ROME – THE BIG LASAGNA

DAY 2

Highlights included:

* Palazo Spada

* Palazo Farnese

* Campo de Fiori

* Piaza Navona

* Palacio Madama (Senate)

* Pantheon

* Trevi Fountain

* War Memorial

* Coliseum

* Constantine Temple

* Hercules Temple

* Squatters Temple

On our first day in Rome we decided not to follow our usual routine of taking the Hop On Hop Off bus tour. Instead, we booked a three hour city bike tour with Fat Tire Tours in the morning with “Mr. Rome”, Mark Wind’s, one of the best guides on earth. And given that I am one of the best tour guides around, I know of what I speak. Later that same afternoon we did the three hour Fat Tire walking tour of the Coliseum, Roman Forum, and the Victor Emanuel Memorial with Alessandra.

If you plan to visit Rome or Florence, please do yourself a favor and book a tour with Fat Tire Tours. They are the BEST! Their guides speak excellent English and really know the city inside and out. They make the tour big fun. They will show you where to eat, shop, and play. Their equipment is top notch. And all for a very reasonable price. They offer walking, biking, segway, food, and shopping tours. Trust me. Whenever you land in a foreign city, the first thing you should do is look to see if there is a Fat Tire Tours company there. And in Rome, they totally rock! https://www.fattiretours.com/rome

Rome dates from 753 BC, starting with the strange origin myth of Romulus and Remus, the two brothers who were abandoned and then suckled by a She-Wolf. One brother eventually killed the other and it’s all bloody nonsense. But it’s no stupider than the biblical story of Cain and Abel, sprouting from God only knows where. So, it’s all good as far as I’m concerned.

Let’s begin our lesson with this simple fact: Rome is HUGE; there are hundreds of must see attractions, and they are spread all over the city; so, plan to walk or bike 5-10 miles a day, and then set aside about seven days to see it all.

For well over two millennia the Romans were like the Lords of the Monkeys relative to the rest of the Western world, and their engineering marvels, like roads, buildings, public baths, fountains, latrines, bridges, tunnels, and aqueducts are still in great shape after 2,000 years. Who were their rivals? The Chinese perhaps. But no one in Europe, Africa, Asia, or the Middle East even came close.

And here’s the other thing: there’s Rome, and then there’s every other city in the world. I’m not saying it’s the best. But whatever city you think holds that title — New York City, Paris, London, or (my favorite) Barcelona — they are all modern cities with some old buildings and swell stuff that has been preserved; but Rome is all about ROMANS, first and foremost, and the remnants of their magnificent culture are EVERYWHERE you go around the city, not just in some central antiquated Disneyland.

Rome is essentially a giant lasagna with layered pasts built atop one another. Our guide Mark had an even better analogy. He suggested that we think of of it like an epic TV show, let’s say “Game of Thrones”, consisting of three seasons: Season 1 we’ll call “The Pagans”; Season 2, we’ll call “The Catholics”; and Season 3 begins in 1861 (the first year of the American Civil War) and runs up until today.

Rome was not designed for cars and there is very little parking. So, “creative parking” rules, and there are no rules. There is some haphazard parking enforcement, but pretty much everyone is illegally parked. So what are they going to do? Ticket everyone? The parking police do write some tickets each day just to remind people they can’t park wherever they like. But that doesn’t stop anyone and people park sideways, up on the sidewalk, in crosswalks, or almost blocking the street. It’s a total free-for-all.

Mark, said he gets one or two tickets a year and it’s just the cost of doing business in a dysfunctional city built before the time of Christ.

That said, the Romans invented the paved road. Roman roads were built with several stratum (layers of different materials) for drainage and this is where the word “street” comes from. The Appian Way, built in 312 BC, was the main curbstone road south out of the city, connecting it to the sea, and it still looks like it was built just yesterday.

