Roma!

Oh, those Romans...
I got up around 6:30 this morning.  After my morning routine, and my now-habitual ritual of throwing of a few more postcards in the mail, I took the fast train to Rome (Italy's stamps are so much cooler than France's!), which left from Florence at 8:14.  My reading material on construction was fascinating, but, as usual, I passed out on the train.  Nothing new.  Then, the ticket machine in the Roman train station wouldn't accept my money, and I needed to travel by foot.  Again, nothing new: it just made me nostalgic for my long, rainy, 2-hour walks in Paris.
I had bought a quality tourist map in the station, and I decided that, first of all, I should visit the Colosseum.  It seemed like a good place to start.  For those of you used to the grid of streets that compose New York City, the streets of Rome are confusing and disorienting: like Paris, which also has confusing streets, human history, not rational city planning, designed the town; unlike Paris, Rome did not receive a major rationalizing makeover in the mid-18th century (Haussmann).  So it was nearly noon by the time I arrived at the Colosseum, even with the help of a map.  And I should add: Italy is blazing hot at this time of the year.  Even late in the day, I read a thermometer indicating that it was 34 degrees centigrade outside (that's over 93 degrees Fahrenheit).  For most of midday, you can see tourists hiding in every available patch of shadow, anywhere, trying to cool off.  It's understandable why the practice of a midday siesta is so common in the Mediterranean world.  The city of Rome has kindly decided to liberally scatter public fountains of cold, cold water across the city, which are always a welcome sight.  Even with a water bottle and the fountains, though, it's easy to become dehydrated, and there are street vendors across the city selling bottled water, straw hats, and cheap parasols.
The Colosseum, despite its name, is much smaller than I had imagined.  Although it has a very wide circumference, it is really not very high, by 21st-century standards, and does not stand out on the skyline.  I didn't see that I was approaching it until I was only about two blocks away from it.  It's fenced off so that tourists can only enter via the ticket office, and there was an enormous mob (I can't even call it a line) waiting to enter, by this late in the day.  In addition to aforementioned vendors, there were also Italian men dressed as centurions skulking in the premises, offering to take photographs with tourists.  I consciously avoided these guys.
Although the Colosseum is big and famous, I realized that I didn't have much desire to see the interior.  The Colosseum was a place of execution for those considered the scum of Roman society, Emperor Caligula made a fool of himself in the arena a few dozen times, and lions devoured a few early Christians.  The interior just wasn't worth the wait, when time was so precious.  So I decided to cross the street to the ancient Roman Forum instead: that is real history.
The Roman Forum and the famous Palatine Hill (the most famous of Rome's seven hills), and the ancient ruins which remain, have been set aside and preserved, as a museum.  I had no more than a 5-minute wait at the ticket office (and yet, I managed to meet another French couple in this short period of time), and began to explore what was, in my mind, a much more interesting site than the Colosseum.  Sadly, there was very little by means historical explanation of the various sites (no leaflets or paper maps), and the next guided tour in English was not until 4:30 pm.  So I did my best to explore what was available, with my feeble knowledge of the Roman classics.  I wished that my friend Sam Pell were there with me, to gush about the Romans, and explain the significance of the monuments to the emperors, and the temples to the various deities.  There were a lot of them, and although I knew a little bit about a few of the figures with whom they are associated (Augustus, Severus, Nero, etc.), I only outright recognized a single landmark: the Arch of Titus.
I actually hadn't known exactly where the Arch of Titus was located.  However, when I saw it indicated on one of the maps, I checked it out immediately.  Sure enough, what I looked for was there: the frieze decorating is a wonderful illustration of the Romans carrying the spoils of the Second Temple.  When Roman generals returned from successful campaigns, they celebrated with a triumph, which is a sort of military parade through the capital (there were also lesser versions of triumphs which followed less important military achievements, but I really don't know much about these).  The Arch of Titus depicts the triumph of 71 C.E., after the all-too-successful war against Judea, and for details of this event, I refer you to my good friend Josephus Flavius.
Other buildings by the Forum and Palatine I visited included the houses of Augustus and his wife Livia, a temple  to the sun god Sol, the building which Emperor Diocletian built for the Senate, a building full of Roman glassware (some of it from Pompeii and Herculaneum), and some reconstructed Roman gardens.  The gardens were part of a temporary exhibit on the Roman hortus (cognate with "horticulture"), and I really wish that my Dad had been there.  It was the only part of the whole site that was presented in an interesting, informative, coherent manner, and drew upon the classical literary sources (Titus Livy, Cicero, all those dudes) to describe the phenomenon of the hortus of the Roman aristocracy.
