Today started out to be my day to tour the Roman Forum, but
wound up being a day spent in the Capitoline Museums atop Capitoline Hill! I walked from Trastevere over to the area
where the Forum is located, using a map.
As I am learning about Rome, the mere fact that you get somewhere near
the actual location of a place doesn’t mean you can actually get to it! I had to wander quite a bit trying to figure
out where the entrances to the Forum actually are, having come upon it from the
back. I wandered up and down narrow,
cobbled streets in the blazing sun, following groups of tourists with guides,
figuring I’d get closer that way! When I
got to the top of Capitoline Hill I saw that the museum was open, contrary to
what the literature says about it being closed on Monday. Given that the temperature today was in the
high 90s and the sun was unrelenting, I looked out over the Forum with its
complete lack of any shade whatsoever and decided to go for the museum which
would be infinitely cooler and, in places, even air conditioned!
The Capitoline museum complex includes two huge
buildings. It was founded in 1471 when
Pope Sixtus IV donated some large bronze statues from Ancient Rome to the city.
Since then it has become the place that houses statues, carvings, inscriptions,
artifacts, paintings and mosaics and tapestries, and collections of jewels,
coins and other artifacts from various periods in Rome’s history. It’s quite a complex with an incredible
variety of things to see, from ancient Roman and Hellenistic statues to
medieval and renaissance art. The
buildings face each other across a square and there is an underground tunnel
that you go through to get from one to the other, lined with hieroglyphs
spanning many centuries. It’s an incredibly
well done set of exhibits. In the second
building, the Palazza Nuovo, there is a section where you can look out over the
Forum and get some wonderful views of the whole complex. As I looked out on the sun drenched and
unshaded walks of the Forum I decided I’d made the right decision!
I am glad to have seen the giant statue (or rather portion
of a statue) of the Emperor Constantine, pictures of which I’ve seen for years.
It’s an absolutely enormous statue, of which only the head and one hand and one
foot remain, but given their size it’s clear that when the statue was intact it
was absolutely enormous and must have been rather daunting to Constantine’s
subjects!
When I left the museum, after about 3 hours of poring over
the exhibits, I walked around the Piazza Venetia to where I could see the Forum
and Colosseum. By then, Tracy had texted
that she would be done earlier than expected, so I walked back to Trastevere,
stopping for a lemon Granita (their version of a slushy!) which was most welcome
in the extreme heat of the afternoon.
When I got back to the apartment, Tracy and I went back to the little
shop with the fresh baked Italian cookies that I found last week and she wanted
to see the Basilica of St. Cecilia, so I took her there. We then walked through Trastevere and got
really good pizza, fresh salad fixings and cold beer for our supper. She had to do some prep work tonight and I am
just taking it easy recovering from the exhaustion of walking around in the
Rome summer heat. I’m not walking all
that far, but in this heat, it doesn’t take much to wear you out!
Pics today include some shots from the museum and some shots
out over the Forum. Given the extremely
hot weather we’re having here, I may not actually tour the Forum this
visit! I’ll save it for a visit during a
more temperate time of year!
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