Friday 3rd May 2019
Today we drove a few kilometres over to the local station, Ostia Antica, to take the train into Rome to visit the Colosseum. Our first parking attempt at the station car park actually turned out to be at a cemetery, but we were soon put right by a friendly local and found one of the last places free at the real station car park 🙂
Kim & I had visited Rome a few years previously and, although we had seen the outside of the arena, we hadn’t entered. Time to put that right. We purchased the tickets at the station, €7 each for a 24hr period on all public transport.
A young lady saw us studying the route map and came and offered us assistance and subsequently she showed up when we had to change train and guided us to the correct platform 🙂
As we left Colosseo station we were approached by two young ladies who sold us two ‘jump the queue’ English guided tour tickets for the sum of €35 each starting at 13:30. This gave us a while to wander around the outside for photographs.
We completed a circuit around the arena and studied the Arch Of Constantine, before returning to join our group & guide.
We were soon equipped with fairly low quality headsets and our guide gave us information about the Colosseum, completed in AD80. We then jumped the queue straight to the brief security check area and then given more information, and the odd joke or two, about the arena internals.
Our guide went on to explain about the entrance and exit stairways and that they are known as Vomitoria. She said that they were known thus because it was where the crowds spewed out after the event, not because of what they were witnessing inside 🙂
She then went on to describe, in some great detail, about the toilet facilities that were some of the earliest public toilets apparently 🙂
After about an hour we were left to our own devices and investigated the upper levels of the arena.
There is a museum on the second floor detailing the history and architectural features and two models took my eye, an as built, and modern day representation of the Colosseum.
Feeling a need to get away from the crowds we set off across the city and found an excellent place to lunch, just opposite the Scalinata dei Borgia.
We had an excellent Lasagne lunch washed down with a beer for me and vino bianco for Kim.
Suitably refreshed we wandered across to see the Piazza Campidoglio or Capitaline Hill, one of the seven hills of Rome.
After visiting Campidoglio we went to see the River Tiber. I stopped to listen to a busker playing some excellent guitar blues on a bridge over the river.
Starting to feel the strain of all the walking and stair climbing of the day, we decided to head back to the staion, and took in more views on the way.
The train was extremely busy returning to camp but we were fortunate enough to get seats. I’m not sure either of us was up to strap hanging for an hour after our day.
We both came to the conclusion that we would not be re-visiting The Colosseum any time soon. It is far too busy for our taste and a finer example of a Roman arena can be found in Nimes.