of the city, a terraced square that gently cascades down to the bottom much like an amphitheater.  Locals will come and perch themselves hear for hours to visit and stretch out as if they were at the beach.  For the Palio, they actually bring in dirt and pack it around the perimeter for the horses to race on.  The towering facade of Il Campo is not the Duomo as you would find in other cities, but the City Hall, proudly flying all 17 contrade flags.

The Duomo is a 13th century Gothic cathedral that features black and white striped marble columns and a six story bell tower.  The floors are inlaid marble that show various scenes from the Bible.  These weren't mosaics as we had seen in other places, but pieces of inlaid marble and etchings in the marble to create the beautiful scenes we were seeing.

One of 17 Contrada flags

It's matching streetlight

Probably the best part of Siena was just the overall vibe.  You could meander for hours up and down the narrow lanes wondering what awaits around each corner.  Although we weren't seeing the actual race, we got a feel for the Palio as all of the locals were decked out in the contrada colors, singing their songs, and creating a very festive atmosphere.  Although we'd love to come back, it's the furthest place from the villa so we probably won't be able to.  If we do make it back to Italy, it will be on our list of places to visit again.  It should be on your list too.

The Best View of Florence

Without a doubt, the best view of Florence is on the other side of the Arno River on a hill overlooking the center city from Piazzale Michelangelo.  The Duomo (cathedral) dominates the skyline with it's impressive dome designed by Brunelleschi in the 1400s.  Michelangelo was a Florentine and this dome was his inspiration for the dome on St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.  However, because of the many other buildings and narrow streets, you can't really capture a great or complete picture of the Duomo without heading uphill.  So we hiked about 15 minutes -- much of it quite steep -- from the Ponte Vecchio -- Florence's famous bridge -- to see the Duomo and Florence in all her glory.  We were certainly rewarded for our efforts.

Duomo

Panorama of Florence

Firenze -- Accademia and Uffizi

Many of the names we use for cities in Italy (Rome, Naples, Venice, etc.) are anglicized versions of the actual Italian names.  Florence is the English name we give to Firenze.  It's very important to know the Italian name of the city so you can make sure you're finding the correct train station, following the right highway sign, or plugging the correct place into the GPS.

Florence has many wonderful sites to visit, priceless art, and an easy walkability.  Many people we've talked with about Italy have commented they preferred Florence to Rome.  Two of the many must-dos when in Florence are to visit the Accademia Gallery to see Michelangelo's David and to see the best collection of Italian art at the Uffizi Gallery.  Both of these galleries are extremely popular, and if you don't get your tickets and reserved time in advance, you will spend hours waiting in line.  Before we left the States, we decided to visit both the same day -- Accademia in the morning and Uffizi in the afternoon.  Florence is difficult to drive in because there is a restricted driving zone for cars in the city center, so we drove about half an hour from the villa to the town of Empoli where we parked and took the train into Florence.

David by Michelangelo

Getting our tickets in advance paid huge dividends.  Both galleries only let in a few people at a time to control the crowds within the building.  Not having a reserved time slot means waiting a long time to get in.  Our strategy paid off big time as the line at the Accademia was already down the street and around the building.  We exchanged our voucher for the actual ticket and were inside within 10 minutes.  There are a lot of great statuary and paintings here, but let's face it, we came to see David.  At about 14 feet tall, David stands alone under a small rotunda, posing in the classical style for everyone to admire.  This is Michelangelo's masterpiece and it does not disappoint.  For me, the other best part of the Accademia was the musical instrument museum that's off to the side in another part of the building when you first enter the gallery.  We saw violins and cellos by the master Stradivarius and other early instruments from the 1600s and 1700s.