The Romans were ingenious engineers and builders who mastered the lever, pulleys and rope, surveying, and geometry in order to build their colossal structures that still stand majestically even today. All they needed after that was an unlimited number of slaves which they assembled from all of their conquests. They used building materials — marble, granite, you name it — from all around the world. And interestingly, the Romans also invented concrete — a very thick and sturdy mix indeed that apparently lasts forever.

At the height of the Roman Empire there were four million people living in Rome, making it far and away the largest city in the world. After the fall of the Romans the center of the universe became Constantinople and a few years after the collapse there were only 50,000 living along the Tiber.

Season 1 is still 95% underground. Fifteen centuries have been covered … but certainly not forgotten. Whenever anyone builds anything anywhere in Rome, they hit Roman pay dirt. It’s a given. So it takes forever to build anything and the permitting is an absolute nightmare because you always have to pay archaeologists to first excavate the property before the project can move forward. And when they find something — and they are going to find a lot of something — then the fun begins.

Rome has been re-purposing building materials from Season 1 since Medieval times and just covering it with plaster stucco like exterior paint. For instance, you can see obvious Roman columns on sixteenth century structures where the stucco has come loose. It’s ALIVE!

All but three arches are gone but the The Constantine Arch, standing by the Coliseum, was the model for many of the arches around the world, including the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The monumental Titus Arch remains inside the Forum. And the largest temple in the world was where the Coliseum was later built. It was cannibalized for building materials by the Romans themselves and exists only as a distant memory.

Much of the building materials for Season 2 comes from the Coliseum and the Forum. For example, all of the marble and metal from the Coliseum were used to build and adorn St Peter’s Basilica. And all of the significant Christian churches and monuments in Rome are inherently Roman.

In Season 3 they started building roads to handle vehicles, trolleys, buses, trucks, and then added sidewalks for pedestrians. Up until the advent of the automobile, Rome was a city for walkers and horses.

The new Subway being constructed under the Coliseum, and slated to open in 2023, will be Season 4.

Other highlights of our bike tour included:

Campo de Fiori is the huge daily Farmers Market where local goods and produce are sold at very reasonable prices.

Piazza Navone showcases the monumental Fountain of the Four Rivers (Italy’s best fountain by far!). Rome gets its fresh water from the nearby mountains and the abundance of clean water is the primary reason Rome came to be. In fact, it was the largest city that ever existed in the world from before the time of Christ until London took that honor in the Industrial Age.

All the fountains are drinkable and they have clever spigots that function as a drinking faucet, so, as Mark said, “Don’t buy water — just wine.”

Trevi Fountain is built into the front of a white government building, and is only famous from the movies, like “Roman Holiday” and “Three Coins in the Fountain”. It celebrates water. Local lore has it that if you toss a coin into the Fountain at night, it will bring you luck. The Fountain takes in 13,000€ a week and the locals drink from a small fountain in an alcove on the lower right side of the sprawling fountain in order to guarantee eternal love. Inna and I, of course, played the corny game and drank from the “Couples Fountain” after dinner one night.

The Romans welcomed the gods of all the people they conquered as long as they paid their taxes — the more gods the merrier — and they incorporated many of the gods worshiped by the people they vanquished. The Romans were incredibly superstitious and it is estimated they worshiped 30,000 gods in all.
The Pantheon was the one stop shop for all religions and all people. When the Christians converted it into a church it became the Church of Christian Martyrs. That’s the only reason it wasn’t destroyed. The Pantheon is the original dome from which all the famous domes of the world — including the Capitol Dome in Washington — were fashioned. The Oculus in the center of the dome is open to the elements and there are ingenious drains on the inside floors.

