Rome Day One: Gelato, The Colosseum, The Pantheon, St. Peter’s, and Carbonara

*My travel recaps from our trip to Rome were deleted due to an issue with my previous blog server; I still had all the text from my daily summaries and I’m slowly going back, adding relevant pictures to those travel logs, and reposting them to my new website. *

Touchdown! We arrived in Rome about 8:20 am local time. While I do most of the itinerary planning when we travel, I gratefully put my brain in neutral for just about everything else. I rely exclusively on John to navigate us through airports and decipher local ground transportation and he does this flawlessly. Within 20 minutes we were on an express train to Roma Termini. John also handles hotels, and the location he selected was phenomenal. Close to major sites like the Colosseum, it was also only a block from Rome’s main train station. We were at our hotel before 10 am!

I’ll admit, my first impression wasn’t great. I always say I’m low maintenance when it comes to accommodations – as long as it’s clean and it’s safe, I’m happy. They were prepping our room when we arrived…which happened to be located less than 2 feet from the main desk area. The room was small and oddly configured and every time a guest needed to come through the front door, it triggered a loud doorbell right outside our door. I quietly expressed my concerns to John but before we said anything, a staff member told us to check back at the end of the day about a room switch.

(Sure enough, later that night they had a different room – far away from the desk and doorbell – and it was perfect! I ended up loving our space. It was simple but spacious, clean, and the bed was SO comfortable. Inexpensive European hotels continue to wow me with their incredible mattresses.)

I had debated joining one of the local “free” walking tours (you pay the tour guide a tip at the end). We’ve done these before on our first day in major cities. It’s a great way to orient to a new location and see major highlights, but in the end we opted to wander around independently.

Our first stop was the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, conveniently located about a block from our hotel. Built in the 420s AD, it is one of the Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome. This church is famous for claiming to have five pieces of sycamore wood from baby Jesus’ manger. It was an enormous church with beautiful and ornate decorations.

Next up we visited another church, this time the understated San Pietro in Vincoli. This was a spot that showed up frequently on lists of “hidden gems”. Though the church façade was unremarkable, the interior contains a giant statue of Moses dating back to the 1500s, carved by none other than Michelangelo. (The horns on his head relate to a reference in Exodus 34 of the Latin Vulgate translation.)

As we were heading toward the exit, we stumbled across an open door and saw a woman hard at work restoring an old painting. It was fascinating to watch her process/progress.

By noon we had reached The Colosseum. En route to Rome we booked tickets for a guided tour, so this visit was purely to check off a bucket-list item of seeing this ancient amphitheatre with our own eyes. Sometimes major landmarks can seem less impressive in person; if anything, the Colosseum was far more impressive from up close.

After admiring the Colosseum from multiple angles, we meandered along and grabbed our first gelato (the Snickers flavour I chose – how North American of me – ended up being my absolute favourite gelato flavour all week!) before arriving at our next stop: the Altar of the Fatherland (also known as the Victor Emmanuel II National Monument).

(There were seagulls everywhere; this one seems rather blasé about his/her incredible view of the Colosseum.)

In a land of antiquity, this enormous edifice is shockingly modern and was built between 1885-1935 in honour of Victor Emmanuel II, the king who unified Italy (he and his son are actually buried in the Pantheon). This monument is huge. We walked around the various levels which provide incredible views of the Roman Forum, the Colosseum and, way off in the distance, St. Peter’s Basilica. We briefly contemplated taking an elevator to the top (the monument is free, but you pay for the elevator) but opted not to. Inside, there was an interesting art exhibition: photos of all of Rome’s most famous landmarks captured during the early days of COVID lockdowns. Famous piazzas looked eerily empty…

I love this picture – glimpses of everyday Italian life happening right outside the front door of this “hidden” church.

Right beside the Altar of the Fatherland there is – not surprisingly – a church: the Basilica of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli. After climbing lots of stairs, we were inside. It was small but beautiful, with frescoes on giant columns, gorgeous stained glass, and ornate floor carvings that marked interior tombs. A famous soccer player (can’t remember who) was married in this church and it houses some relics from Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine.

Down those stairs and then promptly back up more (Rome was built on seven hills, so there are lots of elevation changes and plenty of stairs!) we were on Capitoline Hill. There is a famous museum here…and lots of statues. We walked around for a few minutes and then headed on. I think I put St. Peter’s in as our ultimate destination, but the GPS took us right by the Theatre of Marcellus. I had never heard of these ruins, but in Rome there are ancient things everywhere.

