A few short days in Rome

The photo booklet is coming soon!

Started out by flying to Rome and getting a Bolt to the hotel. A very lovely place, they even left us cookies and chocolates in our room :). The first day we were all pretty tired so we just rested up and had dinner at the hotel’s pizza restaurant upstairs. The pizza was incredible. After that we drank a little bit and headed to bed a bit oozy, as one does on a usual holiday. After dinner though, once me and Hugo got into our own room and my parents to theirs we decided we were still hungry so we ordered room service, it was delicious. Although do not tell my dad, let’s see if he actually reads this post tehe :). 

Day 1 – The Colosseum and the largest archeological site in the world

Waking up early to have breakfast, an avocado toast, and then heading out taking a Bolt to our meeting spot due to my moms injured knee. She damaged it a little during her descent of Mont Blanc (which sadly due to some rough winds they could not summit) but more about that another time. So we get there early, wait for 30 minutes and finally meet our guide, an archeologist whose style resembles Indiana Jones. We are given one ear earphones (or maybe they are called earphone?), anyhoo through their connected radios we can hear the guide even from some distance, very useful. Thus with this we begin our journey through Rome starting from the golden mile, according to them the centre of the earth sort of like the 0 0 0 coordinates in minecraft. Apparently the area is so large that if you spent 4 minutes at every site of interest there you would spend 12 years there, that sounds like a lot of knowledge to be gained. He told us about Rome’s population of 1.3 million back in the Roman Empire days and how after their fall it only became 30,000 people. Which is why so many of the buildings have collapsed as they were abandoned and parts were used to build other buildings. I don’t remember many of the facts from that day other than the two large almost gateway like structures, one dictating the fall of Jerusalem and one of the first tragedies for Judaism and the other depicting the absolution of Christians by some Roman Emperor. They were both very pretty and well carved if you just look at it objectively. And then there was the fact that Mussolini built a straight road to the Colosseum on top of said archaeological site which means a lot of the buildings were torn down. It seems that the citizens or rulers of Rome do not have much regard for its archeological purpose, but the trash and smell of the place is more likely due to tourists considering the masses they appear in during summer. Alas onwards we explored the villas of the rich all built on this one hill, people can be really competitive huh. The rest of the stories and facts I do not quite remember so you will have to take your own tour to hear those ;). 

Moving onwards in the scorching but merciful sun (around 28C which is better than the 30 plus that time of year usually brings) we got to the Colosseum. He told us how he excavated one of the old toilets there in the closed off area, very intriguing indeed hahaha. Then we entered and looked around, it was a lot cooler in the shade and we got to go into the arena. He also told us about how 45% of the Colosseum was scavenged and repurposed for other buildings such as the Saint Peter’s Basilica, the largest Christian church in the world. So all the iron was taken, most of the marble and a large chunk of the outer circle, including all the seats. This was stopped when a pope declared that no more shall be taken. Alongside that the Colosseum was not actually called the Colosseum back in the day, it was called Amphitheatrum Flavium after the Emperor’s last name who built it. It is now known as the Colosseum because when people rediscovered it they confused it with a statue nearby called the Colosseum depicting a roman emperor called Nero who built a statue of himself in gold. The Colosseum was built on Nero’s great lake meaning that for cooling they still had water passages going along the backstage underneath the stadium. It also allowed them to do ship battles in water. Apparently 70% of the fights within the arena were actually fake, so they did not kill their opponents rather the winner was chosen by the crowd. When one won they would strip and take a knife to scrape off their sweat (mixed with blood and olive oil) which was then collected by maids and later sold. People would drink this sweat and it was regarded as a high honour to do so because of the gladiator’s great power. And with this our tour ended. We decided to do a round at the top to see what it is like to look down and then we promptly headed off for lunch in a friend’s recommended restaurant. The food was good, I had a pizza with potatoes, sausage and rosemary on it, a very interesting flavour combination. Afterwards we took a Bolt home and all fell asleep as a siesta. Waking up again at 7 we walked through the Spanish steps and all the way to the famous fountain in which we threw some coins. After a small ice cream break we headed back to the hotel and had our dinner there in the same restaurant upstairs. This time not getting as drunk, and I slept much better. We continued the next day, waking up early again. 

