Ancient Rome

On day 2, we decided to spend exploring the Ancient part of Rome, again with Grazia as our guide. I'm so fascinated by ancient Roman civilisation - whenever there's a documentary about it on TV, I'll definitely watch it! The achievements of the Roman empire were so impressive - and to think that they had sophisticated social systems like laws, taxes, markets combined with advanced engineering feats - all over 2,000 years ago. If the Roman empire had not fallen into its demise, I wonder how much more advanced our lives would be now?

So, our tour started at the Roman Forum. Again, I had been here before (way back in 2001) but this time, Grazia had a book that showed us what all the ruins would have looked like 2000 year ago. They were truly magnificent structures - temples, houses, arches, all in shiny white Carrara marble.
For example, this is what the ruins look like today (near the Temple of Saturn)..

and this is what they looked like in their hey-day...

Can you imagine what this whole area would have looked like if you were a Roman citizen so many years ago? Would have been enormously impressive!!!!

After the Roman Forum, we climbed up to Palantine Hill which is where a number of Roman emperors built their palaces. Above is some cornice detail which is an example of how elaborate the palaces would have been. The emperor had grand dining rooms, private baths, his own fighting stadium arenas - it was an opulent life!

Emperor's private baths

And he also had direct access to the huge circus maximus where chariots raced. Again, it's hard to imagine now (it's just a bare grass field now) but it looked amazing when it was built.

After this, we made it to the Colosseum where there must have been a million other tourists....

Here are some of our favourite shots to share... probably very cliche for those of you who have been but for those who haven't, enjoy!

Our ancient Rome tour ended at the Pantheon - a real amazing engineering feat - a perfect half dome built almost 2,000 years ago.