I think Rome might have to be broken up in 3 or 4 posts…whew! So after exploring Rome on our own the first day we were there, the next morning we woke up bright and early and met our tour guide at our hotel. If you go to Rome I would HIGHLY recommend hiring a tour guide to take you to the sites.  If you never hire a tour guide the entire time your in Italy – do it in Rome!! The guide we hired came from vatican tours. She was excellent, she spoke 4 languages, has a doctrate degree in Roman Christianity and was an archaelogoist. She knew her stuff inside and out. There wasn’t one question we couldn’t ask her that she didn’t know. Basically she was a private tour guide, she picked us up at our hotel and took us to all the major sites that we wanted to see in Rome, it was just the three of us from about 9 am in the morning till about 5pm that day!!

We started out by going to the catacombs which are ancient underground cemeteries.  The catacomb that she took us to is not frequented by tours all that much. (Another plus of hiring a guide) We get out of the taxi and knock on this big wood door about 12 feet tall and the door sqeaks open and a little nun opens it and peeks her head around the corner and starts talking Italian to our tour guide. I felt like I was in the movies, she proceeds to let us in and tells us that we are the only ones today. Basically, this catacomb is underground this monastery for these nuns. Our tour guide proceeds to take us down two flights of richety old stairs where we are surrounded by graves that are built 10 high, one after another these graves are just stacked on top of each other. Our catacomb was two stories deep, we didn’t even go down to the 2nd story because there was no electricity or lights. People who go down there need flashlights. Let me just say that this was the eeriest place I have ever been in my life. I touched 1500 year old bones that were in there and saw infant caskets lined up 10 deep on top of each other and literally stood 2 feet away from the first recorded drawing of The Virgin Mary and Jesus that has ever been found on earth. This catacomb was built in the second century and still has never fully been excavated. To give you an idea how big this place was, it held 20,000 – 30,000 bodies at one time. What I found most interesting about these burials is these people were so small back then, men were on average 5’0 to 5’2 in height and women were smaller then that so you can imagine how small these caskets were.  Unfortuntely, I don’t have any pictures of the catacombs because we were forbidden to take any photographs since this is a place of worship and should be respected as such.

After leaving the catacomb’s we then went to The Pantheon which means “Temple of All Gods”. They say this building is perhaps the best preserved building in all of Italy and perhaps in the world. Since the 7th century the Pantheon has been used as a Catholic church. We walked in and it was just stunning. There is a huge hole or oculus in the ceiling. It’s open to the sky and when it rains it rains in the Pantheon literally. What is even more amazing is when they built this they did this on purpose and built the foundation so that when it rained the floor is built at a slant so that the water will actually drain out. Genius!

The outside of the Pantheon:

The “Oculus” or “Eye” as it’s known.

After leaving The Pantheon, we then went to The Roman Forums.

After leaving the Forums we went to The Colosseum.  Built in the year 70 and finished in 78 – 80, this massive feat was accomplished in just 8-10 short years. Back in those days that is amazing, one of the reasons they were able to build this so fast was because they had 10,000 workers on it every day!  Imagine that!  This held 50,000 spectators and was used for gladiatorial contests and public spectacles.

After leaving The Colosseum, it was time for lunch!! We walked to a quaint street to have lunch and she said “I’m going to leave you guys here and have lunch by yourselves and by the way, this is the same street that Julius Caesar was born on and grew up on during his childhood.”  Wow! So we sat and had lunch outside on this back alley street and talked about all we had seen that morning..knowing that we still had the rest of the afternoon to look forward to.  As we were talking school had been let out and all these high school students started walking by so I grabbed my camera quickly. I wanted to show their movement in this picture…