It’s actually amazing the multitude and diversity of famous sights in Rome, ranging from the oldest of the old Roman ruins, to the Catholic Jerusalem, to some of the hippest and most expensive high fashion in Europe. Angela and I sat around a map and my Let’s Go the first night, reading about the sights and circling everything we wanted to do on the map. We circled pretty much everything. In light of the constant walking and seeing we did in Rome, it didn’t even matter that our hostel was at the bottom of our favorite hostel list and we had to take glacial runoff showers the first two days and deal with the rancid smell of mold in the bathroom and the smelly, loud Australians and unhappy couples who were also staying in our room (they were all actually very nice, though).
Without knowing it we decided to forgo seeing the Pope on Wednesday at 10:30 and instead went straight to the Colosseum. I think what is most amazing about Rome (and most old European cities for that matter) is that the old is mixed in with the new, the modern Romans live on top of and along with the historical Romans, ruins from BC coexist with newfangled things like cars, asphalt-paved streets, and high-rise buildings. Gabriel García Márquez says it best in his story “La santa/The saint” about his/the narrator’s return to Rome 22 years after he first saw it: “Pues la Roma de nuestras nostalgias era ya otra Roma antigua dentro de la Antigua Roma de los Césares.” Translated: “So the Rome we remembered so fondly was already an ancient Rome, preserved with the Ancient Rome of the time of César.” (Of course the brilliance and simplicity of this sentence in Spanish cannot be translated into English, not by me not by anyone, but I’m a recent graduate of a translation class and, well, I try.)
The Colosseum is particularly amazing because it is, well, completely colossal. We found it without trouble, by literally walking down the street from our hostel and turning our heads to the left. And there it was, a remnant from 80 AD just chilling there with cars zooming past on all sides and apartment buildings across the street. Though it’s pretty much intact, the bleachers are gone, and once inside it’s hard to visualize exactly what it would be like to be one of the 70,000 spectators there to watch the day’s bloody events (that’s what Gladiator’s for, right?). Along with the ridiculous (that seems to be a trend) 9€ we paid to enter; we had access to the few informational signs. And it sounds so idiotic to me, but like all buildings, the Colosseum had a lifespan and when it was abandoned the people reused pieces of its substantial amount of building material to build new things… I guess we do it now sometimes with old buildings, but imagine the Colosseum defunct, left to rot, be buried, and disassembled. And now they charge thousands of tourists a fortune to enter each day.
Arguably even more amazing than the Colosseum was the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill right next door. This is BC stuff, seriously old and in ruins, but completely amazing. They’re still excavating this whole area too, a work in progress, a whole city buried by layers and layers of sand. Truth be told, Anglea and I were expecting Caesar’s Palace, but what we found was considerably more impressive: buildings, columns, Romulean huts (like Star Trek), the oldest street in Rome. Most of it appears to be relatively unrestored, so it feels more authentic, each piece of marble touched by ancient Roman hands. I don’t know how I feel about restoration. The Parthenon in Athens is under restoration and the scaffolding certainly makes for ugly photos. It depends what one thinks is amazing about seeing old things: the fact that they’re old and partially still around, or the fact that ancient people built amazing things, in which case it would be okay to restore them to their original state. Even though ancient people would probably be sad to see their city in ruins like it is, they might be even sadder to see that it’s been rebuilt, slightly erroneously, and touched all over by modern hands and machines. Do we have to control everything? Obviously more impressive in real life than in photos and certainly in my description, the Roman Forum with its Corinthian columns, which I particularly like, beats David hands and sling shot down. Michelangelo is contemporary in comparison. Angela and I sat for a long time next to what we thought was the senate house, eating pistachios, defacing the forum with their shells, marveling at the old ruined marble we were sitting on, and listening to German and French speaking tourists. Fabulous.
We went on to discover more ruins, the Fori Imperiali, still being excavated and located right across a big road from the Forum. The contemporary Roman government building is right there too, and the way the elevation is, it appears to be on the top of a hill, a huge, white marble building with columns, overlooking the city and dwarfing the ruins right next to it. (This was really our most productive day EVER). Then we made our way to the Trevi Fountain, which though beautiful, had far too many tourists, vendors, and possible pick-pockets for it to be enjoyable. The Spanish Steps were just a short walk away, and well, not deserving of their reputation. Attempted pictures failed because of the amount of people sitting on them, and the building at the top had scaffolding. Coming right out the bottom, was of course, the high fashion, and though it was interesting to see all of the expensive stores, we would never dream of actually entering them.
The other days were mixed in with the Vatican, which is another city and another post in itself. Most memorably, we stood on Corso and watched a truly magnificent violin player and the confusion surrounding a huge and possibly special bird that had landed right there in the street in front of her. We attempted to see an Egyptian obelisk stolen from a pharaoh, but it was under restoration. The Fountain of Four Rivers was beautiful when we finally found it, and there was a guy there pretending to be Charlie Chaplin who kept messing around with the passersby. We sat on the steps of the Pantheon, spitting cherry pits, eating olive oil potato chips (only in Europe), and watching a precious little Italian girl run around while her grandfather tried to keep track of her. European kids are 100 times cuter than American ones, because they are either dressed like their siblings or in cute little designer clothes. It’s amazing the control mothers have over wardrobe; I saw a little boy yesterday, too old to be dressed by his mother, who was wearing tight yellow shorts with pink butterflies and flowers, a pink polo shirt, and jellies. The Pantheon was pretty cool with its dome, and it was free, and old, but it was also taken over by the Catholic Church which slightly ruined its authenticity, just like everything in Spain. We ate the most delicious gelato. And I finally, finally, on our last day in Italy, ordered the right kind. Angela showed me up all vacation with her amazing, rich chocolaty flavors; I always got the fruity flavors and then regretted it after trying hers. Maybe when I return to Rome I’ll have the same nostalgia as García Márquez about when I was there in June 2006. For now, it was pretty much the most amazing manmade place I’ve ever been.
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