The Birth of Venus by Botticelli

Our afternoon visit to the Uffizi was much the same as the Accademia.  We exchanged our vouchers and were inside within 10 minutes.  The line for those waiting to buy tickets was long and moving very s--l--o--w--l--y.  The Uffizi started out as the personal collection of the Medici family who controlled Florence for centuries and were great patrons of famous artists including Michelangelo.  The building itself was originally constructed to consolidate administrative offices of Florence, but the art gradually took over and the gallery officially opened to the public in 1765.   It houses both statuary and paintings by the Italian masters, including masterworks by Botticelli, Caravaggio, and Titian.  We took the elevator up to the 2nd floor and walked the length of the gallery and down again to the first floor, seeing most all of the rooms.  

Admittedly, we're not art experts, and after a while we hit our wall and want to do something else than walk through another museum.  However, you can't come to Florence and not experience this.  It was well worth our time and an enjoyable way to start and end our day.

Villa Maura

View of the front of the villa

There's a great episode of Seinfeld where Elaine's boyfriend has rented a villa in Tuscany for vacation and tells Jerry he got the last one.  Jerry's response was along the lines of "You mean there are no more villas in all of Tuscany" so of course, he stews about this the rest of the episode with George and Kramer.  In the end, he finds his villa in Tuscany and it's across the street from Elaine's.

View from the terrace below

We've had great luck with renting apartments where we stay for a week (Paris, Amsterdam) and we rented a house in Colorado for a week for a family reunion.  It's much like renting a house at the beach.  You can use a realty service, or now with the internet, find one on your own through a site such as Homeaway or VRBO.  The great thing about an apartment or house rental is that we have a kitchen to cook meals, laundry facilities, and more room to spread out than just having a hotel room.  Plus you can split the cost with others and end up with a much better deal than individually renting hotel rooms.

View of our pool from the front balcony

We knew we wanted to stay in Tuscany for the week so we researched multiple sites on line.  There are lots of places to rent throughout Tuscany and we stumbled across Villa Maura outside the town of Fucecchio.  Fucecchio is between Florence and Lucca, and so far is proving to be a great location.  We're less than an hour from both Pisa and Florence so we can visit both while we're here.  Our house is owned by a lovely lady named Tiziana who we communicated with via email to set everything up.  She welcomed us with bottles of wine, brought a huge binder with maps and other information on the area, and made sure we knew how to get to the grocery store.

A portion of our view of the Fucecchio countryside

Tuscany is very much a rural region with lots of vineyards and olive groves.  The scenery is very pastoral and relaxing, but a car is a must because there isn't much in the way of public transportation except in the larger cities and towns.  It's great hearing the birds and the crowing roosters in the mornings.  After the hustle and bustle of Rome, this will be a great place to unwind, relax, and enjoy a slower pace of Italian life.  I think it's time for a nap.

My Name is Lucca

We are now settled into our home in Tuscany for the next week and are making side trips to towns across the region.  First up is the walled city of Lucca.  Apparently, Lucca is the tissue and toilet paper capital of Europe, but it's certainly nothing to sneeze at (insert groan here).  The more impressive aspect is that it still has a perfectly intact wall approximately 2.5 miles in length that surrounds the old city center.  It was spared from bombing during both world wars.  Today, you can jog or ride your bike under a canopy of shade trees that line the wall.

Seeing a portion of the city wall and the park
that lines the top of it

We visited on Saturday morning when Via dei Bacchettoni is closed and vendors set up in the street for their weekly market.  Although predominantly clothing stalls, there were a few food vendors and a couple of fruit stands interspersed the length of the street.  We strolled with the locals and perused the items for sale, occasionally getting to butcher their language with our poor Italian speaking.

Piazza dell'Anfiteatro

Their really aren't any must-sees in Lucca -- no Colosseum, no Statue of David, etc.  As a result, there aren't big crowds as it's probably not on most lists of places to visit.   That's a shame because this is the kind of place where you can really experience Italian life more like a local than most of the places we've been so far.  Besides seeing the fully intact city wall which is really functioning like an elevated linear city park, the neatest feature of Lucca is the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro.  This "square" is actually circular on the site of an Roman-era amphitheater.  It is completely surrounded by buildings and you enter though one of four small arched tunnels.  Once inside, the piazza is lined with shops and outdoor cafes.  It definitely has the feel of the local outdoor gathering spot.  Lucca is only about 30 minutes from where we are staying, so I suspect we will be returning before we leave Tuscany.