To the all powerful Catholics, the Egyptian obelisks scattered throughout Rome represented heathen blasphemy, but the Christians decided that if they crowned them with a Pope’s hat or some other holy symbol, then the monument was sanctified and could stay. Given that most churches were built atop Roman temples, when you see an obelisk today, it’s usually out in front of something pretty darn important, either secular or religious.
The Catholics don’t see the cruel irony in showcasing in a prominent piazza an Egyptian obelisk inscribed with ancient symbols, and then blessing it by crowning it with a dove holding an olive branch in its mouth, symbolizing peace, after the Romans enslaved the Egyptians and looted their country of resources and grand treasures like the obelisks. This “Damnation of Memory” — reducing the cultural and architectural remnants of the Egyptians and Romans by the Christians — is no different than what the Taliban did at the ancient City of Petra.

The prominent tree around Rome is your standard pine, but they have been trimmed of their lower branches to make them look like big green umbrellas.

There were pairs of soldiers with automatic weapons, standing around the Coliseum and most of the high-profile attractions to guard against terrorists. And an army of soldiers from every service branch were getting ready for the June 2 military parade along the grand Imperial Boulevard that was created by Mussolini who wanted to be able to stand on his balcony and have a clear view of the Coliseum. So he mowed down the apartments that blocked his view, and in so doing he also created the grand parade boulevard in the center of the city.

Highlights of The Coliseum tour with our guide Alessandra included:

The Coliseum was first called Flavian’s Amphitheater after the emperor who built it.
The statues were life-like and were painted and had real hair.
The steps in the Coliseum were called “vomitiria” and were very steep so they could get the 50,000 out of the stadium in 20 minutes, like they were being vomited out of the stadium.

There were 100 days of battles a year in the Coliseum. Each day consisted of three distinct events: animal fights in the morning; executions at midday; and the gladiators, doing battle, at day’s end.
Gladiators only fought two times a year. A gladiator was worth big bucks to train and arm, so they were not easily expended. Wounds were gruesome and took a long time to heal, but rarely were the combatants killed, unless the crowd screamed for them to be put to death and the Emperor consented to their wish. This is where the thumbs up, thumbs down gesture comes from.

Gladiators were well known personalities and hugely popular with the populace. But they got maimed and disfigured during repeated combat. So, while they were famous and worshiped like today’s star athletes, they probably didn’t look like handsome Russel Crowe. They were probably short and fast, and looked more like Danny Devito.
Vendors sold the blood of the dead gladiators because it was rumored to give great strength.
All the meat from the animals killed during the morning show was doled out to the people for some much needed protein.
One million people died between 200 BC and 5th Century in the Coliseum.

The word “fornicate” comes from the people who went to the Coliseum at night and screwed under the Forum arches.
Near the Coliseum sat the world’s first shopping mall filled with shops that date back to Emperor Trajan in 100 AD.

We ended our whirlwind day by eating dinner at an outside table at Baccano and got really drunk, watching the hordes of people walking to and from the Trevi Fountain. We would have one more day of nice weather before cool, wet weather rolled in, so we needed to gird our loins for whatever Day 3 might throw at us. And some fine Italian wine was just the ticket.

Walked 8.1 miles

Bicycled 6 miles

Insider Tip — The Hotel de la Minerva rooftop bar is open to the public and has a stunning view of the Pantheon. In Rome there are quite a few rooftop bars in many of the finer hotels. What could be finer than a chilled glass of Italian Presecco while looking out over Rome at night like a modern day Emperor?

Insider Tip — Pompi has the best tiramisu in Rome and offers takeout.

Insider Tip — L’Antica Birreria Peroni is the best beer joint.

Insider Tip — The wine bar next to Trajan’s Tomb, Bar Enotcera, is a place to sample the best Italian wines. It’s where the locals go to drink good local wines at a reasonable price.

Insider Tip — On Saturday nights there is the “Night of the Museum” — 1€ entrance fee at all of the city’s many exceptional museums and they stay open until 2 AM, often with free concerts.

Insider Tip — The nightly laser show at 9, 10, and 11 at the Forum stages a stunning light show about the reign of Augustus shown across the Forum walls. It’s the best 15€ you’ll ever spend. http://www.viaggioneifori.it