Wednesday, May 25, 2011

A Big Pile of Rocks, They MUST be Important!

At least in Rome.  It seems that every pile of rocks or ruins has history on top of its history.  We went on a class trip to the Capitoline Museums, and the ruins of the Roman ruin.  We started the trip at the museum which we quickly found out was built upon the ruins of the ancient temple of Jupiter by the orders of the pope.  It was built on top of the ruins and also around the old Senate building from the medieval age, and even directs your eyes toward the Vatican.  Talk about trying to break from your ancient ties.  So in the process of all of this building Rome has just become a giant pile of history.  We even found a building that’s side was ancient and the rest of the building was from the 1600s.  This just makes it so much fun to explore!!  

So anyhow the trip to the museum was amazing!  There was SO much Roman art that it was just piled up around the different rooms.  There were busts of every single Roman Emperor, a bust of the first Brutus, a list of every single consul of Rome, the She-Wolf statue, it goes on and on.  There was a statue of Marcus Arrelius, which was the only full equestrian statue left from the Roman era, and tons of statues of Constantine, Hadrian, and so many gods.  Idk even how to describe it, there were just so many.  See some of the pics below. 
Marcus

She-Wolf


After we went to the museums we went to the coliseum, which was loads of fun, because our tour guide knew so much about the topic.  We also got a tour with some of the headphones over walkie talkies so we all looked like secret agents walking around the coliseum.  We walked around the different levels, debating how the floor was flooded for sea battles, and how the seating was arranged for the different classes.  There is the is the saying that the entire coliseum could be emptied in 15 mins, our tour guide told us “that is totally not true.  No one in Roman gave a damn about the plebs.”  So great!  So after we walked the different levels and found out about the structure of the building, we also learned that most gladiator fights did were not actually fatal, and in fact a thumbs up was for a kill, and thumbs down to live.  Then we moved on to the Forum. 

There we found all the different temples in various states of disrepair, as well as the senate house and the funeral sight for Julius Caesar.  All the temples were pretty much the same, so there is not much to say about them, however the Senate building was actually very small but very well built.  We also found out that the Senate had multiple places that it could meet, and the one in the Forum being only one of the places they could meet.  This means that Caesar was actually killed elsewhere, and in fact, ironically, he was killed in the theater of Pompey.  To make up for it however like I said before his funeral sight was located in the forum, where Mark Athony gave his famous speech and the plebs of the city burned down the Senate house in response. 
Funeral pyre of Caesar 


Much later we tried to go to the movies to see the Hangover 2 but we found out it was only in Italian.  We got gelato and wine instead and decided to blog and read livy together.  A good choice!  That is what we are doing now, and with that I leave you all for now. 

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