Montepulciano

It's a little over 3 hours drive from Rome to our home in Tuscany for the next week, and since we couldn't check in until after 4pm, we had time to stop along the way.  We decided to stop in Montepulciano, a hilltop town overlooking the Chianti region in southern Tuscany.  Yes that Chianti, a region known for its wine making.  Fortunately, the town wasn't crowded and we were able to leisurely stroll through the various narrow lanes, enjoying the stone buildings and fantastic views of the countryside.

Montepulciano is known for its Vino Nobile red wine, and we visited the Cantina Contucci to sample some of it.  The Contucci family has been making wine for over 1000 years -- 41 generations of the same family.  The coolest part of our visit was being able to visit the Contucci wine cellar and seeing the huge barrels of wine aging.  A lot of the tags on the labels indicated this particular batch of wine wouldn't be bottled until 2016.  

Because this is a hill town, the topography gets quite steep as you essentially travel switchback roads or up and down strategically placed staircases.  The wine cellar is cut into the hill beneath the building and you can tell its been used for hundreds of years.

Three of the four of us sampled the Vino Nobile (I'll let you guess who didn't) and all gave it two thumbs up.  There was a nice article in Wine Enthusiast from a few years ago that rated the wine very highly and noted it sold for $30 per bottle.  Here we can pick it up for less than $15.  Sounds like we may be stocking up for the week.

View of the Tuscan countryside from
the top of Montepulciano.

Goodbye Rome, Hello Tuscany

After spending five wonderful nights in Rome, it's time to say arrivederci.  We have had a fantastic time -- the Hotel Raffaello has been a wonderful base to explore Rome.  We could walk to the train station and to the Colosseum.  The weather has been fantastic -- sunny and not too hot with cool nights and mornings.  We walked (a LOT), explored, ate great food, and just enjoyed life in the city.  But now we're looking forward to a change of pace in Tuscany.

We walked to the Train Station to get our rental car for the next week -- pulling our suitcases along the way and avoiding traffic and throngs of people.  Although the rental car desk was located in the train station, we still had to walk another few blocks down the street to the garage where the car was parked.  Our car for the week is a Renault Megane and we quickly focused on its most important feature -- the GPS.  After spending a few days in Rome, we know why people recommend that you don't drive there.  Stop signs seem to be a suggestion and it would appear that scooters and motorcycles always have the right of way.  As the GPS voice is male, we've nicknamed him Roberto.  He's gotten us off to a good start -- no wrong turns and quickly out of the city and on the autostrade towards Tuscany.  I think Roberto and I will be great friends this next week.

Pantheon

The Pantheon was built as a Roman temple to all (pan) gods (theos).  Although originally built by Marcus Agrippa, whose name is inscribed across the front, the current structure was completely rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian around AD 120.  This building has survived the centuries and appears today much as it did when it was built.  One of its most astounding features is the mathematical precision in which it was built.  Thomas Jefferson was so inspired by this building, he spent many hours here and used it as the basis for his design of the Rotunda at the University of Virginia.  The dome of the Pantheon served as the inspiration of the dome of the Duomo in Florence, which inspired Michelangelo's dome of St. Peter's Basilica.

Unlike the Colosseum and Roman Forum which sit prominently within the center of Rome, the Pantheon is tucked away off of the main streets and fronts a small piazza.  Depending upon the direction from which you enter the square, you just turn the corner and "bam!"there it is.  We visited during our last night in Rome, and the piazza was a hotbed of activity.  After walking through the Pantheon, we walked over to Piazza Navone, another lively square where local artists sell their work and street performers try to earn a euro or two.   It was a nice way to finish our last night in Rome -- experiencing its history as well as its liveliness.

