We weren’t quite sure what we’d do with today; we’ve seen a lot of Rome. We scoured the map, looking for little nooks and crannies we may have missed. We came up with the Musei Capitolini, the Circo Massimo (Circus Maximus), and the Mamertine prison.
The museum was just north of the forum, and the most interesting part was the building itself had been rebuilt and reused many times throughout Roman history. The very strata of the building can be divided into thousands of years. They’ve got a decent collection of sculpture, and the busts were very interesting. It was also eye-opening to see some of the same statues we’d seen in Naples again, where we’d learned they were popular and often copied. We related this to numbered Disney sculptures; people collected the bust of Caracalla, and therefore there are more than one around. The actual layout of the rooms was very beautiful, and has remained largely untouched for hundreds of years.
We walked towards the forum, on the north overlook where there entrance to the Mamertine prison is. We left an offering and used 1 Euro to listen to the audio guide. This is the prison where Peter and Paul were held before they were martyred, and where a miraculous fountain appeared to Peter that allowed him to baptize and convert his guards, who were then subsequently also martyred. It’s a powerful, small, dark room, where an honorary altar has been added, complete with an upside down cross to symbolize Peter’s upside-down crucifixion (he didn’t feel he deserved to be killed the same way as Christ).
We made our way out of the forum, and headed south towards the Circus Maximus. Along the way we passed the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, which houses the Bocca della Verita (Mouth of Truth). If you’ve seen Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn, this is the big round, open mouthed face sculpture that will supposedly grab you if you stick your hand in the mouth and tell a lie. There was a very long line to stick your hand in the mouth, so we took a picture of somebody else and kept heading southeast for the Circus Maximus. Super cool to see it, though.
We made to the Circus Maximus! Whoopee! It’s boring. It’s a big oval field where they used to have a chariot races, behind the Palatine hill and before the Aventine. We walked a length of the track and made our way back towards the crappy hotel by way of the Colosseum again.
We stopped at an internet cafe to research hotels for Florence. The Dream Domus Bed and Breakfast looked neat, with unique, charming rooms. We’re hoping we’ll be able to get in there.
For dinner, Andrea, Kim, Wayne, and I decided to follow a suggestion from the Rickers and headed to Ristorante Il Gabriello. It was in a neat space, downstairs from the main street through sliding glass doors. The staff was very curt, and didn’t seem to enjoy our presence at all. The food was OK, not outstanding, and a little pricey. We had a fun time and headed back towards the Trevi Fountain in search of limoncello. We found it at Taberna, that same restaurant with the painted walls and ceilings (and huge beers) we’d visited a few days earlier. It was extremely lemony, a bit sour, with a really strong alcohol aftertaste. We reveled in broken English t-shirts (I celebrate the LA Doggers baseball shirt as my favorite), drank, and wound down another fun day in Rome. Dreadfully, we headed back to our crappy hotel room for one last night of crappy sleep in a crappy bed, with their crappy staff. We’re looking forward to writing an honest review on every website we can find when we get back.
matt & andrea 