Day 28 Rome Day 3

Rome Day 3

Today was another early morning to be up as we had to be ready for our tour of the Colosseum. It was HOT again today in Rome. You really can’t appreciate the Colosseum until you’ve seen it in person and you know some background on it. To realize that it was built almost 2,000 years ago and the extensive lengths that Romans went to to build it. Nero had been an unpopular leader and Vespasian had taken over the role of emperor and had to win back the favor of the public after Nero’s damage. So he got the idea to build the greatest amphitheater ever where all Romans could come together and enjoy sporting events. The whole idea was to keep the people happy and control them by giving them something to do. Vespasian’s arena plan was so grand there was no flat land area large enough to build on, so they got creative. Near the forum was a large lake that belonged to Nero as part of his personal palace grounds. Vespasian decided to drain the lake and use the flat lake bed to build his Colosseum on. So they built an elaborate system to drain the lake, then poured layers of concrete (which the Romans invented) to support the weight of the structure. Building something of this magnitude required great engineering skills to ensure the structure could support its weight. The arch played an important role here because by design it is strong and distributes weight evenly, yet remains open in the middle to make it lighter. The bottom row of arches around the Coliseum is made of marble, then, each layer above that gets lighter by using different building materials such as cement and bricks. When you consider the massive amount of marble needed, and that the marble came from a quarry in northern Italy and had to be transported to Rome, this alone makes the building an incredible feat. After the Coliseum we went to tour the Roman Forum ruins. It’s incredible to see what is there and has been standing since before Christ. For me to walk on original marble stones that ancient Romans and rulers walked across is insane! The tour was quite interesting despite the heat and after it was over we found a restaurant to get some pizza for lunch.

We were so hot and tired after lunch we decided to walk back to the hotel and take a little nap. Colin seems to be getting sick again, he has stopped eating and been fighting a fever since last night, so a nap would do us all good. I didn’t expect to sleep so long but felt great when we woke up two and a half hours later! We got up and decided to head over to the delicious restaurant from last night and eat there again. After dinner we went walking to see Rome at night all lit up. We hit the Trevi Fountain, which is equally impressive at night. Then the Pantheon, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier building, the Pallazo Nuova, and lastly the Colosseum. It was a late night for us but the sights at night were worth it.