Slice of Napoli

While Pompeii was the main focus of our day on Wednesday, we had to change trains in Naples -- Napoli in Italian -- so on the way back, we decided to stop for a few hours to get a flair for the city.  The Train Station is not really close to the things we wanted to see, so we rode the subway to the Spanish Quarter area of the City.  The Naples subway was sleek and new and probably the nicest one we've ridden -- at least the section we rode.  We saw Castel Nuovo (pictured here) which dates back to 1282 and has an imposing view over the harbor.  We walked the narrow streets of the Spanish Quarter, where the vibrancy of Naples is so apparent.   The lanes are narrow -- too narrow for cars, so motorbikes are the norm.  We saw families sitting at their dining room tables as we walked by the open windows, and looking up, we saw people hanging their laundry out to dry.  You had small businesses such as produce stands and small restaurants interspersed with all of the homes and apartment buildings.  We truly saw a slice of Napoli life.

Walking one of the narrow streets of the Spanish Quarter

Napoli is also the birthplace of pizza, so we couldn't leave without sampling the local fare.  We found a busy sidewalk cafe on one of the squares and each ordered a pizza -- the classic Margherita.  Here the pizzas are small and ordered individually, and they are not pre-sliced.  You eat them with a knife and fork.  It was deliziosa! Molto bene!  Fortunately, we could walk off some of the carbs as we made our way back to the subway to catch the train back to Rome.

Pompeii's Brothels

Pompeii had at least 30 brothels.  Because it was a trading post in its heyday, merchants, sailors, and other travelers passed through on a regular basis.  Because not everyone spoke the same language, the brothels had pictures painted on the walls illustrating the various services.  You could simply point at what you wanted and adjourn to your private room for your services.

So it's not just restaurants where a picture menu comes in handy.

Pompeii

After two full days of immersion in all things Roma, we paused and took a day trip to Napoli (Naples) and Pompeii.  We took the high-speed Frecciarosa train from Rome to Naples which took about an hour, and then switched to the local Circumvesuviana for the rest of the journey.  As far as train travel goes, this is night and day.  The Frecciarosa is sleek and modern and we hit top speeds of almost 300km/hr or about 180mph.  It has comfy seats and wifi availability.  On the other hand, the Circumvesuviana had older train cars plastered with graffiti on the outside and more resembles a subway car.  In fact, there was lots of standing as the cars were very crowded with locals who use it for everyday travel as well as the influx of tourists doing the same thing we were.

Standing in the Forum area of Pompeii with
Mount Vesuvius behind us

We arranged for a tour with a company called Mondo Guide.  This was a group we found out about in the Rick Steves guide book.  We enjoy using his books as we plan our trips and this was another winning tip.  We met up with other travelers who found out about it the same way we did and were in a group of about 15 people -- including 3 fellow W&M folks -- another W&M couple Class of '83 and their daughter who will be a senior in the fall.

Pompeii is an archaeological treasure.  It was a thriving Roman trading city of about 20,000 or so people in a very middle class setting.  It ceased to exist in 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius erupted an buried it in about 25 feet of extremely hot volcanic ash.  The Pompeiians had no time to react and were literally buried alive.  However, because it was hot ash and not lava that buried the town, it was extremely well preserved as was discovered over a thousand years later.  Pompeii was all but forgotten from history until rediscovered in the 1700s.

Mona walking on the crosswalk.  Since there were no sewers,
the streets would be flooded to help wash everything away.
This is how you would walk across, with room for chariots
to pass between.

Our tour guide Carmine walked us through the site for our two hour tour, showing us the highlights and giving us quite the history lesson about Pompeii.  Pompeii had everything -- houses, bakeries, restaurants, hotels, spas, etc.  We saw the gladiator ring and the slave quarters where they were kept.  We walked across the stage of the theater which still has its original marble in place.  We saw the brick oven of a restaurant and the marble counter top where the food was served -- all original and all preserved by the tomb of ash for over 1,500 years.  You can see original mosaic floors still in place as well as frescoes on the walls.  We even walked in the spa and knew which side was men's and which was women's by the decorations still present.

