Sat, 20 Sep 2003

author Tim	location Roma, Italia
posted 09:08 CEST 22/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Roma I - San Pietro, Overview ( 83 photos )
A couple of days earlier, teetering on the edge of calling the rest of the trip off, two main things emerged that we didn't want to go home not having seen. One was Paris, but top of the list was Roma (Rome). We are amazingly glad we made it here.
The night before stumbling off the train and trapsing around for a hostel could really have been in any city, with the possible exception of the cars and scooters parked literally anywhere they would fit, but there was of course a lot more to be seen.
Still the only ones in our room, we went downstairs for some breakfast, which we were suprised to find out was included in the price. It was nothing amazing, but we weren't complaining.
Since there is so much to see in this city, we had picked a particular chunk to explore for the day - the Vatican City. On the opposite side of the city from where we were staying, we boarded bus 64, worked out how to validate our tickets (lucky as we were inspected twice) and got off at the other side ready to have a look around.
Not quite knowing exactly where the bus went, we got off a couple of stops early and walked up some back streets. After a peek through some buildings, we rounded the corner and there it was. Saint Peter's Basilica - the largest church in the world, the largest basilica in the world, and (by law) the highest building in Roma.
Just as impressive is the Piazza San Pietro in front of the basilica, created as a space where Christians of the world could gather, and surrounded by four rows of colonades, focusing on the central obelisk "borrowed" from ancient Egypt.
You could say we were stunned. After so many streets which looked like Just Another City, here we were, technically in another country (Vatican City is the only country in the world with a stable population), staring at the centre of the Christian world.
We didn't have to stand around for long looking like tourists until we were approched by a guy asking if we spoke English. More than a little defensive, we answered yes, only to be invited on a free tour, no obligation. It turns out this is very common here, they attempt to sell you (low pressure sales) further tours with their company.
We wandered over to join our small tour group, lead by a kiwi girl about our age who had been in Roma for two years - it's quite easy to see how she fell in love with the place and is happily spending so much time here.
After passing the clothing police (they strictly inforce no shorts, no shoulders and no short skirts, leaving both of us in jeans in the thirty degree heat, and Liz having to wear a jumper), we were lead inside, and our jaws dropped once again. The tour guide was right - there is no way that your eyes can understand just how huge this place is, they just sort of give up and allow you think it is smaller.
Walking over hundereds of mosiacs, admiring the marble carvings (one especially where one of the hardest types of red marble had been made to look as soft as cloth), past Michelangelo's Pietá (one of his first pieces of sculpture, from when nobody knew who he was), and just around and around this huge place we walked.
One of the most interesting facts I thought was that this huge bronze altar piece, over twenty-nine metres high and truly massive up close, would fit inside the tiny little bit sticking out from the top of the dome with enough room left over for a small truck to drive around.
As we wandered, my eyes were constantly tricked as they looked up at the dome - things didn't move by at the right speed for the size my brain thought it was. Truly a huge huge place. We walked down into the crypt, where the tombs of many people of significance in the religious world were. Most notably of course was that of Saint Peter himself. His bones were only re-discovered relatively recently, and are now inside a NASA-designed casing just to the side of the obvious place in his rather elaborate tomb.
From the crypt, we exited to the courtyard area where the sell for the paid tour of the Sistine Chapel began. We decided the asking price was a little high for our budgets, instead tipping the girl for her work. We went back inside for another look around to get some more photos of the place and admire specific works up close. You can photograph everything inside, because it is all stone - even the parts which look like paintings have infact been replaced with mosaics - a detail you only notice when you get up close.
With early closing times on Saturdays, we decided to leave the Sistine Chapel, a walk up the dome, and the Vatican Museums for other days. There was no real rush, we wanted to enjoy this city.
So, we elected to explore a bit more of the north-west shore of the Tiber River, heading first towards Castel Sant'Angelo. This place had a turbulent history, starting out first as The Mausoleum of Hadrian, a monumental tomb for Hadrian and his successors from 130AD. By the fifth century however, its usefulness as a defensive structure was noted, and it was converted into a bastion. Five hundered years later and it was a fortress, complete with turrets and an imposing look more than enough to scare any invaders coming from the north.
Across the Ponte Margherita bridge, we entered Piazza del Popolo. The again plundered central tower and fountain were impressive, but no match for the view you got from standing there and looking south at the three roads around/between two identical buildings. You could see for a long way in all the directions, and we chose the left path, leading us down Via del Babuino towards another famous Roman monument we couldn't dare miss, the Spanish Steps.
The French should be seething about this one, as the only real Spanish involvement is the fact that their embassy is nearby - the money came from Paris, and the church at the top is French also!
The funky boat-shaped Barcaccia fountain at the bottom was great to splash our faces with, but by now we had become addicted to the Roman spring water which flows all over the city to drink all day long in the heat, and none was to be found near here.
Wandering south through plenty more piazzas, past horrifically expensive shopping streets lined with Gucci, Armani, et al., we made it ticked off another famous monument at Fontana di Trevi. This is a very ornate fountain, rather attractive if you can find it through the tourists. We indulged in the famous tradition of throwing a (very small) coin over our shoulders, said to mean we will one day return to Roma.
Further we wandered down to Piazza Venezia. This square is totally dominated by the central Monumento Vittorio Emanuele II, an over-blown huge building complete with chariots on top, all to comemorate Italian unification. We sat there for a while on the grass, eating more of our half-loaf of bakery bread with peanut butter (much cheaper than the four euros one vendor tried to charge us for a hot dog, although his price dropped rapidly as we turned and walked away) and watching the poor horses which run carts through the city on such a hot day.
We had a few more things in mind for our overview day of Roma, mostly in the direction of the Colosseum. There were plenty of on-going excavation works, trying to decypher the mess the Romans have created with their still-current policy of building new things right over the ruins of old things.
Stumbling across the Roman Forum, which is the centre of the old Roman world complete with temples and political buildings galore, we had a bit of an overview before ear-marking it for another day. We walked out the bottom end, and there it was, the sight which graces a million picture postcards world-wide, the Colosseum.
Seeing it this way, after so much other history during the day, it was actually quite hard to appreciate that this was actually it. There is a busy enough street running most of the way around it, and the ever-present tacky expensive tourist garbage sellers. Sure it was great to look at, but we would only come to appreciate it fully when we got inside in the coming days.
After a walk around its outskirts, we picked a road up the hill behind and followed our rather useful map back towards the hostel, another reasonable walk after a day of plenty of others.
We passed under the train station, stopping in a supermarket there for some pasta sauce, odds and ends and a bottle of ridiculously cheap Italian wine. This was all thrown together for a cheap satisfying dinner (I think if you want to sell pasta sauce in Italy, the standard is going to have to be pretty high), before we met some new room mates (Chris and Marie from Melbourne) and flaked out, exhaused after our Roman overview.

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