When in Rome,

Do as the Romans do! We woke up at 8 and ran to the train station to be there by 8:30 and left on our way to ROMA! When we arrived we all put our stuff in our rooms in the Hotel Portamaggiore, which was a pretty nice hotel, and then began our very, very hectic weekend! Rome is HUGE! We went to the Colosseum first where we waited in line in the rain for a while, but while waiting our teacher began telling us so much already! The Colosseum is an elliptical amphitheatre that is in the center of Rome. This is the ONLY amphitheatre that can be called “colosseum.” It is commonly misused when people are generally talking about amphitheatres, but this is actually the title that this amphitheatre was given in 70AD after the COLOSSAL statue of a rich man named Nero who lived on the hill next to the Colosseum. So, it was built between 70 and 72AD!! Incredible! It originally sat 50,000 spectators who came to watch the gladiators flight until their death. We heard incredibly gory stories, which I won’t repeat on here, that our teacher told us about the fights. These festivals, if you will, lasted all the way from dawn until dusk. It took approximately one hour for the people to file into the Colosseum, and there was one break for lunch, where the Emperor would leave and get his lunch while most of the other pagans stayed to watch the hangings and beheadings of the criminals. As time went on, the people demanded more extravagant shows, so the Emperor had many exotic animals shipped there to fight. He would also drop flower pedals half way through the show from the tops of the Colosseum; imagine millions of flower pedals floating down while sitting in the Colosseum. I imagined it would be a very peaceful and beautiful experience, until I was told this was only done in order to take away the odor of the blood and rotting bodies that had already been killed. Peaceful huh?

We saw where the animals were kept down below and how the Romans built lifts and “elevators” to hoist the giant animals up to surprise the audience. They were very clever indeed. I will let the pictures tell the rest…