Ben Ayers

I’ve just returned from a weekend break in Rome with Nicola and I can honestly say that sightseeing in Rome is so totally, breathtakingly intense that it’s not surprising that upon return, one feels drained, moved and even somewhat ‘altered’. Such is the power of the ‘Eternal City’.

Friday: Old buildings, Imperial ambitions and breathtaking frescoes

After an OK BA flight from Heathrow we checked into the Hotel Locarno, just of the Piazza del Popolo at around midday.

After dropping our bags we headed on foot to the Roman Forum, a place that had so excited my imagination on my last trip to Rome around six years ago. We paused briefly at the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II a fairly hideous and overbearing monument to honour former King of Italy from 1820 Victor Emmanuel, where we got a pretty good view of the city after ascending a glass lift up to the terrace (we paid but I can’t remember how much). This is one of those buildings that’s so big it’s hard to summon up the enthusiasm to explore further so we headed along the pavement towards the Colosseum, which is considerably smaller and far more interesting. Well, it’s a former arena of death, innit.

On the left as we made our way there were the ancient ruins of Trajan’s market and to the right, our first glimpses of the Forum. Inspired by the brilliant HBO series Rome, we couldn’t wait to get down among the ancient city so we took a right and headed down amongst the ruins and made our way up towards the Colosseum via the remarkably well preserved Titan’s Arch. We decided we’d go for a guided tour and managed to bag a place on a tour of the Colosseum and the Palatine for 10 Euros. (This excluded the entrance tickets for the Palatine and Forum which I think also cost about 10 Euros). Tip: If you plan to go into the Colosseum buy a ticket for the Palatine and Colosseum from the kiosks by the Forum - saves queueing for ages at the Colosseum.

The tour of the Colosseum was conducted by a chain smoking white haired Italian who would lean back with his eyes closed as he reached into his brain for the details that would make for a memorable tour. He described how earthquakes had destroyed two thirds of the outer ring of the magnificent building but it had been rebuilt as part of Italian celebrations of the Second Millennium.

He took us to the part of the outer ring that had remained intact and showed us the gate numbers still present on the walls, numbering up to 80. He also showed us where high up towards the roof, wooden poles would have jutted upwards, each attached by rope to a giant ’sail’ that would encirle the roof of the bulding providing welcome shade from the blistering Roman sun. Thanks to a steel ring in the centre, it would still alow in enough light for the baying crowds to see the gruesome details of what was happening before their eyes. He provided plenty of gory details and also seemed to revel in Rome’s past glory. In fact, he hinted that Rome’s imperial ambitions could still lead to future glory, but his references to the slowness with which modern Italians go about their business suggested that he didn’t quite have faith in such convictions.

After the tour of the Colosseum it was off the Palatine Hill for a tour with Jill, an Amercian studying theology and philosophy at the Vatican. She led us back past the Arch of Titus up the hill to the area thought to house the first early settlements of downtown Rome.

She explained that Rome has its origins on the Palatine Hill and recent excavations show that people have lived there since approximately 1000 BC.

According to Roman mythology, the hill was the location of the cave where Romulus and Remus were found by the she-wolf that kept them alive. According to this legend, the shepherd Faustulus found the infants, and with his wife Acca Larentia raised the children. When they were older, the boys killed their great uncle (who seized the throne from their father), and they both decided to build a new city of their own on the banks of the River Tiber. Suddenly, they had a violent argument with each other and in the end Romulus killed his twin brother Remus. This is how “Rome” got its name - from Romulus.

Many affluent Romans of the Republican period had their residences there, not least because the temperature is considerably more pleasant than down below. The ruins of the palaces of Augustus, Tiberius and Domitian can still be seen.

Towards the end of the tour Jill mentioned that recently archaeologists had uncovered some amazing frescoes in the former residence of Augustus, Rome’s first emperor.

His modest villa on the Palatine was where he spent his time alone plotting his next moves. She explained that as is typical of Roman excavation, the decision to allow visitors to enter the rooms would probably be reversed in six months when experts decide that the flashes of eager visitors (which are prohibited at many sites but still go off) could damage the ancient works. Jill’s revelation that the site could soon be closed prompted Nicola and I to make our way down through the ruins of the various imperial residences in search of the newly discovered rooms. Once we found them we queued for about ten minutes before being ushered through some gates with a few others. As we entered we were presented with the most amazingly vivid frescoes. We were speechless as we wondered around the two rooms looking at the walls, marvelling at the detail and vivid colours of the artwork. It really was an astonishing sight and one which fuelled our conversation over dinner that night.