Inside one of the homes with original frescoes and
a fountain lined with sea shells

One of the questions I asked Carmine was what happened with all of the excavated ash?  It has been recycled and is combined with concrete to form the foundations of houses and buildings in the region.  There are still large sections of Pompeii still to be excavated in the future.  For now, Pompeii lives on as a testament to Roman ingenuity from two millennia ago as well as the foundation of much newer cities. 

The Swiss Guard

The Swiss Guard have pledged allegiance to the Pope since the 1500's and stand guard over Vatican City to this Day.  A good history of the Swiss Guard can be found here from the Vatican website.  One of the most striking things about them is the uniform they wear -- an icon of the Vatican although maybe not the religious kind.

Bernini, Caravaggio, and the Borghese Gallery

After our jam packed morning of touring the Vatican and St. Peter's Cathedral, we took a brief break before heading to the Borghese Gallery.  We walked to Termini train station to catch Bus 910 which dropped us off next to the Borghese Gardens, a large park that once was the home and property of the Borghese family.  Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1576-1633) built the villa specifically to house his impressive personal art collection so he could enjoy entertaining the VIPs of his day.   While there is a lot of impressive art and the building itself is a treasure to walk through, the main draw is for two artists -- Bernini and Caravaggio.

Gian L. Bernini was one of Italy's foremost sculptors.  Several of his major works are displayed here.  The realism is striking and it is amazing to see how he can transform marble into such life-like representations.  His David (1624) shows David in action getting ready to sling his rock at Goliath, not merely posing.  I look forward to seeing Michelangelo's David when we visit Florence later in our trip.  Caravaggio is the nickname of Michelangelo Merisi and he is known for his realism in painting as well as his strong contrast between light and dark.  The Borghese Gallery has the single best collection of Caravaggio paintings displayed in one place.

You definitely should plan ahead to visit the Borghese Gallery.  We used our Roma pass which allows us into two attractions for free, but even so, you must still make a reservation for a specific date and time which I did by calling ahead from home before we left for our trip.  Every two hours beginning at 9am, 360 people are admitted for two hours.  You must leave at the end of your time so the next group can come in.  We made our reservations for 5pm and were in the last group of the day. I noticed a sign on the door when we entered that said no tickets were available until 3 days later, so it does pay to plan ahead.  This isn't a particularly large museum, so two hours worked out just fine.

The Vatican

After our fabulous tour of the Colosseum and the Roman Forum on Monday and we're excited to have our tour of the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica.  Our tour guide today is also named Barbara so it will be easy to remember her name.  Originally, we were to have Francesca as our guide for both days, but she was sick so the need for last minute replacements.

The Vatican is a separate sovereign nation, surrounded by Rome, but not a part of Italy.  Located on the other side of the Tiber River from most of the famous sites in Rome, it's a too far to walk from our hotel so we took the Metro over and met Barbara at 9:00 in front of the entrance to the Vatican Museums.  Fortunately, we booked our tickets and tour time on line or else we'd be standing in an extremely long line outside waiting to buy tickets to get in.

Standing in St. Peter's Square in front of the Basilica.
The Sistine Chapel is the brown building in the upper right.

Most of us non-Catholics know the Vatican as the home of the Pope and the seat of the Catholic Church. St. Peter's Basilica is the largest church in the world.  What I think most people don't know is the Vatican has a treasure trove of antiquities, historical documents, and priceless works of art.  Barbara walked us through centuries of world and religious history and art -- both mind-boggling and fascinating to see all of this in one place.

Without a doubt, the highlight of the tour was seeing the Sistine Chapel.  Painted by Michelangelo over a period of four years, it is considered my many to be one of his crowning achievements.  To sum it up -- awe-inspiring.  To think that he was able to paint at this detail and scale in the early 1500s and it still remains today is simply incredible.  Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take photos so I will have to make do with mental images and postcards.