Day 2 – The Vatican and its sculptures. 

As stated above we woke up early (9am for me is early, yes) and after having breakfast consisting of a chia pudding we headed towards the Vatican in another Bolt. After passing through all their security checks we got inside to have a view of all their gardens, covering almost a third of the entire country. They are quite peaceful and pretty. We learnt that there are only around 500 people who lived there and other than the churches, gardens and basic facilities they go outside to Rome for most things such as the hospital and school. Walking onwards we saw all the sculptures in the museum most of which were of naked women and men. It made me wonder how they have all these naked sculptures within the Vatican they see everyday but still make women cover their shoulders and knees within the church. We went through all these grand buildings seeing all these wonderful sculptures and it made me wonder where all the talent and craftsmanship went within art. I see all these striking and in some terms outrageous pieces in galleries yet I don’t see a single ounce of craftsmanship usually. Not a single piece which was made for months, years, painstakingly crafted not for the money of hosting shows but for the art and love of the process. It is truly quite sad knowing that all this great and grand buildings that we see history has produced will no longer be made. In a few centuries will museums still hold the great works of past artists, will no new large grand and powerful buildings be made into history museums educating those of the future simply because the ROI of said projects was not great enough. It is quite sad. 

But moving on from a sombre topic, we entered the 16th chapel to see Michelangelo’s paintings. (Disclaimer: The following is just my opinion and should not be taken as fact, you are welcome to have other opinions but please do not try to change mine because I simply do not care that much to argue over this, I am just documenting my thoughts). To be frank I was quite disappointed, yes the centrepieces of the paintings are great and he paints well but on the sides there’s so many areas in which the painting work does not look finished. They look like the underlayer where you block out darks and lights which you later paint on top of with more detail. It could be that it is just the way that the painting has aged to which I would argue then why has not the entire painting got the same effect. It could also be because as Michelangelo was doing this alone, and considering his profession of being a sculptor he did not have the energy nor time to finish every small detail, which is understandable. Finally it could also be because in doing so he wanted the focal point to be the central pieces and hoped the blurriness of the rest would produce this effect which in my opinion it did not. These are just a few of the opinions and arguments I came up with. If you know more or have further opinions feel free to get in touch to chat about it. All in all I was quite disappointed in his paintings but his sculptures are marvellous. I also found it funny that when Michelangelo was painting the wall, the pope’s advisor complained that the angels do not have wings and thus this would create a controversy. However the bible states that angels do not have wings and Michelangelo was simply following the bible. The view that angels have wings comes from Greek mythology. After this Michelangelo got mad at the advisor and painted him in hell with some Greek mythology characters and a snake biting him. So the advisor went to the pope to demand it to be changed, but the pope stated and I am paraphrasing “I have power in heaven but since you are in hell I can not do anything about that”, which I found quite humorous. Lastly we went to the Saint Peter’s Basilica which I found marvellous not because of any religious facts but simply because the art within it was superb. I would’ve loved to sit there and simply draw and paint the sculptures but I am not exactly sure the people who actually use the church for its intended purposes (as far as I know it’s used for prayer and sermons and possibly more) so I shan’t be doing my little artsy things. We tried to go up to the top of the basilica to the viewing platform but the line was too long so we just left and went to a restaurant instead. Again the food was good, I had pasta. We proceeded by walking by the Pantheon, again the line was too long to go in. Then we went shopping and finished the day off at the same hotel restaurant but this time downstairs. All in all it was a great day

Return day

Waking up late, really late like 30 minutes before leaving, I was in scrambles to finish packing. My brother had decided to leave the room after packing the two things he took with him and left me to do all the checking and packing myself. He also left his charger behind. Alas we made it to the airport, the plane was delayed, we hopped on and got home. Great trip!

Follow along to see more of my adventures 🙂