Europe Trip - Day 6, Rome

Day 6: 22 April 2005

We had a long day ahead of us and the idea was to cover as much as possible in a day. It was impossible to cover 3000 years of history in a day, but that’s how it was to be.

Our first stop was the Colosseum, but of course. Perhaps the first image that comes to mind when the name Rome is mentioned. All of us had heard of the legend of the colosseum, about the gladiators and the bloody duels this historical place was witness to. And the many movies, books and even cartoons had furthered our interest in the colosseum. Here was a place which was a witness to a reckless sport, an inhuman barbarian game amidst the most advanced of civilizations of that era. The sight of the half destroyed monument was itself awe inspiring.

Over the years the colosseum had slowly disintegrated with restoration works being taken up only a century ago. We were listening to a guide who with her broken English was making an earnest effort to enlighten us on the history of the place. The 4 tier seating arrangements, the entry point for the gladiators, the gates through which the dead were taken away, the underground chambers all were for us to see. Surprisingly the arena, where the duels happened, was quite small in diameter. Maybe it was because we had imagined it to be real big after having seen movies like the Gladiator. The only flip side was the pot bellied 50 something urchins dressed up as gladiators and offering themselves to be photographed with for a euro or two. They were giving the legend of gladiators a bad name.

From the colosseum we walked up to the Palantine Hill, one of the 7 hills, which gives the city its epitaph. The Palantine hill overlooking the colosseum once housed the senators and other important functionaries of the Roman Empire. The Hill also gives you a panoramic view of the Roman forum which is a vast stretch of ruins dating to the golden age of the Roman Empire One could walk through it gazing at its half destroyed temples and buildings.

Unlike Paris, where we had taken the Hip hop bus, we decided to cover the city by foot. For there were monuments and churches on every street and also the best way to cover a city was by foot. From the forum we walked to the Venezia palace which towers above the surroundings. The palace was easily the most majestic of all the buildings that we had seen so far. The palace was giant in scale with even the fountain at the entrance dwarfing us by a considerable margin. This palace also houses the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

From there we walked to the pantheon, the 8th century temple (or was it a temple, I am not sure) which is famous for its special architecture. Infact my architect room mate was telling me that drawing the pantheon was something that every architecture grad would have done in college. We did not spend much time there and walked towards the famous Trevi fountain. As we were walking through the various lanes/bylanes and roads what struck us was the sheer number of historical buildings and monuments we saw in every street. That the city has a long history was well known, now we were seeing it. The trevi fountain is famous for being a ‘wishing well’. Everybody who comes there throws a coin or 2 into the small well formed at the base of the fountain and make a wish. The coins are thrown facing away from the fountain and across. Meaning, hold the coin in your right hand and throw it over your left shoulder. Now we were already on a tight budget, and no one was prepared to throw away a euro. So out went the 1 and 2 rupee coins and with it the wishes of we 6 Indians.

The next stop was the Vatican City. We were going to the Vatican just 2 days after the new Pope had been announced. We were feeling excited to be there at such a historically important phase. But our fear was that the place would be too crowded. Thankfully it was not as crowded as we thought it would be.

We got down at the St.Peters Metro station and walked towards the Vatican. We entered into the huge courtyard in front of the St.Peters Bascilica.This place had witnessed the funeral of the late Pope John Paul II only a few days back. The chairs and the arrangements made were intact, for the inaugural mass of the new Pope Benedict XVI was scheduled for the next day. The courtyard is a huge circle with a fountain in the middle. There are giant corridors along the semi circle on either side. People are routed in through this past a security check and proceed towards the Bascilica.

As we moved in near to the main entrance, there were 2 Qs formed in front of us. One of them was for the main entrance and the other was to the tomb of Pope John Paul II. Since we did not have time we had to choose between either of the 2, we chose to get into the church since the Q was smaller for that.
It was exciting to be entering into one of the holiest of shrines of Christianity, the seat of Roman Catholicism. As we entered, to our right side was the ‘Pieta’, the celebrated sculpture by Michelangelo. This stunningly graceful work shows the grieving Mother Mary cradling the dead Christ in her lap. We were captivated by the work and were amazed to see that Michelangelo completed this when he was only 23.

From there we moved further inside towards the altar, where a mass was being held. We attended it, and then later roamed inside the huge hall. There were lots of arresting statues and sculptures inside. After spending a considerable length of time inside the massive St.Peters Basilica we stepped out, did some souvenir hunting and later took the train back to our hostel.

We had a train to catch the next day, a longish one, straight from Rome to Paris, reaching Paris at around 11 in the night and the day after was the return flight to India.
But things didn’t work out as simply as we thought they would …