Rome Day 5

17^th Dec 2009

Today is an exciting day! The itinerary for the day will be to interesting visit places like the Scala Santa, The Colloseum and Palatino! We headed out early today as we wanted to make full use of the short daylight hours that we have to cover all that has been lined up for the day. The day started off a little bad as it was drizzling in the morning but thank God that the drizzling relented and we started to have sunlights around 1000hr.

 Beautiful facade of San Giovanni in Laterano

The main entrance of the church.
Can you believe the size of the door?

For our first destination, we took the Metro from Spagna to San Giovanni Metro whereby the beautiful Arcibasilica Papale di San Giovanni in Laterano is located. This is the oldest church amongst the four major churches in Rome namely The St. Peter’s Church in the Vatican City, Santa Maria Maggiore which I have visited on my first day while making the blasted police report and Papale di San Paolo fuori le Mura i.e. Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls. Although the church is located outside the Vatican City, it is in fact a property of the Holy See and the Pope himself used to reside in this church prior to moving to Santa Mara Maggiore and then to the Vatican Palace.

Beautiful hall way

One of the 12 apostle statues.
Shown here is Matthew, The Tax Collector.

Why do they have to do it this grand?
I guess its because its to manifest the greatness of
God's Holy temple, which should really be ourselves.

[Tips: If you are visiting this church, you may also want to check out the Lateran Cloister. It costs €3.50 per pax to enter.]

San Giovanni in Laterano Cloister

After this, we headed next to the building adjacent to the San Giovanni in Laterano to see the Scala Sancta or The Holy Stairs, believed to be the stairs whereby the Lord Jesus treads upon on His way to be tried by Pontius Pilates during The Passion of Christ. Pilgrims flock to this place in throngs but during our visit, it is pretty empty (Perhaps it is break-hour). One can only scale the Holy Stairs on his or her knees and at the top end of the Holy Stairs, you will see the Holy of Holies. Well, many of you may not know, but my knees has been injured and thus am not able to scale the stairs and besides, I am not sure what are the modus operandi for this purpose.

Statue of Judas Iscariot betraying Jesus with a kiss.
Here is a song that I loved by Michael Card.

The Holy Stairs

Next, the plan is to walk to Chiesa Santa Stefano Rotondo. Being tourist and having all the time in the world, we just kept walking and hope that the direction we are heading to be correct. Well you guessed it, it is not the correct direction per see but at least we are not far off. We managed to find our way to the church but the only bummer is that by the time we arrived, the church visiting hours has passed. This will be another item on my “To-do-list” the next time I return to Rome. The next item in line is really the temple of Hercules, Aventino and Trastevere but we have decided to cut it short and do the Colosseum on that day instead.

 

The nearest metro to the Colloseum is the Colloseo metro and you will see the great structure once you surfaced from the underground station. Trust me, you will not miss that colossus Colloseum in a million year! Since we are planning to walk…we ended up back at San Giovanni in Laterano with two pairs of sore legs to boot! Not wanting to cause further damage to our near-to-worn-out mode of transport (Read legs), we took a bus from the square behind the church to the Colosseum instead. Once we reached, we had our lunch right outside the Colosseum. It is coldddrrrrr… but we nevertheless enjoyed it. As I have mentioned before, we utilized our ROMA PASS to enter the Colosseum otherwise it will cost us back another €12.50 (Includes the whole ancient city i.e. Palatino/Roma Forum).

Colosseum against the clear blue sky

The Colosseum is truly a sight to behold and the fact that it was built in the ancient days made it even more intriguing. I wonder how many people has sacrificed their life in building this structure on top of the countless gladiators cum animals and Christian martyrs’ blood that has been spilled here. The internal of the Colosseum today was pretty much in ruins but does provide an interesting sight. However, even if you don’t enter the Colosseum, IMHO, you are not really missing much but as for me, since I am there I also thought that it is silly to not enter and have a first hand experience on how it looked like inside. At least after doing that, I can tell people how it looked like and whether it is worth your while.

Pretty much the interior of the Colosseum.
It would be nice to have a wide angle lens here.

The ruins provides great background for shots like this!

Side view of the Colosseum taken from the Arc of Constantine

To be fair, there are many great view points to capture beautiful photos from inside the Colloseum as the many “windows” on the structure allow me to capture the Arc of Constantine and the Temple of Venus and Roma. The remaining structures also provide interesting subject or background for portraits. It is around 1530hr the moment we headed to the Palatino or the Roman Forum… make an educated guess as to what happened next. The gate closed at 1530hr and it took us 10 minutes to stroll from the Colloseum to the gate. Great! Our ROMA PASS is only valid for 3 days from the date it was first utilized! Most likely, I will have to pay for it already. Rats!

Plenty of "Windows" to take creative shots

Not wanting to let that dampens the mood, we headed to other areas that we are supposed to cover for the day. Next in line is the Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, an ancient church located on the Celian Hill. This church was also referred to as SS Giovanni e Paolo. The X factor of this church is that it was built on top of a city itself and you can still see the Roman rooms dating back to the 1^st – 4^th Century below it. The entrance will cost you €6.50 but we gave it a pass as we still wanted to cover another few areas.

Ancient structure prior to enter the SS Giovanni e Paolo.

The exterior of SS Giovanni e Paolo

 The worship hall (Nave?) of the SS Giovanni e Paolo

It is too dark to venture up the Aventino hill, so we cross the street to take a peep at the Circo Maximo and seriously… Si Mi Mah Si Boh (“Nothing there” in Hokkien) notes that Mah Si Boh sounded dangerously like the name Maximo. Skip this! We then headed towards the Circo Maximo metro to take a ride towards the border of the southern Aurelian wall to view the Pyramid of Cestius. The metro you should stop is Pyramide and this place mind you, is quite a slum. The only thing worth going here for is just to see the pyramid and the Porta San Paolo. The pyramid was built about 18 BC–12 BC as a tomb for Gaius Cestius Epulo, a magistrate and member of one of the four great religious corporations at Rome, the Septemviri Epulonum (Source: Wikipedia). This structure was incorporated into the Aurelian wall and the reason? Believe it or not… to cut the cost of bricks in building the wall to hold back the invasion of the Barbarians. After taking my shots of the pyramid, we make a quick exit from the place and head back to hotel.

Pyramid of Cestius

Anyone for steam boat?? :p

Nothing beats steamboat during winter... woots!

More adventure for tomorrow as we head out of the city of Rome!

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