Rome, Italy needs no preamble. You can read all about modern Rome and Ancient Rome online.
I arrived in Rome by airplane from Istanbul. I didn't really want to go to Rome because I had spent the previous 4 months traveling through cities in Europe and I'd kind of reached my limit. I was tired of busy cities and I was tired of going from one tourist hub to the next.
Rome is indeed a big, busy city. And it is very much crammed full of tourists. But I loved it as soon as I entered the city. The unfathomable history and the incredible beauty of this city won me over as soon as I set foot on its streets. Rome was a place that I didn't want to visit, but it became one of my favorite cities in the world.
After I bought my ticket to Rome, I booked a room to stay in. The people who were renting the room emailed me and offered to pick me up from the airport for a small fee. I accepted their offer and they greeted me at the airport and took me to my room. They were a lovely couple and explained a lot about the city as we drove to the apartment.
One bit of information that I found interesting had to do with the metro that had been under construction for years and years. The city was trying to build a metro, but every 10 feet that they dug into the ground revealed new ancient ruins that had to be excavated and preserved. They couldn't make any progress with the metro because of all of the archeological treasures that were being discovered.
After getting settled into my room, I went out for a walk to explore. I was dumbfounded as soon as I turned the first corner.
It seemed like every corner that I turned in Rome revealed an amazing building, artifact, or piece of art that was thousands of years old. I would stop for a moment, take a photo, then wonder what it was. Who built it? What it was built for? How old was it? Then I would go to the next street and there would be another ancient mystery.
I mean how did the ancients transport a giant Egyptian obelisk to Rome? It's just sitting there on a random corner. Like they ran out of places to put all of their cool stuff so they just dumped it onto a random street corner.
This building had all this art painted on the inside of it, just sitting there exposed to the weather. I spotted all of this stuff within the first 15 minutes of walking outside of my apartment.
Then I came across the Coliseum. Normally I don't bother with going inside of popular tourist attractions, but I felt compelled to wait in line and visit this iconic structure.
You've most likely already seen a million photos of the Coliseum, and mine aren't that great. So I'll spare you my photos inside of this structure. I will say that the Coliseum is definitely worth the wait in line and the cost of admission. It's such a huge and imposing building and the thought of what it must have been like in the past made my brain go into overdrive.
This illustration that I saw in the little museum really appealed to me. My mind struggles to imagine what things were like based on seeing the ruins. Seeing an illustration of what it might have been like really brings it to life for me.
From the windows of the Coliseum, there were some cool views of the surrounding city.
After exploring the Coliseum, I went back outside to wander around a little more. The Arch of Constantine was absolutely impressive. I can't even begin to imagine how they constructed this thing in the year 315. My phone's camera doesn't do it justice. It's full of intricate and interesting details.
I found a place across the street from the Coliseum and had a little refreshment.
Walking back to my apartment, I kept finding cool and interesting things to take photos of. I've never seen so many nuns and priests as I saw in Rome.
I got back to the apartment and found a place to have pizza for dinner. On the next day, I went to the Vatican for a tour. I'll make a post about that tomorrow. I've got way too many photos of Rome as it is, and I'm really struggling to keep this post manageable.
At some point I changed rooms to a place more centrally located. I liked the first place that I stayed in close to the Coliseum, but I wanted to stay in a place within walking distance of some of the other attractions.
For the rest of the post, I'm just going to try an pick out some of my favorite photos. I've got over 500 photos of this city and I really have a hard time editing down and only picking the best ones. These are just pictures that I took while wandering around.
My favorite site that I saw in Rome was the Marcus Aurelius Column. I was wandering around and turned a corner and it was just standing there. There were no tourists or anything. Just two bored looking guards. I was fascinated. It's like a giant comic book that tells the story of Marcus Aurelius and his victories over other nations. The wiki page is sparse on details.
There's another more famous and popular column in Rome called Trajan's Column, but the Marcus Aurelius Column felt special to me. I had just stumbled upon it unexpectedly, and I felt like I had it all to myself.
I visited the Trajan column and I'll post some photos later in the post.
The Piazza Venezia gave me some great photos. The clouds in the sky were perfect. The building and the statues looked incredible.
Here are a few photos of the city itself.
This is Trajan's Column.
One cool thing about this column is that they have a huge photo of all of the scenes that wrap around it. It's HUGE. This super long photo that everyone is looking at is double sided!
The detail in each scene is incredible. I took a tour of a nearby archeological site. They said that the all of the thousands of characters on the column had real metal weapons and the entire thing was painted. It must have been one of the most amazing things on the planet when it was new.
The archeological site that I went to is called Le Domus Romane di Palazzo Valentini and it was awesome. When I was in Rome it was one of the top rated attractions on the Travelocity app. Not only do they show you the dig site in someone's basement, but they show a video with a 3-D reconstruction of the area. It was awesome to see what it must have been like. They also use projection mapping to bring the ruins to life. I highly recommend it.
I'm going to end the post here before it gets too long. Rome is amazing and should be visited by everyone. Yes, it's a big, busy city. Yes, it's full of tourists. None of that matters. If you have any interest in history, Rome will absolutely delight and mystify you.
I would recommend 3 full days at the very least. You're better off spending a week or two here so that you don't feel rushed. My biggest recommendation is to visit the churches. After you've gone to the main attractions and you're not sure what to do next, open up Google maps and search for churches. Then wander your way to them. Every single church in Rome is STUFFED with art. They are absolutely incredible. Best of all, they are free to visit, they are nice and cool inside, and they are mostly empty. Millions of tourists walk past these churches without even looking at them. But the churches are where I found some of my favorite pieces of art. If you're not sure what to do in Rome, do not miss the churches!
That's going to do it for this post. Tomorrow I'll post about Vatican City. I didn't post any of the indoor photos from the churches, but I'm thinking that I'll have to do that after I finish this City to City series. I hope you enjoyed this post and that you'll join me for tomorrow's post!