Luckily it didn't take all day and we set off to the colosseum. It is a huge building. It is in ruins but not much as I thought. It was damaged by earthquakes hundreds of years ago, but the Romans started to demolish it when the games were no longer popular.
When there were games on, it could seat up to 70,000 people and it had a big cover to shade people from the sun... Pretty amazing for a building that was built nearly 2000 years ago! Sometimes, they even filled the arena with water and had ships floating in it!
Under the arena there were tunnels to move the gladiators, slaves, and wild animals around.
These marble pillars didn't fall down. The Romans took them down and recycled the marble in new buildings.
After the Colosseum, we went to a 12th century church called San Clemente. It was built on top of another church that was built in the 4th century, which was pretty amazing. But even more amazing was that that church was built on top of a Roman house and a Roman temple that were about 2,000 years old! The Roman house still had tiles on the floor in a herringbone pattern and a spring was still bubbling up fresh water into the house.
It was a little bit scary, because the older buildings were under ground. And each time we had to go down another level. It was quite a surprise because from the outside you would never have guessed there were buildings underneath it. It makes you wonder what else is buried under Rome!
Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take photos down there.
Every day we took the subway. On a scale of one to ten the appearance of subways in Rome scored a measly two. They were filthy, dusty, had wires hanging everywhere and they smelt bad. Also there were few escalators so you didn't really want to be using them when you had to get around with a lot of luggage.
They were reliable though. These trains were covered in grafitti.
Location:Rome
No comments:
Post a Comment