Sunday, July 29, 2012

Ruins of the Empire

On our first day in Rome we left the country, entering into the worlds sovereign state, the Vatican City. It is a strange little country within a city, existing entirely as the headquarters for a worldwide religious organisation. It's Cathedral, St Peters is enormous, with enclosing a hugely cavernous space. It's also an immensely popular deaination and the museums are packed. There is no room to wander, instead visitors sort of shuffle between galleries in slowly moving lines. It's worth it for the Roman art, frescos such as Raffiel's School of Athens and Michael Angelo's Roof of the Sistine Chapel. I found the chapel itself a bit dark and unimpressive, but it does have an amazingly painted ceiling.



Rome is littered with archeological sights from its days as capitol of the Roman Empire, the colosseum being the most salient feature of the cityscape. Huge and crumbling, it is a structure that embodies the wealth an power of the Roman Empire. Standing in its galleries it's not hard to imagine 50 000 bloodthirsty Romans being entertained by the brutality of the arena below. Today, whenever a country or US state abolishes the death penalty, the City of Rome lights up the Colosseum in gold to campaign against capital punishment.




In the vicinity of the coliseum are the scattered remains of ancient Rome. My favourite was the Pantheon, a domed temple that has stood for 2000 years in Rome. Not only is it a wonder that the dome has stood for so long, but that such a large dome was built in the first place. The light Romans were the masters of the ancient engineering world.

Modern Rome is a product of several thousand years of development. The city today is an architectural patchwork from across the ages. It's also a little bit mad and intense, take the traffic for instance. We certainly saw some "creative" parking solutions. Drivers double park, everywhere and cars are left at all kinds of angles the the kerb, across crossing, in intersections and generally anywhere the owners feel like leaving them.

On my last night in Rome I took Gemma and Nikki to the airport, our Italian journey together was over. Back to Sydney for them, and onwards to Naples for me.




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