This giant amphitheatre was built at the end of the Roman Republic. Julius Caesar bought this plot of land but was murdered before construction could begin. It was finished in 13 BC by Augustus (he named it after his nephew Marcellus, who he intended to be his heir but Marcellus ended up dying prematurely). Now dwarfed by the Colosseum, when it was built the Theatre of Marcellus was the largest theatre in ancient Rome and could hold about 15,000 spectators. There were also remnants of a temple (I think?) and many delightful side streets.

This path led us through the Jewish ghetto; for hundreds of years the Jewish residents of Rome were segregated and literally locked inside the ghetto (allowed to leave in the morning for work – in almost exclusively menial jobs – they had to be home by a curfew when the gates would lock them in until morning). While this area has a sad history, the streets are absolutely beautiful. Somehow it always seems mindboggling that people actually live in these storied cities! Every day they get up in the morning and hang clean sheets outside to dry and water plants on their balconies and buy fruit from local produce stands…all just a few steps away from 2000-year-old ruins.

Next up was Largo di Torre Argentina which contains the remains of four Roman temples and, most famously, The Theatre of Pompey where Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15^th in 44 BC (the Ides of March). His death had a cascade effect, ultimately leading to the end of the Roman Republic and the start of the Roman Empire. The backstory to his murder was fascinating; usually, the senate would meet in the Roman Forum, but Caesar was financing reconstruction work in the area and had moved their meetings to this square. In addition to being the scene of an ancient murder, it is now the official cat sanctuary for the city of Rome and we saw plenty of adorable felines wandering around the ancient site.

And then the Pantheon! This building wowed us. The feats of engineering involved with building this structure are incredible and hard to describe in words. The sheer scale of the entryway columns (from Egypt; 39 feet tall and 65 tonnes each) and bronze doors (8.5 tonnes each) and the enormity – and incredible precision – of the dome (still the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world) were amazing. This was the first time we used a Rick Steve’s audio guide (thanks to Kaelyn’s recommendation!) and it was fantastic at describing the various techniques used to pull off all these engineering marvels. At the top of the dome is an oculus which provides the only light in the building. Obviously…if it lets in light, it can also let in rain…which it does. There are drainage holes in the floor, which also slants downward to allow for water runoff.

The “current” Pantheon is actually the third version; the first was built by Agrippa (finished in 14 AD). That burned (80 AD), and Domitian built a new version (struck by lightning and burned in 110 AD) and the final version commissioned by Hadrian was finished in 126 AD. There were a lot of fires in ancient Rome! Hadrian’s version has stood the test of time, and it’s almost 2,000 years old.

The façade survived both fires and you can still see the original inscription to Marcus Agrippa.

First designed as a pagan temple (Pantheion = of all the gods), since the 600s AD it has been used as a Catholic church. There are some famous inhabitants, too: Victor Emmanuel II and his son, along with the painter Raphael. The inscription on Raphael’s sarcophagus was really interesting: Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die.

Years ago, I read a trick that the best way to prevent jet lag is to avoid eating on overnight flights. By now it was 3:30 pm local time and I hadn’t eaten since our layover in Newark the previous day. We walked around Piazza Navona for a few minutes (a famous square from the Flavian era; the main highlight now is the Fountain of the Four Rivers by Bernini – who helped design much of St. Peter’s Basilica – topped with an ancient obelisk) and went to a little pizzeria that offered takeaway.

This was some of the best pizza I’ve ever had – my first taste of authentic Italian cuisine, enjoyed while strolling down cobblestone streets in the heart of Rome. Delicious!

We walked across a bridge (I think it’s famous? can’t remember the name) and passed right by Castel Sant’Angelo (Castle of the Holy Angel) which was originally built by the emperor Hadrian as a mausoleum. For a while, this was the tallest structure in Rome; now it’s a museum, but we never ended up going inside.

One left turn later, and we were walking toward St. Peter’s Square. It was about 4:30 and the line to get inside was long, we were tired, and it just didn’t feel like the right time to tour such an iconic area (but there were great bathroom facilities and the cheapest bottled water in all of Rome!).

It was a long trek back to our hotel on tired, sore feet. At this point we made the room switch, brushed our teeth and headed out the door for an early supper (early being anything before 9 pm to locals). We selected the first restaurant we came across.

We both ordered the carbonara, probably the most classic of Roman pasta dishes. The food was good (but this ended up being our least favourite sit-down meal of the trip) and relatively inexpensive. There was a bit of a language mix-up so we wound up with a € 9 chocolate cake soaked in Kirsch (it was pretty mediocre) instead of the bill. Our whole meal we had fun spotting celebrity doppelgängers: at this restaurant, the servers were Sebastian Maniscalco and Mark Rylance.

Then back to the hotel for hot showers and the end of Day One. I had slept for less than 20 minutes on the flight over so by this point I had been awake for almost 36 hours, and had walked over 20 km…so I crashed HARD!