Inside St. Peter's Basilica

After the Sistine Chapel it was out through a side door and into St. Peter's Basilica -- the largest cathedral in the world.  It took 120 years to complete and was completed in 1626.  Michelangelo himself designed the dome that sits atop the cathedral although he did not live to see its completion.  Dripping with Baroque ornamentation, there's gold leaf everywhere.  One of the most impressive things for me is that there are no actual paintings in the cathedral.  Everything that looks like a painting is actually a mosaic -- tiny pieces of individually placed tiles.  Unless you inspect it very carefully and up close, you'd swear it was a painting.

Another interesting item you see when visiting is that there are markings on the floor indicating the length of other world cathedrals to put into perspective the relative size of those cathedrals to St. Peter's.  The closest in size is St. Paul's Cathedral in London, and it still has a ways to go to match St. Peter's.

Our three hour tour with Barbara went by way too fast.  There's no way we'd achieve the level of appreciation we gained if we'd have done the tour on our own.  Given the throngs of people walking through - you're literally shoulder to shoulder -- we'd have been hard pressed to sort out what we should see versus what was skippable.  If you go to see the Vatican -- splurge for the guide.  It's money well spent.

San Pietro in Vincoli

Just down the street from our hotel is San Pietro in Vincoli church.  Walking down the main avenue -- Via Cavour -- we walked up a steep flight of stairs into a square where the church sits.  Fairly nondescript from the outside, San Pietro in Vincoli -- translation St. Peter in Chains -- is an historic Roman church first built in AD 440 to house the chains that held Peter.

Peter's Chains behind the altar

Actually, there are two sets of chains -- one set used to hold Peter when he and Paul were held in the Mamertine prison in Rome.  The others were used in Jerusalem when Peter was jailed by Herod.  The chains from Jerusalem were a gift to the emperor in the waning days of the Roman empire.  According to tradition, when the two sets of chains were placed together, they miraculously joined into one.  The chains are displayed in a special case at the altar.

Moses

The church underwent significant changes around 1475, but the 20 Doric columns flanking either side of the church are original.  The other interesting item for which this church is noted is for is a statue of Moses by Michelangelo.  This statue was originally supposed to be part of a monumental work for the planned tomb of Pope Julius II in St. Peter's Basilica.  The pope would abandon this project and instead have Michelangelo paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

So many of he churches here in Rome have priceless works of art such as this Michelangelo statue.  They're free to see and usually not very crowded.  While you wouldn't necessarily say this church is off the beaten path, one of our favorite things about traveling is discovering these often bypassed sites.  You just have to know where to look.

Roman Forum and Palatine Hill

Arch of Titus

Our tour of the Colosseum with Barbara also included a guided tour of the Roman Forum.  The Roman Forum was the political, religious, and commercial center of the city.  It was the market, it was where returning war heroes had their parades, and it was the place of important political speeches -- you just had to imagine as Barbara would tell us.  This is an area of ruins, but one that archaeologists have examined for many years, and what still remains shows the impressive abilities of the Roman Empire to construct huge and elaborate buildings.  While they had indentured servitude and slavery to help them, it still would not have been possible without the architectural and engineering knowledge developed at the time.  What

View of Roman Forum from Palatine Hill

remains today is just a shell of its former glory, but Barbara showed us pictures of what the archaeologists have pieced together that the Forum likely looked like in its time and it would have been incredible.

Mona and I also walked up Palatine Hill while Mom and Pop took a break from all the walking.  There's more ruins to explore but we went for the view -- one fit for an emperor as he took in the grand expanse of the Forum from his palace that once stood here.