I left after about two hours, and headed northwest in the direction of the Roman Pantheon (not to be confused with the Parthenon, which is in Athens, and which I find much more historically interesting).  I stopped at the Victor Emmanuel II memorial on the way, which also houses the tomb of the unknown soldier (Milite Ignoto).  It's big, showy, and not very interesting.
The Pantheon, on the other hand, is fascinating: the structure is the result of the renovations, including a 180-degree rotation, made by the Emperor Hadrian, but the former structure dates to the first half of the 2nd century C.E.  Since then, the building has become a church, but it's still magnificent.  The floor has a fantastic multicolored checkerboard design, and the high dome has a circular skylight at the top.  There used to be a legend that it never rained in the interior of the Pantheon, that rain miraculously avoided the church.  In fact, in the building's early use, there were dozens of candles burning at all times in the church: they produced acurrent of hot air, which rose, and evaporated raindrops that entered the building.  Now, the floor in the center does get a little bit wet, but water doesn't coat the entire floor: the Romans built 24 small, almost invisible drainage holes in the floor, allowing water to flow out without causing any harm to anyone not standing directly under the center of the dome.
The tomb of Raphael is also in the Pantheon, and he has an amazing epitaph: Ille hic est Raffael, timuit quo sospite vinci, rerum magna parens et moriente mori, or, in English "Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die."  Pretty cool, don't you think?  Also, for those of you paying attention to this sort of thing, you'll notice that I visited Leonardo's tomb with my brother Sam (Middle Davis) while at Amboise, Michelangelo's and Donatello's tombs on my second day (Wednesday) in Florence, and Rafael's tomb today.  Thus, I have visited the final resting places of all four of the Renaissance artists named after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  There should be a t-shirt with that logo.
I walked from the Pantheon westward.  There is no efficient way of walking from the Pantheon to across the Tiber River.  I just had to navigate by the sun, walking in the opposite direction from which shadows peeled off of objects.  I made it to the river, across it, and arrived in a different country, the one with the highest proportion of Catholic residents in the world...
If I hadn't already been to Versailles and to the Louvre, I probably would have been bowled over by the size of the Vatican.  Even in spite of the overweening French monarchs' megalomania, I was quite impressed by the size of the plaza in front of the Vatican, surrounded by marble columns and statues of famous churchmen.  There was a gargantuan line, which I think might have been as much as 300 meters long, which disappeared very quickly in fact, once I stood in it.  I saw several Swiss guards: to be honest, I really don't envy their jobs.  They don't even get a chance to read: they just stand and stare straight ahead with their halberds.  It was apparently too late in the day to visit the Sistine Chapel, and see either the ceiling or the altarpiece painted by Michelangelo (the former is more famous; the latter, more esteemed among art historians).  However, I could enter the Basilica, and climb up the Cupola.  By foot (you can also take an elevator halfway up), it's a 520-step climb (significantly more than the Eiffel Tower), and more than three times as many as are in the Cornell clocktower.  They come in several different sets: the long, shallow, spiral is at the beginning, followed by alternating straight and spiral staircases, with occasional roofs and landings: it's quite an adventure.  The initial climb gives a fantastic view of the dome's interior, with mosaics of crossed keys and of cherubs' faces.  Around the main girdle of the dome is written TU ES PETRUS ET SUPER HANC PETRAM AEDIFICABO ECCLESIAM MEAM, a verse from the Vulgate translation book of Matthew, which I recognized from all of my conversations with Sam and Shea.  The pun works in Latin (Petrus), Greek (Πέτρος ), French (Pierre), but I have no idea if it works in Aramaic, which is the language which those guys were probably all speaking. 
The final, steepest, helical staircase has a vertical rope hanging down the center, for use as a banister.  Anyway, the view is quite good, but not amazing.  You can see the strip of the Tiber, the monument to Victor Emmanuel II, and a few other monuments, but it's nothing like the Parisian skyline (sorry!) where, from the right place, you can recognize every dome and pillar.  Maybe that's just because I've spent 4 months in Paris, and 10 hours in Rome, though.  Sam, it's your job to tell me, after your semester abroad, if you can recognize the Roman skyline when standing on the rim of the Vatican's cupola!
I climbed down, exited the Basilica, and stopped by the post office.  There are three addresses which need to have postcards sent to them from every country I visit (all for different reasons), and so I paid the overpriced postage, wrote three quick notes, and dropped them in the mail.
I took the Metro back to the main train station, and, at 8:45, after finding various ways to occupy myself for the 90-minute wait, I took the train back to Florence.
I'm thinking of you all, whether you know it or not!  Shabbat Shalom, v'Rosh Chodesh Tov!

~JD