Discovering Rome’s Majesty

 

Rome, Italy

DAY 99 – Thursday, April 14, 2011 – Rome, Italy is all it is famed to be, and more…including way too many cars!

Much of the ancient city of early Rome is found underneath this traffic, so no modern methods of underground subways or train transportation are to be found.  A day in Rome is a day dodging everything from cars and limos, to buses, taxis, and many, many motor scooters on mostly narrow streets.

In spite of the amazing congestion, majestic and very memorable iconic landmarks rise above everything else in Rome, known worldwide as “the Eternal City.”

Imperial Rome was the very center of the Western World’s most powerful empire for many centuries.  Stunning, beautiful statues line the same streets now that Nero’s chariots once charged along.  Renowned sites include the Coliseum and the Forum, St. Peter’s Square & Basilica, the Vatican, Sistine  Chapel, Trevi Fountain, and literally hundreds of plazas and monuments found on both sides of the Tiber River – the dividing point between the ancient east side and the Vatican City west side of the city.

The Romans’ passion for life, art, and intellectual pursuits is so evident…and it’s contagious.  It is easy to understand the pride and love contemporary Roman citizens feel for their city.  There are so many artistic masters, such as Michelangelo, who helped design the remarkable works of art found throughout classical Rome.

We were forced by our ship’s travel itinerary to experience “Rome in a Day,” so we spent 11-1/2 hours seeing as much as we could, realizing that we could spend months exploring Rome and never see all of the historic and modern sights!

Here are some photo highlights of our marathon day in Rome:

Here is Larry throwing one coin in Trevi Fountain.  Tradition says this will bring your wish to return to Rome again…right hand over left shoulder…and the coin needs to land in the fountain for the wish to become true!  (Larry’s coin made it…)

Of course, I had to have a photo with the costumed Roman gladiators wandering around the Trevi Fountain!  It was a 50-degree brisk, windy, but sunny day.

There were so many fantastic horse sculptures, statues, and paintings all over Rome that I immediately fell in love with this city!

I had a nice, brief and loving ‘conversation’ with this gorgeous black real horse that gave people fun carriage rides around the city.

Grand and beautiful buildings were everywhere in Rome.  This is the Altar of the Nation (Altare della Patria) that is covered with horse statuary.

The side streets in Rome are only wide enough for one-way traffic between rows of tightly parked cars…parking becomes one of Rome’s biggest challenges.

We saw the Mercedes-marketed SMART cars all over Rome…here’s why…you can literally park them sideways between other parallel-parked vehicles!

Bridges over the Tiber River connect the east side of ancient Rome with the west side of Vatican city.

Long lines and huge crowds fill St. Peter’s Square daily as people must pass through security screening gates before entering the Basilica.  (We were in line for 30 minutes.)

Here is the magnificence of the inside of St. Peter’s Basilica – the largest Catholic church in the world.  It is remarkably beautiful and truly massive in both size and height inside.

Inside the Basilica, Michelangelo’s Pieta sculpture takes your breath away – the sculptural beauty and the emotion that wells up inside you as you view it right in front of your eyes are hard to describe.

We quickly moved on to have the opportunity to go to the Roman Coliseum, which is truly enormous.  It is under reconstruction and thousands of people visit this site daily.  The Coliseum was completed in 80 AD, and as many as 50,000 spectators crowded in this huge arena to watch condemned men confront lions (or each other).

Newly unearthed, the lower floor under the gladiators’ field, (the level where the people are standing) reveals the many rooms where the lions, tigers, elephants and condemned men were kept.  There were large cables that lifted the animals and people up to the field level where they were to compete for their lives.

We now leave the western Italian coast and head the bow of our great ship toward the country of Spain, where we will visit two amazing ports.  As the end of our voyage nears…we feel so thankful for the opportunity to experience the phenomenal places we’ve visited, and I wish we could just keep going and going and going…