Rome Day 1, Vatican, Pantheon, Trevi, Spanish Steps

9/20/2019

Today we got to Rome.  We took the train from Lucca to Florence and Florence to Rome.  When we got there we had to take the subway to get to our apartment. The name of our stop was Valle Aurelia.  The Rome subway system is easy. It only has two lines. The reason it only has two lines is because every time they try to build another line they have to stop!  Do you know why?? Rome is a city of ancient ruins. These ruins are buried deep underground. If builders find ruins, they have to stop and archeologists have to excavate it. Excavate means uncovering and digging around ruins without damaging or moving them to keep them preserved.  A long time ago, Rome flooded, covering the town, statues, buildings and art in mud and ground. It is covered for other reasons, too, like pollution, dust, and buried on purpose to make the land higher. A lot of it is still covered today!  

When we got to our apartment we got in the elevator and went up to our unit on the seventh floor.  At night, it was very noisy. When we woke up the next morning, we walked 20 minutes to The Vatican.  If you don’t know what that is, it is where the Pope lives now. The Pope is one of the most powerful people in the world.  His name is Francis, he loves kids, and he’s in charge of the whole Roman Catholic religion. We went there and found our tour guide and he gave us all a set of earphones and a little box so when you put your earphones into it you could hear his voice so he didn’t have to shout.  First we went through security, then we went up a spiral walkway with Polynesian art along the wall. Then we went through a hallway and came out onto a large courtyard. On one side of it there was a giant pine cone made of bronze and was a fountain back in the days of the Roman Empire.  It is almost 4 meters tall, which is about 12 feet tall. And about 400 centimeters. Which is about 4,000 millimeters. Which is about three times as tall as me!! Ha ha ha!!

Also in the Vatican courtyard was this giant ball that looked like the Death Star II.  It is called Sphere within a Sphere and it is a sculpture by a man named Pomodoro (which means tomato in Italian, Ha ha!) It is also bronze and is fractured, or broken, showing another sphere inside that is also broken.  Not many people know this but, even though it is so heavy, there are little gears in it that are tiny, that if you step over the chain and spin it, it will spin slowly. Guess who got picked out of the crowd to spin it?? ME!!!!  It was hard to push, but once it got going it wasn’t that hard. I felt very lucky that I got picked and got to spin the sphere.  

Then we went through an art gallery and saw many sculptures and paintings and tapestries.  A tapestry is like a big rug. But you would never walk on it because it goes on the wall and is hung like a special painting.  Only Spiderman could walk on it, but he would get kicked out of The Vatican or get put in the Vatican jail. The Vatican is its own city, so it has its own jail and police and post office. Anyway, the tapestries are really old, from the time of Medici.  The Medici Family was a powerful family in Florence and they were the banking family for the Popes and the Catholic Church. The main tapestries that were owned by the Medici family are at the museum in Florence. And one of the Medici brothers named Guiliano was murdered by the Pazzi family ( a rival banking family) and one Medici family member named Giovanni di Lorenzo became the Pope.  This all happened around the time of the Renaissance when people started to appreciate art and writing and poetry and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, HAHAHAHAHA!!!!! The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were all named after famous renaissance artists, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , Raphaello Sanzio da Urbino, Leonardo da Vinci and Donatello or Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi.  

Next we went into a big room where there were paintings all over the walls and ceiling.  This room is called the Sistine Chapel. It was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BIG and had SOOOO many paintings.  This is the most famous part of The Vatican because Michelangelo painted the ceiling and part of the walls.  It took him many years. Other artists did the other paintings in this room. This is where there is a painting on the ceiling where God and Adam are almost touching fingers.  You are not supposed to take pictures in this room, but a lot of people were taking pictures. Naughty, naughty!!!

Then we went into Saint Peter’s Basilica.  Here is where we saw something really cool.  We saw the SWISS GUARDS!! They are some of the oldest continuously running military forces.  They are like the Army for the Pope.  They looked like CLOWNS!! Guess who designed their uniforms?  It was Michelangelo and they still wear the same design!! He was one busy turtle!! Saint Peter’s Basilica has a huge dome and it is where the US capitol building in Washington D. C. was modeled after and the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin where my mom went to college.

