Rome

27-29 December 2005

This is the continuation of previous story about our Italy trip. The first part can be found here.

After visiting nice cities in Toscana, we visited Rome, the famous beautiful city and the capital of Italy. The first time we entered the city, Rome reminded me about Jakarta, with the busy highways and traffic jams. Luckily we reserved a hotel that is not located in the city center so we did not need to spend hours on the streets. The hotel provides shuttle bus to the nearest metro station so it was convenient for us.

We arrived some times before dinner time in the hotel, so we took the metro to the city center to have dinner. It was rainy in the whole evening so we could not do much sightseeing. We decided to stop at Barberini metro stop, and had dinner in the Hard Rock Cafe at Via Veneto. The street is a famous street of Rome, full of high-class restaurants and hotels. The HRC was full of people as usual, and we needed to wait for about half an hour before got our table.

After dinner we hurrily walked back to the metro to catch the last shuttle bus to the hotel. Once we reached the platform it turned out that there was no metro at our direction. We went back to the street and luckily could get a bus to Termini station, the main Rome station and the only metro junction. We managed to take the metro heading to the hotel and catched the last shuttle bus to the hotel. But that was quite a tense evening, first night in Rome and struggled about the transportation.

We started early on the second day because we had an important appointment with an important person...the Pope Benedict XVI! We attended the papal audience that is held every Wednesday morning. Before visiting the Vatican we were split, me and my wife went to Termini station to buy train ticket for next trip between Naples and Rome and the other two of us went to Santa Susanna to collect the ticket for the papal audience. We spent quite some times to obtain the ticket, and when we arrived at Vatican it was already quite crowded, especially the queue to the Vatican Museum.

St. Peter's Basilica

Even though, we still managed to stop in a souvenir shop to buy rosaries and postcards before entering the famous St. Peter's square. The front-half of the enormously wide square was arranged of chairs for the audience, and almost half of the area was already full of people. To avoid undesirable things, we needed to pass metal detector before entering the square.

After little struggle finding best place, we managed to get seats quite in the back rows, already near the obelisk at the center of the square. The stage at the entrance of St. Peter's Basilica looked so far from our seat. But it was still a good place because it was near the alley that was the entrance route of the Pope.

We waited about an hour in the cold windy square before finally the Pope arrived. As being reported in the medias, he was wearing camauro, the traditional Pope's cap that was used the last time in 1963. Applaused by the crowd, the Pope sat on the stage and begun the audience procession. It basically contained welcome messages from the Pope to pilgrim groups from all over the world. The introduction messages were announced by several different priests in different languages and then for each languages the Pope greeted the groups, which were always replied by the targetted groups. We could follow the speeches on the large screens on both sides of the square.

Swiss Guard, the army of Vatican

After the greetings, the Pope met one of the pilgrim groups on the stage, meanwhile the audience started leaving the square. We left the square and went to the post office to buy Vatican stamps for sending postcards.
From Vatican city we went to Castel Sant'Angelo, a castle on the side of Tiber river. In front of the castle lays Ponte Sant'Angelo, a beatiful bridge crossing the Tiber. At both sides of the bridge we could see angel statues designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. While crossing the bridge we could see the St. Peter's Basilica in a distance. It was a very nice view of the Tiber, the castle, and the dome of basilica from the other side of the bridge. The only minus point was that the bridge was full of tents selling souvenirs so we could not really expose the beauty of the bridge.

Castel Sant'Angelo

Heading further away from Vatican to the center of Rome, we stopped for lunch at a small pizza restaurant. One thing to be noticed in Rome, in every restaurants there is additional service fee on top of the food price. The extra can be quite big and shocking if we are not prepared :).
Back to the journey, after the nice warm pizzas we walked further to Piazza Navona. This is a nice crowded square hidden by surrounding buildings. There are two fountains at both ends of the square and one main fountain in the middle. The main fountain, Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers), is another Bernini's creation. Symbolizing four great rivers (Nile, Ganges, Danube, and Rio de Plata), the fountain has statues of river gods, animals, and on top of it an obelisk with a dove at the top. The other two fountains are Fontana di Nettuno and Fontana del Moro, less spectacular then the main fountain but still beautiful and fit very will with the piazza.

Fountain of the Four Rivers, Piazza Navona

From Piazza Navona we walked via the small streets of Rome to the Pantheon. The huge building was originally a Roman temple and converted into a Christian church in the seventh century. The entrance is constructed by pillars and the main building is round shaped roofed by dome with a central hole (oculus), which serves as the natural light source. The inside walls were full with statues and paintings. Despite the building size, I found the Pantheon was not so attractive.

From the Pantheon we went to the Roman Forum. We passed the monument of Victor Emmanuel II and Cordonata staircase before reaching Capitoline Hill, one of the hills in Rome with a temple from Roman era. The Forum was located behind the hill and we had a nice view of the complete area from the hill.
Entering the Forum, we walked around the historical ruins, looked at the remaining pilars of old temples. At one point we met a free guided tour so we joined the tour to hear explanation about the ruins. After the tour was finished we walked through Via Sacra to the Colosseum. It was almost dark when we reached at the Colloseum, and then it was suddenly raining, so we rushed to a bus stop and hopped in to the bus.

Roman Forum

In the evening we back to Vatican to visit the St. Peter's Basilica. The interior of the basilica was spectacular. It was very big and full of beautiful masterpiece arts, such as the pieta by Michelangelo, the canopy over the altar by Bernini and many statues and chapels. Unfortunately in the evening we could not enter the dome.

From Vatican we went back to city center and visited the famous Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. The area surrounding the Spanish Steps are shopping streets so it was nice to walk there until reaching the Trevi fountain. The fountain is large, with nicely crafted wall with statues about Neptune. It was crowded with people, because the fountain is famous for throwing coin legend. One coin could ensure you will return to Rome.
From the fountain we took the bus and then the metro to back to the hotel.

Trevi Fountain

The last day in Rome, we planned to visit the Vatican Museums in the morning. But the queue was incredibly long, so we cancelled the plan and we decided to enter the Colloseum to spend the morning. There was a guided tour inside the Colloseum, which explained the history and several different materials used to build the huge gladiator arena. We explored several levels of the tribune before we went out and back to the hotel to collect the car.

The Colloseum

It was the last trip in Rome before we continued to Naples and Pompeii.