Italy 2005 - Rome

Day 1 - Sunday - Arrival Day

Captions to follow when I get the chance.

And so it begins.... Rome Airport Railway terminal

Seeing as we arrived mid afternoon, we went to see what we could see.....

The road up to the Colosseum

A Roman road outside the Colosseum

The high side of the Colosseum from the ground.
This is the half that still remains of the outermost ring.

Entering the arena

View of the main arena and the inner workings of the underneath where all the running of the events went on (where the tigers come up from in Gladiator for anybody who cares enough...)

Looking down from the second level.

View of most of the levels that were in existance in the Coliseum. The top two floors were for the "plebs" and women.... (the women got the very top one apparently)

Same as previous photo but from the other side.

I did know what this was but have forgotten. If I find out again, I will update this comment.

Close up of the maze of corridors underneath the arena floor.

View up the levels from the arena entrance.

The arena itself.

Gives some impression of how imposing the arena must have been when filled with 50,000 odd people were in it. This shot is from the other edge of the arena so not overly large area but high sided....

Shot showing the outer wall`s half way temination. I believe this is due to most of it being nicked to build other buildings.

The Circus Massimo (Circus Maximus I believe it is known as). This is taken from the top turning area. Mucho chariot racing here....

Shot of the tower at the top turning area. They basically had from only just off shot right to this tower to turn up to 12 teams of chariots...... This gap is only about 30/40 odd feet.....

The Forum from above. We went to this later so will give better descriptions then but the building on the right is where Caeser was seen to by Brutus et al.

Most of these are "meant something at the time" shots....

View of the Forum area

A column that depicts a lot about the Roman army`s arms, techniques, et al.

I can`t remember what this building is so once again, when I find out I will update this comment.

"Three goons in a fountayyyn, which one will the foutayyyn drown....."
The Trevi Fountain

The Trevi Fountain again.

Day 2 - Monday - Off to see el Papa

View of the Castel Sant'Angelo.

St. Pietre (St. Peter`s) with piazza

Inside the Vatican Museum

Continuing the Vatican Museum tour.

The hall below the previous photograph.

One of the many, many ornately roofed hallways in the Vatican Museum.

The Vatican Museum is full of roofs like this, it really is amazing.

A case in point....

Close up of the roof in the previous image. This is what it is like all the way along.

View from just past half way down the same corridor.

View of the roof in the next hallway down from the previous photos..

Another example of the roof paintings in another corridor.

As much as I could fit in of a photograph that took up the entire wall of a room in the museum.

This was a "I-found-funny-at-the-time" sort of image. This is the car park in the middle of the Vatican.
I didn`t get a shot of the 50 odd scooters on the other side of the wall on the left. I just found it funny
at the time.

This is a painting that is approximately 8m x 4m and was apparently transported to the Vatican
from its original painting location a fair distance away. How they transported it all that way I am not
sure. This would have been a number of hundreds of years ago and it ain`t small.....

The roof of either the same room or the next one on the tour.

A guilded roof in the museum.

The roof of the stairs leading to the Cappella Sistina (Sistene Chapel)

The Sistene Chapel.

The roof of the Sistene Chapel. Explore the Ceiling

Corridors leading away from the Chapel.

I can`t remember...... Nice roof and walls though....

The entrance of St. Peter`s.

Floor plaque at the door of St. Peter`s.

A gothic archway in the middle of the building.

Close up of the structure.

The stairs down to the crypts

The end chapel area.

These will all make sense when I get hold of a guide book again....

Ajoined (hence the lines running less than parallel) images of the view from the front door of St. Peters

View down from half way up the main dome on route to the roof.

View from the top of the Dome about 128m up. Dome is 137m high.
Some info - The top public bit is just above the main dome and below the columns.

View of a nice building below the dome. Probably is something important.....

View of the Vatican museum that we were touring round earlier.

Example of how we got to the top of the dome.... 500+ steps to climb.
321 of them mainly like this.....

View of the Swiss Guards at the Vatican. Better images here

Shot of the St. Peters from the piazza with dome in the background.

View across the bridge of the Castel Sant'Angelo

The obligatory rower shot. This one is a Sculler.

The Spanish Steps. Shot taken from possibly the most expensive street in Rome.
It is the one with Armani, Versace, etc`s shops on it.

Day 3 - Tuesday - Easyeverything time and the hunt for the Catacombes.

After visiting Easyeverything (for Susan to get her exam results), we went north and found
the Villa Borghese estate.

The Villa Borghese Museam

Some building next to it..... Looked nice.

After all that, it was off to find the Catacombes of St. Sebastien

Passing shot of the Coliseum

Another Egyption needle thingy shot while waiting for the bus.

On the hunt for the Catacombes. We found out later that it was 2.3km after where we got off the bus and that there was a bus stop 200m from the door!!!!!

Still looking for them.....

Tada!!!! Only to find that it was closed until 14:30 and we had arrived at 14:00.....

So we went to the restaurant across the road.

2000 years later and with the exeption of the cars, nowt much else will have changed.....

We were not allowed to photograph inside the Catacombes but we were allowed to take shots in the church above them so took an arty floor level shot.

St. Sebastien`s coffin area. The arrows in the figurine are depictions of what happened to the "real" Sebastien.

The box middle left of the central area holds an arrow that apparently "could be an actual arrow that shot Sebastien if you believe that he was real" (the tour guides words).

Alongside the arrow are the "footsteps of Christ". It is a piece of I think stone with a couple of footsteps imprinted on it that are allegedly that of Jesus Christ.

Returning to Rome central, passing shot of the Coliseum again.

Shot to try and show perspective of height of the thing.

Same again but facing the other way.

Night shot of the church right outside the hotel. This sort of things is very common Rome. Nice small(ish) street then voila, dirty great big piazza with a dirty great big church in it....

Day 4 - Wednesday - Pompei Time

Day 5 - Thursday - Time to visit the Forum

Day 6 - Friday - The last day

Phone Video 1 - View of Rome from the Castello parapet.
Phone Video 2 - Same as above but starting from the other side of the parapet.
Phone Video 3 - Pope City from the Castello parapet.
Phone Video 4 - Weapons of War - old school styleeeee.
Phone Video 5 - The Castello itself from the lower ramparts.
Phone Video 6 - They have modernised their clothing and the goods are the modern merry junk rip-offs but the African and Eastern European traders still go about their business for passing tourists .
Phone Video 7 - Boring non-descript street, boring non-descript street.............. huge bloody great marble clad building. So typical of how Rome is....

Phone Video 8 - Shot down towards the piazza and building in the above video. Was doing another typical view or Rome thing....
Phone Video 9 - One of the many churches that just appear every so often when walking round Rome.
Phone Video 10 - The piazza (Piazza Esquilino) and church (Bascilica di Santa Maria Maggiore) right outside the Hotel. Another "typical of Rome" thing....
Phone Video 11 - A better shot of the "Piazza Esquilino" and "Bascilica di Santa Maria Maggiore" outside the hotel.

Day 7 - Saturday - Returning home