After breakfast we met with a local expert to take us on a walking tour through the more aristocratic areas of the city. We were given lots of history regarding the buildings and their occupants, We saw several embassies, one of which had the exterior designed my Michaelangeo.
The buildings and history were interesting but the fountains were our favourite part of the tour! It didn’t take us long to discover how much we loved fountains!
Our next stop was the Colosseum. What an incredible structure to walk through! There is way too much history to write about here, so I’ll settle for one interesting tidbit.
Most of the columns had holes in them. We were told this was from people chipping away at the marble to get to the iron bars inside that had held the blocks of stone together. These were then repurposed!
We also saw the site where gladiators were trained. They were actors and fought many times, until the crowds started to recognize them. Most of the deaths witnessed by the spectators were false, but eventually each gladiator met his death in the arena.
Our next tour was to catacombs. One of the nuns gave us a tour and explained the history. These corridors of burial sites cover 13 kms and over 2,000 were once buried there. When grave robbers started looking for treasure (there was none) buried with the bodies, it was decided to move the bones out of respect. Many of them are in the church we visited yesterday.
It was interesting to see the various sizes of graves cut into the walls and to see pictographs above some. Unfortunately, I have no photos to show you. We were about six feet below ground and it was quite cool so despite my interest, it was nice to come out above ground into the warmth again.
