Roseyland

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Welcome to Italy day 4. This is the midpoint of our adventure, and today’s agenda includes the Galleria Borghese and a tour of the ancient roman ruins. We had 11:00 am reservations for the Galleria Borghese, so we were able to sleep in a little bit longer. The Galleria Borghese is an art gallery, inside a villa, inside a park. Now here is where I get confused, sometimes Villa Borghese refers to the park in which the Galleria Borghese is located, and sometimes Villa Borghese refers to the Villa, which contains the Galleria Borghese. Basically, Galleria Borghese is an art gallery, inside a large fancy house (or Villa), which is located in a big park, that is something like central park.

We arrived at the Villa Borghese a little early, so that we could check out the park part of Villa Borghese. This park was one of my favorite parts of Rome. It had lots of winding paths, and different fountains and statues hidden all over the place. There were lots of runners, and it felt very peaceful for being inside a big city. The fountain below is somewhere inside the Villa Borghese park.

We were in Rome during the World Cup, but by this time Italy had already been eliminated. It looked like a part of Villa Borghese had been set up as some type of World Cup watching party, but as you can see, the party was long over and the place was covered in trash. Looks like it was a good party though.

This is the Asclepius Temple. It’s a temple, on an island, in a lake, in the park. There were also ducks. It was very pretty.

These are the gardens behind Villa Borghese, and this time I mean the Villa that contains Galleria Borghese. I want to say something like, “Hey, check out that statues butt”, but I’m afraid you’ll get the wrong idea.

This is a water spout. They have these all over Rome, and people use them to fill up their water bottles and splash water on themselves. Which is nice, because the summer is hot in Rome. In case you are wondering, you can drink the water in western Europe. I always say that I’m going to stick to bottled water, because even though the tap water is perfectly clean, it’s still possible that your body will need an adjustment period. I always end up drinking tap water by the first day though, and so far I have suffered no ill effects.

This is the Galleria Borghese, in the Villa Borghese, that is the big house and not the park. I’m not a huge art fan, but this gallery is nice for a couple reason. First, they only let people in with a reservation. Every two hours, they let a set number of people in for two hours, so that the gallery isn’t packed with people. The other nice thing is that this is a smaller gallery. It’s basically a villa filled with art, and there aren’t many barriers between you and the art. You can get right up close to some amazing statues. One of these statues was Apollo and Daphne, in which Daphne is being chased by Apollo and is turning into a tree for one reason or another. In the statue, her legs are starting to become part of the tree, and there are these leaves sculpted out of marble that are just unbelievable. The leaves are so thin, but they are marble. It doesn’t seem possible. Click on the link for a picture. If you visit the Galleria Borghese, you might consider getting an audio guide. They have cards you can read in English, but I find it hard to read and look at art at the same time. Of course like almost all art museums, you aren’t allowed to take pictures inside. I used the same website to make reservations for the Galleria Borghese as I did for the Galleria Academia and the Galleria Uffizi in Florence, which you can find here.

After the Galleria Borghese, we had lunch at the galleria’s bar. You remember that bar in Italy means something like counter service restaurant, right? Then we headed to the ancient roman ruins area where we took another Context Travel tour of the Palatine Hill, Roman Forum, and Colosseum. The tour we took was the Roma Antica tour, and just like the Vatian tour, it was excellent. Usually, I’m not big on tours. I’d generally prefer to explore on my own, but when it comes to something like the Vatican or ancient Rome, you really kind of need someone to explain it all to you. And again, the small group format of the Context Travel tours is way better than the larger group tours, in my not so humble opinion.

We started our tour at the Palatine Hill. The Palatine hill is the most ancient part of Rome, and it is where the most well off ancient roman citizens, including a few emperors, lived. I would like to take this moment to point out that I do not guarantee the accuracy of any information in these blog post. This is just what I remember, it could totally be wrong. The picture below is of an aqueduct that provided water to the Palatine Hill. It’s thousands of years old.

Here is a picture of the colosseum as seen from the Palatine Hill. I love those trees, they are so ancient Rome.

Here is a picture of the ruins on the Palatine Hill with the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the background. Yeah, awesome shot, I know. I learned a few things on this part of the tour that I’d like share with you at some point. How about now? First, the ancient Roman ruins were completely buried until the 1950’s. Initially treasure hunters started digging in the area for artifacts they could sell, and soon after that the government stepped in to protect the artifacts and excavate the ruins. Everything you see in these pictures had been completely buried until relatively recently. Second, you know all those white marble statues you expect to see in an ancient Roman palace? They were not white. They were carved out of marble, which was white, but then they painted them to have clothes and skin, etc… They were full color statues. Weird. The ancient Romans also had many modern conveniences, like running water and under floor heating. I’d love to tell you all about it, but you really need to go to Rome and take the tour yourself.

Now we are entering the Roman Forum area. This was the center of government for ancient Rome. Something like Washington D. C. The picture below is of an arch. Our guide told us that arches represented the open legs of a woman. Seriously. When soldiers would come back to rome after doing all sorts of bad things, they would walk through the arch to symbolize a rebirth and be forgiven for their transgressions. I will never look at the Gateway Arch the same way again.

This is an original road in the Roman Forum area. Actual ancient Romans walked on this road. I touched it, because other people were touching it, and it seemed like the thing to do.

Here is a good overall view of the Roman forum area. One thing to note, this area was in use for hundreds of years, and all of these buildings were built at different times. So you are looking at a hodgepodge of buildings from different times in this shot.

Another shot from inside the Roman Forum.

This is location where Caesar was cremated. There is a big story around Caesar’s death. It goes something like: Caesar was emperor, the people loved him, the senate did not, the senate had him assassinated, the people were outraged, and there was a big funeral where Caesar was cremated. You’ll have to take the tour if you want the full and accurate version. As you can see, people still leave flowers and notes for Caesar today.

After the Roman Forum, we headed to the Colosseum. You have probably seen the movie Gladiator, and you pretty much know what the Colosseum was. Gladiators used to fight here, and sometimes criminals were punished here. Also, the Colosseum was not buried for a couple thousand years like the other ruins we have seen so far.

This is a picture of the pathway you can walk on inside the Colosseum.

This is a cross inside the Colosseum. I don’t know why it’s there exactly, but I suspect that many Christians were sent to their death in the Colosseum, and the cross is probably a memorial to them.

Here is a good shot of the inside of the Colosseum. See the small section of floor that has been built at the opposite end? That is the level of the original floor of the Colosseum. What you see in the bottom now are the areas underneath the floor where they would keep various animals (lions, tigers, etc…). There were also numerous trap doors in the floor, and the animals could be sent to pop up from any one of them, for the Gladiators to fight. They could also flood the whole area for naval battles. I almost said navel battles, hee hee.

Hey look! It’s a cat in the Colosseum. He seemed to have somewhere very important to go, and was not interested in stopping for a picture.

After our tour we headed to the Spanish Steps for dinner. We wanted to eat at a restaurant called Hostaria Al, which is supposed to have this amazing shrimp risotto, but they were closed for vacation. Instead we ate at a restaurant called Da Giggi, which had a hillarious waiter named Kiko. You should go see him, he will make you order the lasagna, and it will be very good.

That is all for today. Only two days left. Tomorrow we travel to the small hilltop town of Orvieto. You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.