After that we went to the Pantheon and guess what??? This is the dome that St. Peter’s Basilica was modeled after!!!!  The Pantheon was started to be built in 27 BC and was a temple and meeting place for people to hang out. The Romans allowed all religions to spend time there and it was a temple for all gods. And guess who is buried in there and the body is still there?? Raphael!!

Then we wandered around Rome and went to the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. The water from the Trevi Fountain comes from the aqueduct and it is THE COOLEST FOUNTAIN I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!!!!!  The Spanish Stairs looked normal and I asked my mom why they were so famous and she told me to look it up because she didn’t know either. So we looked it up and they are famous because they connect the Spanish Embassy and a church that’s over there and because a lot of artists and poets were inspired by their beauty.  But they just looked like normal stairs to me and my mom made me climb them to the top and I was bored.

Rome Day 2, Flavian Amphitheater, Roman Forum

9/21/19

Today mom woke me up early and said we were going to go to the Colosseum.   I was so surprised!! I had always wanted to see the Colosseum. We got ready and then took the subway and walked the rest of the way to the Colosseum.  IT WAS HUMONGOUS. It felt weird after everything I imagined about it then to be standing right in front of it. We found our guide, Nick, and we went inside. It was sooooooooo cool!! There was a big platform where you stood and looked across to the other side. In the middle there was a bunch of scaffolding that you couldn’t see through. This is where they kept the lions, tigers, and other animals like elephants and bears that the Gladiators fought. If you don’t know what a Gladiator is you can read this. A Gladiator is a person who fights animals and sometimes other Gladiators in the Colosseum and other Roman arena back during the Roman Empire days.  They were mostly slaves and criminals, but very rarely they were volunteers. Some people volunteered to be a Gladiator to hope to become famous. What a big risk!!

Did you know that the Colosseum is not called the Colosseum at all? It’s actually called the Amphitheater of Flavian.  It was built in 72 AD by Emperor Vespasian, or Titus Flavius Vespasianus, part of the Flavian family. There used to be a big statue of him that people called “colossal”. So, it got its nickname “colosseum” from the big statue, but the statue was torn down, but the amphitheater kept the nickname “Colosseum”.   It’s the most “colossal” misunderstanding about the Colosseum!!! Ha ha ha ha!!!!!

There was a special cat that lives in the amphitheater floor.  We were lucky enough to see it the day that we were there!! There is construction going on under the floor right now and he was in the scaffolding.  I saw him jumping through the bars. Under the floor of the amphitheater was a maze of rooms and passageways where the animals could be lifted up through a trap door to open into the arena to fight the Gladiators.  It was fun to look at it and imagine the lions and tigers under there next to where we saw the little cat.

After that we went to the upper levels. We walked around and got a good view of the entire area and got to see where the emperors sat.  We also saw the holes that held the posts that held the sails that used to cover the amphitheater to protect people from rain and sunshine.  Sailors used to raise the sails and were in charge of the covering. It was dangerous and hard work.

After that we left the Flavian Amphitheater and went to the Roman Forum.  The Roman Forum is where Rome’s main center of town, marketplace, and government used to be during the Roman Empire. It’s right next to the Colosseum. We saw A LOT of Roman ruins. It was SO COOL!! We got to go into some of them and just walk all around.  There was a really cool ruin of a building that looked like a hotel. It was open so you could see the different rooms stacked on top of each other.  There were a bunch of fallen marble columns all over the ground everywhere. Some columns were still standing!! After almost 2000 years!!!!!! I saw a big green door and I asked my mom what it was and she said it is the original door of The Temple of Romulus and it has survived for so long and is still in pretty good condition after 1700 years.  According to Roman mythology, Romulus and his twin brother Remus were the ones that founded Rome. Romulus killed his brother and named the city of Rome. Get it?…Romulus-Rome!!!

After that we walked a lot more and went to dinner.  It was Granni’s last night in Italy and we were all a little sad.  But we had a nice dinner and went home and went to bed. The next day Granni and mom left for the train station (to catch the train to the airport) while I was still asleep.  Rome was also sad that Granni left because it rained all day. But this wasn’t all bad because we got to do our homeschooling and then watch movies all afternoon!  We also had to pack up, because the next day we were leaving for Napoli!!! That’s Italian for Naples!!!

We were sad to leave because we loved Rome, but we get to come back in 2 weeks to catch our plane to Thailand, so at least I get to see it one more time!