The Colosseum and The Forum

This afternoon a small group of us went to tour the inside of the Colosseum. It was much better than I thought it would be. For 11 euro you get inside the Colosseum, The Forum and The Palatine Museum, three of Romes best sites. I don't think words can really describe what you see when your inside, especially when you know what happened in there. The Italians have tried their best to keep the Colosseum in great shape, and it shows. The maze of tunnels underneath what used to be the floor of the Colosseum is dark and dirty, just like what you would guess it looked like. The walls are high and look as if they are about to crumble down on top of you. It's an experience, for sure. Just imagine being thrown onto the floor, then being hunted down by a lion all while 50,000 fellow humans cheer the lion on, both thumbs in the air. It's quite chilling. The Forum is where all of Romes social, political, and judicial business was conducted from. It's located down the street from the Colosseum, and is a site in itself. Located within the Forum is the place where Marc Anthony gave his famous speech. You can sit in front of this spot and enjoy views of all the other ancient sites in this enclosed area. Like I said, words cannot really describe it so here's some pictures from the afternoon.
Also, here's a link to an album containing all the pictures from the day. Enjoy!

Today was a great day! This morning Dom, Cole, and myself woke up rather early and walked to class. What a beautiful morning for the 45-minute walk! Once there we had two orientation sessions, and then we went to visit a church just down the cobble-stoned street from our classroom. The church was beautiful! The paintings on the inside of the church were made to play with human eye, and in turn the images on the ceilings of the high church appeared to be 3-D. Outside of this specific church was a Piazza in which various shows occur throughout the year. I can’t get over the fact of how life in Rome is lived. Narrow streets. Crowded streets. A population density like nothing in the United States. The town is amazing, but confusing at the same time. None of this seems to faze the people who live here, though. I guess after a while you grow accustomed to the crowded, busy lifestyle. Anyways, after our church visit Dom, Cole and myself decided that the Colosseum was something that we had to see as soon as possible. So, with a 20 minute walk through some of the most historic ruins in the entire world, we stood in front of the Colosseum. We literally just touched the concrete of the stadium and the surrounding structures as we thought about what actually happened here, and what it meant in present day Rome to the present day Romans. To them, this is the perfect place to earn a few Euros. Everything from 20 postcards for 1 Euro, to 5 Euro for your picture with an “authentic” roman gladiator, it seemed, to me at least, that this was not the “right” place for this type of stuff to be going on. I have the same feelings though about the men and women who stand outside of the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. and sell t-shirts that say “I saw the Lincoln Memorial!”, there has to be a better place for this to happen. But again, it’s been this way for years and years and us humans are stubborn when it comes to changing our habits and our way of life (especially when it comes to making some money). As we walked back towards Via De Parrasio we kept to the outskirts of Trastevere in hopes of finding some new places to check out on our next dinner excursion, of course there are hundreds of them scattered about town, each just as unique as the one next door. Tonight me and the four other roommates are going to have dinner at some other Penn State students apartments down the street as we plan our trip to Paris for next weekend.