Colosseum

As we were planning this trip and thinking about what we wanted to do, Mona decided she really wanted to have a guided tour of certain sites in order to gain better knowledge and really appreciate the history of what we were seeing.  She definitely wanted a guided tour of the Vatican.  She researched different guides and groups on line and found a company called Tours of the Vatican that had a tremendous number of positive reviews.  One of the reviewers said they enjoyed their guided tour so much, they wish they had done one for the Colosseum as well.  I believe that was the deciding factor, and Mona said we had to use this group for tours of both sites.

Our first full day in Rome began with a guided tour of the Colosseum.  We took the Metro -- Rome's subway system is called the Metropolitan -- and met out tour guide Barbara outside of the Colosseum Metro station.  Barbara studied art history at university and really enjoys giving tours.  She was extremely knowledgeable of the history of the Colosseum and shared so much information.  I won't bore you by sharing everything we learned, but it is interesting how the Colosseum got its name -- Colosseo in Italian.

Originally, this was known as the Amphitheatrum Flavium - or Flavian Amphitheater.  This was due to being constructed by two emperors of the Flavian dynasty -- Vespasian and Titus -- between 72 and 80 AD.  These were the first two emperors after Nero.  There was a gigantic bronze statue of Nero nearby -- a Colossus -- or colossal in today's English.  So it began to be referred to as Colosseo by the Romans even though it served as a "theatrical" venue with gladiator fights, executions, and the like taking place in its heyday.  Even though this was considered an "amphitheater" in its day (which is a word we still use today), Colosseum stuck and the term is still used throughout the English-speaking world to refer to sports arenas.

Inside the Colosseum 

For me, the other most interesting tidbit was that the Colosseum could hold 50,000 to 80,000 spectators back in the day and could be completely emptied in 15 minutes.  Very efficient design by the ancient Romans.  Now if only we could figure how to do that after our own sporting events in the 10,000 seat arena instead of spending a lot longer trying to get out.

Aqueduct Park

It's hard to do much on the day you arrive given the lack of sleep on the plane and trying to ward off jet lag.  We have some longer tours and lots of walking the rest of the week so we thought the best course of action was not to do a whole lot and just get our bearings.  After buying the Roma pass, we went ahead an activated it so we could start riding the subway.  There's only 2 lines currently -- A and B -- that sort of form an X as they crisscross the City.

We decided to visit Aqueduct Park (Parco degli Acquedotti).  This is a natural park area near the south end of the A line at the end of Viale Giulio Agricola.  This is a popular spot with locals to bike and picnic.  It's well off the traditional tourist path and it certainly seemed like we were the only non-locals there.  There we found the best preserved sections of aqueducts that date to the Roman empire. The Acqua Claudia pictured here dates to the first century A.D.

As we walked closer to the ruins to get a better view, it seemed like we were the only ones there.  The  park is left to its natural state -- no manicured lawns or mowed areas around here.  In fact, it seemed like one section of the remaining aqueduct was standing in a field of wheat.  It's hard to think back on the ingenuity and ability of the Romans to build such a massive structure that transported water from the mountains into Rome.  This ruin was also in the flight pattern of nearby Ciampino Airport so it was interesting juxtaposition to see a 2000 year old aqueduct standing tall as a 20 year old passenger plane flew right over it.

This was a great start to our trip -- seeing two millennia of history but without all of the crowds.  Those are coming tomorrow as we tour the Colosseum.  

Buongiorno da Roma

Good Morning from Rome!  After our overnight flight from the US, we landed about 9:40am local time.  After getting our passport stamped and collecting our luggage, we met our driver who drove us directly to our home for the next five nights -- Hotel Raffaello.  We drove right past the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and the Roman Forum -- only an hour into our visit and we're seeing thousands of years of history.

Italy is known for its HOT summers.  The weather forecast for the next few days looks very promising -- highs in the low 80s and down in the 60s at night.  The high today is right at 80.  Let's hope the good fortune continues.

Our first order of business is purchasing our Roma Pass which allows us free entry to our first two sites as well as unlimited use of the subway and buses.  Off to explore!