Saturday: Papal power, dedication and the old ‘jam tart’

We were really impressed by Jill and had decided to book her tour of the Vatican the next day. We’d already pre booked entry to the Vatican online so it was just a case of getting inside and then catching up with Jill once she had taken her tour group inside. I wasn’t really sure what I’d make of the Vatican. So many people had told me that the Sistine Chapel, St Peter’s Basillica and the Vatican Museums with their collection of ancient Roman art were A-M-A-Z-I-N-G so I was almost expecting to be disappointed. There is just so much to take on board here that I won’t even begin to describe it. The level of dedication to God over the years, the corruption of the papacy and the sheer cost of keeping such a collection going all struck me.

We were enthralled by the collection in the Pio Clementino Museum which was filled with Greek and Roman sculptures. There are major sculptures under the porticoes in the Belvedere courtyard. One of the most famous shows Laocoön and his two sons locked in eternal struggle with the serpents. Another, Apollo Belvedere (a late Roman reproduction of an authentic Greek work from the 4th century BC), has become the symbol of the classic male form.

Surprisingly (for an atheist) it was the religious art that so grabbed me the most. The buildings are home to some of the most famous art in the world, which includes works by artists such as Botticelli, Bernini, Raphael and Michelangelo.

It was Michelangelo’s influential works including the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel that blew us away. Jill explained that the Creation of Adam, which illustrates the Biblical story from the Book of Genesis in which God breathes life into Adam the first man, was the fourth in a series of panels depicting episodes from Genesis on the Sistine ceiling and among the last to be completed. Michelangelo had been persuaded to return to Rome (after leaving the city with severe Rome fatigue) to come back and paint the chapel.

She also told us that In 1990 a physician named Frank Lynn Meshberger noted in the medical publication the Journal of the American Medical Association that the background figures and shapes portrayed behind the figure of God appeared to be an anatomically accurate picture of the human brain, including the frontal lobe, optic chiasm, brain stem, pituitary gland, and the major sulci of the cerebrum. It has also been claimed that the red cloth around God has the shape of a human uterus and that the scarf hanging out, coloured green, could be the representation of a newly cut umbilical cord.

Jill said that a recent tour included a posse of heart surgeons who claimed that the shape containing God and the cherubs exactly resembled a dissected heart. Such ideas leave one filled with wonder. It’s not totally beyond the realm of possibility that Michelangelo was making such connections, for he was known to carry out complex dissections in order to inform his sculpting and painting of the human form. Needless to say, it was Michelangelo’s genius and dedication to these religious masterpieces that occupied much of our conversation over dinner. I vowed to read up on Michelangelo, if only to back up my (no doubt highly unoriginal) hypothesis that he was less of a believer than he was a proud perfectionist.

Sunday: From fountains to prisons and back again

On Sunday we visited the Trevi Fountain and headed back to the Forum with the intention of taking a tour of the ruins to hear in more detail about the rise and fall of the empire. Our plans were scuppered as for some reason the Forum was closed, but as is often the way in Rome, we stumbled across some sights that more than made up for it.  As we made our way to the Capitoline Hill we came across some steps leading down into what looked like an underground church. It was in fact the Mamertine Prison where high profile prisoners of the Roman ruling powers were kept, usually foreign commanders who had been defeated and became the centrepiece a triumphant procession. There they remained until they were publicly executed - unless they happened to die of natural causes first.

The name “Mamertine” is medieval in origin, and may be a reference to a nearby temple of Mars, or to the legend of St. Peter, who according to the audio guide in the prison had been locked up there before his martyrdom: the legend states that Saints Martinian and Processus, supposedly his warders, were converted and baptized by Peter before being martyred themselves.

Buzzing from this discovery we wondered up the Capitoline Hill to the magnificent Capitoline Museums which are apparently amazing but by then we were a bit museumed out so we gave them a miss. We walked down the museum steps in the direction of the Tiber and had a quick bite to eat before heading off in search of the Catacombs that a colleague had recommended we visit. They reopened at 2pm after lunch so we thought we could pop in for a quick look around before heading back to the hotel for our ride to the airport. When we arrived via taxi along Appia Antica, part of the historial Appian Way, we were told that a tour would be starting in twenty minutes. Worried that we wouldn’t get out in time to get back to the hotel for our taxi to the airport we reluctantly made the decision to pass on the ancient graves and add them to an ever growing list of things to do next time, which also includes the Capitoline Museums, Piazza Navona, Rome Cavalieri Hilton (for when I have won the Lotto), Circus Maximus, the ancient sea port of Ostia Antica…