Rome: Colosseum

origamiunicorn ♦ August 11, 2019 ♦ Leave a comment

Our last full day in Rome began with a 4 hour tour of the Colosseum, Palatine Hill and Forum. The tour was just me, Sarah and our guide, Liz. The colosseum is a spectacular ruin and imagining what it was like back when it was inaction is simultaneously awesome and horrifying. Our guide is an architect, so she focused a lot of the tour on the construction materials and the physical buildings and landscape. That aspect of the colosseum is the part that impressed and inspired me: an arena that rivals our modern day billion dollar football stadiums, complete with marble floors, columns, trap doors and elevators to bring wild animals and unexpected opponents into the gladiator games.

Colosseum seats

Colosseum floor engineering

Frieze of gladiators provides valuable information about wardrobe and arms

More Colosseum engineering

Pigeon in the Colosseum ruins

The aspect of the colosseum that I had a hard time stomaching was the nature of the gladiator games. Gladiators were slaves, typically of war, forced to battle each other, often to the death. There is some evidence that the games were somewhat less brutal than portrayed in shows like Spartacus or films like Gladiator. The fighters were an investment and brought in money, so killing half of them off every game might not have made much financial sense. Admission was free for the citizens and this was an acceptable source of entertainment to a majority of people.

I asked the tour guide if there were organizations or groups at the time who opposed this tradition on humanitarian or religious grounds. She didn’t know of any, but a quick google search points to some religious leaders who may have spoke out against the games. My thought was that if the Greeks in Delphi were entertained by sporting competitions, art and music, then ancient times were not entirely bloodthirsty. There must have at least been pockets of citizens opposed to the practice.

After the Colosseum we walked past several Triumph Arches, built to celebrate military victories, then up to the Palatine hill where the Emperor’s palace was located. The tour ended at the Roman Forum, the center of commercial and civic activity in Rome. Our guide had many supplemental drawings to show us how the area would have looked when the buildings were intact.

Arches. Menorah detail in the arch celebrating fall of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem

Panorama

Forum ruins

At one point, we saw the remains of a colossal statue: a single toe. I was reminded of the poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley with the line “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Ruined toe

The contrast between the Ancient Greeks’ celebration of science, art, philosophy and music in Delphi next to the Roman celebration of violence and bloodshed at the Colosseum made me pause.

Roman trees

We took time for lunch and then Sarah returned to the Forum to spend more time exploring there and then to visit another site. I went back to the apartment to regroup. After a short rest and some hydration I ventured out again. I walked back through the Jewish ghetto and visited the ruins of the Teatro Marcello and the Temple of Apollo.

Temple of Apollo

Teatro Marcelo

I walked back towards the Forum and found the Piazza del Campidoglio, a square designed by Michaelangelo. The back of the main tower building looks out over the ruins of the Roman Forum.

Piazza del Campidoglio

Detail of Piazza del Campidoglio

Next to the piazza is the building I used as a landmark to help navigate to/from our apartment, the Victor Emmanuel Monument (Altare dells Patria). I walked by to get a closer look at this magnificent building.

Victor Emmanuel Monument

After my little outing, I met Sarah back at the apartment and we walked back to the Jewish ghetto for dinner at the Nonna Betta kosher style restaurant. We tried the famous Jewish style artichokes (their slogan is “Life is too short to have the wrong Jewish style artichoke”). I had grilled eggplant Parmesan and we split a small bottle of kosher Italian white wine.

Jewish style artichoke

Italian Kosher wine

After dinner we walked across another bridge to attempt to find a park that is supposed to have spectacular sunset views. As we walked past the Teatro Marcello, there was an opera being performed outside. From there we walked to the river and got a lovely view from the bridge. Then it got dark, and we somehow got horribly lost. At this point, we had walked close to 9 miles throughout the day. We were both exhausted and the neighborhood was dark and deserted. We took the easy way out and hailed a taxi back to the apartment.