Every year I buy a calendar with a different picture of somewhere interesting each month. I have visited some of the places, such as the Taj Mahal and Venice, but there are many places I have not been such as Rio de Janeiro and Petra. I have joked that whenever there is a place we have visited, we should go. This month the picture is of the Colosseum in Rome and I have never been there. My husband has obviously been listening to me for once, and has found a cut-price, last-minute trip to Rome, flying via Frankfurt.
I was surprised to find that I didn’t want to go. I have now realised that as I have got older, I have become less spontaneous. Cities are full of criminals, the traffic is too heavy, the weather’s not good in November and other excuses were running through my head. After much prevaricating, I gave in and I know a very good restaurant in Frankfurt Airport.
So, less than 48 hours after booking, we were on our way. We arrived in Frankfurt on a grey, wet day just in time for lunch. To my dismay, I found that we were travelling from a different terminal from the one with my chosen restaurant so we had to eat somewhere different. In that restaurant, we met an American who was travelling from Washington to Rome for the weekend and was staying there for a shorter time than us!
We stayed in the Hotel Regno which was very conveniently situated, halfway between the Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon. We started our sightseeing in the evening we arrived, and the floodlit buildings were delightful. We enjoyed a glass of wine at a pavement café in front of Altare della Patria, the monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, the first King of Italy.
The following day we did an enormous amount of walking, as is often the way in cities. We visited the Trevi fountain very early in the morning so that we could see it with fewer people present. We used to frequent a Trevi restaurant, sadly now closed, and there were pictures of the fountains around the room. Now I was in front of the real thing, I was pleasantly surprised by how bright it was. It is made of a very pale marble and spotlessly clean. I threw a coin over my shoulder into the water as is the custom here, it is supposed to ensure that you return to Rome. I had never thought about this before, but it is called the Trevi fountain because it is where three roads meet (tre via).
The Spanish Steps, which link the church with the Piazza di Spagna, were also much paler and cleaner than I had imagined, although apparently they have flowers on the steps in summer but very few in November. There is a beautiful marble fountain in the square at the foot of the steps.
The River Tiber brought back memories of Latin lessons in my youth and also of the car chase in the James Bond film, Spectre. We crossed over the bridge by the Castel Sant Angelo and then towards the Vatican – a new country for me. Saint Peter’s Basilica is so big that it looks closer than it is and the walk is surprisingly long. The queues to get into the church were enormous so we made a mental note to get there early in the morning.
We walked to the Roman area, which includes the Colosseum, the Forum, Circus Maxima and so on. I had always thought that there would be heavy traffic circling the Colosseum but the whole area is now traffic-free.
We had dinner in the square overlooking the Pantheon and it was an unexpected pleasure to be able to dine outside on a November evening. The floodlit Pantheon looked a little like a film-set and I was reminded of eating in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas but this church/temple was two thousand years old!
The following day, we started at the Colosseum and Roman Forum, which can be visited with a combined ticket. The Colosseum is enormous and was, unfortunately, damaged in an earthquake in 1349, but enough of it is still standing to give you a feel of what it must have been like to be a spectator in Roman times. The entertainments were extremely bloodthirsty so wouldn’t have wanted to be there.
The Forum on the Palatine Hill was especially interesting. We visited the ruins of the emperors’ residence and the views from there were extraordinary. I was thinking how powerful and impressive Rome would have been to people from other countries, especially anyone from Britain 2,000 years ago. It must have seemed like being on another planet! The scale of the Colosseum, the Circus Maxima and the palace itself must have been mind-blowing.
It started to rain mid-afternoon and I particularly wanted to visit the Capitoline Museum, so we went there for afternoon tea. My main reason for going there was to see the famous statue of Romulus and Remus with the she-wolf which I remembered from my old Latin books. There were other famous works of art such as the Dying Gaul and a magnificent statue of Marco Aurelio on his horse.
We made an early start on the following morning so that we could avoid the queues at the Vatican. We were able to enter St Peter’s Basilica with hardly any queue at all and were amazed by the size and beauty of the building. There is a statue of St Peter and one of the feet is wearing away because it has been stroked by so many pilgrims.
After the basilica we went to the Vatican Museum but the queue was enormous by now so we had to wait for one hour to get in. We were carried along by the sheer numbers of people and inched our way through the magnificent Map Gallery and the Gallery of the Candelabra before arriving at the packed Sistine Chapel. I think this chapel would be best appreciated in peace and solitude, but it was not to be.
The crowds had dispersed as we walked around the rest of the museum, it seems as if most people only want to see the Sistine Chapel which is unfortunate because there are so many treasures to see – possibly too many to take in. I was particularly interested in the Pinacoteca, the gallery which contains Raphael’s last work, the Transfiguration, and also St Jerome, an unfinished painting by Leonardo da Vinci that shows how his paintings developed.
All too soon, it was time for our journey home. I had enjoyed Rome immensely – it was far cleaner and quieter than I had imagined- but it was not without its problems. I have never seen such a heavily defended city, even the smallest churches had heavily armed soldiers in attendance and there are defences against attacks from lorries driven by terrorists. There is a large number of refugees at the tourist sights selling mainly African trinkets. We spoke to a charming man from Senegal who is soon returning home, almost certainly a boat person who has not been granted asylum.
I know I will visit Rome again as I threw coins in the fountain – I am looking forward to it already.
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