One of the highlights of our entire trip was going to the Colosseum and the Roman Forums. As we were walking to the Colosseum we passed by the Arch of Constantine. The first thing that caught my attention was all the people walking around trying to get the tourist to buy stuff. As we have travelled and know the tactics and ways of the street sellers, we just tried to ignore them. However, one guy actually took Kevin's arm and put a bracelet on his arm, then proceeded to demand money. The nerve and boldness of the street sellers here was one of the boldest we have seen yet. Kevin took the bracelet off and very firmly said, "Don't touch me". The street sellers almost took it as a challenge, and we didn't get to enjoy the Arch as much as we would have liked to.
I found an amazing book on Amazon called, Mission Rome: A Scavenger Hunt Adventure. This book made Rome not only memorable, but super fun for all this kiddos. As we saw the different things around Rome, the kids went on a scavenger hunt for different stuff from the book, and the best part was that the book also provided history and neat facts.
We did a really neat private tour of the Colosseum through Walking Tour of Italy and it was fantastic. M&M really loved the Colosseum and wanted to write about it, so I'm going to pass the computer over to her...
Hi! This is M&M and I am going to tell you about the Colosseum and the Roman Forums in Rome, Italy. We had a really great tour guide and I learned lot of facts from her. I learned that the Colosseum took 8 years to build. It is almost 2000 years old. Its tallest wall is 50 meters high. There are arches everywhere. There used to be statues inside the Colosseum, but after the Colosseum shut down, people started taking things.
So people took the statues and and made them into marble powder to put into paint. There used to be 160 statues but now there is only one left. The last piece was found 10 years ago. It looks like a person on a horse. The Colosseum survived millions of earthquakes. There are 3 rows of arches. There are 80 arches in each row. Half of the Colosseum's outer wall is still standing. The Colosseum is the biggest Roman Stadium. But the sad thing is that most of the damage was done by people. People would go in and drill holes into the walls to get the iron pins through the Gladiators Gate.
We got a chance to go through the Gladiator Gate when we walked in. It was where all the people and fighters would go. There are only 2 gates that can be used now. Roman numerals were at the top of each gate to mark them. People got free tokens from restaurants and pubs that had a gate number on them and the date. So the people got to go to the fights from their tokens gate and date.
The flooring was the rich people and V.I.P.'s and the bottom so they got to see the most. Then on the 2nd floor was the military and businessman. The 3rd and 4th floor was common romans. The top was for slaves.
The Gladiators or fighters would go under the stadiums floor that was once wood and get ready for their flights. There would be a couple fights but for the morning sessions, there would be Exotic animal shows. People never had zoos back then so they would be in aw when they saw Elephant, Giraffes, Zebras, Alligators, etc. Then there would be the Gladiator fights.
The Colosseum could hold 50-60 thousand people. It was in good shape in the 1300s. But after the 1349 earthquake, it ruined the outer wall. Most pieces of the original outside+inside of the Colosseum were put in churches. But people reconstructed the bottom with modern supplies. There were 80 elevators under the original wooden floor where the Gladiators got ready for the performances. The elevators would bring stuff to the stage for the performance. Every show was free. The emperor payed for everything.
Morning session : Exotic animal shows
Lunch session : Go and eat from the vendors outside then wait for Gladiator games
Evening session : Gladiator games
The ceiling was supposed to be beautiful. The whole building used to be covered from top to bottom in white pretty marble. Now it's all gone. They all got torn off by the people that mixed the marble powder into paint. The people are now doing a 7 year cleaning project. Half of the Colosseum is done so far.
In 80 A.D. the Colosseum opened. In 523 it closed. There was no money left so there was no more shows. The people abandoned the Colosseum. The Gladiator games went like this. The first game was mercy so no killing just hurting. The second game had killing but there was rarely a 2nd game. There was only a 2nd game if the emperor wanted one. The emperor was the one who decided if the gladiator got to live or not. If he wanted them to die, he would do a thumbs down sign then the gladiator would be killed.
We got to walk on the main floor of the Colosseum and we got to go up the stairs to the top deck. The view was pretty great. I loved being here and hearing all the history and learning so much.
We also went to the Roman Forums. When we were done with the Colosseum, we went to a new tour guide that took us to the Forums. There was so many broken down ruins of buildings and temples. There are five forums. Only three are open to the public. We only went to one because the other two required special tickets.
And this is Heather again because that's all that M&M wrote, because to be super honest, our tour guide super sucked. Like, big time lazy lady who walked just a few hundred feet into the forum and stopped and from a super far distance pointed to different buildings and attempted to tell us what they were. Of course, this did not keep the interest or the attention of Monster or Little A and to be honest Big Sis and M&M ended up having a gloss over look too.
We took pictures all around the Forums, but we really didn't know what we were looking at, the significance of it or why it was important. Kevin and I were super frustrated and irritated and wanted to just walk off on our own and follow a Rick Steve's audio tour (which we would have learned so so much), but the tour guide kept yelling at us that we had to stay with the large group. It was a completely night and day experience than the tour guide we had for the Colosseum. By the time the tour guide let us go on our own, the kids were hungry, they had walked so many miles already and they were tired.
I do remember the tour guide pointing out the Temple of Antonio and Faustina. She said this was a super important temple and that it was made back in AD 141. She also said that it was transformed into another church in the 8th century. She also told us about how the entire Forum fell into disrepair after the fall of the Roman Empire. The buildings crumbled and the marble and stones were plundered and stolen. The entire area was a large cow field and ended up being buried. Excavation started in the 18th century and still continues today.
The last thing the tour guide told us before taking off was about the large stone streets. She said that they uncovered the original stone walkway and took all the stones out to clean and put back except three. She pointed out the three original and unmoved stoned from the walkway. Now whether this it true or she just made it up, we will never know, but it was a cool thought and it was something that actually caught the attention of our kiddos.
After walking on thousands of years old stones, all the kids were ready to follow the lazy tour guide out of the Forums. But there was still so much more exploring to do! With the bribe of gelato and pizza and points in the Mission Rome book, I convinced everyone to walk around the walkway and up Palatine Hill lookout. As we turned the corner, Big Sis spotted the Arch of Titus and asked if we could make a pit stop. The Arch was in their Mission Rome book and they were trying to get as many points as possible since the tour guide prevented us from exploring and looking for the objects the book guided us to explore.
After the arch we went to a lookout spot up the Palatine Hill. Of course they only walked up the stairs after I promised this was the very last thing we would see in the Forums. We saw that the forums were HUGE! There was a nice cool breeze up at the top, and the kids really enjoyed the view, and they knew that gelato was in their very near future, so all the kids perked up. I would love to go back to the Forums and take the oppotunity to learn and see. Perhaps another trip to Italy is in my future, one can hope.
After leaving the Forums, which we actually had a hard time finding the exit and ended up walking way more then we planned, we decided dinner and gelato was priority. We were walking down the road, when we noticed that the Mouth of Truth was just down the road. We decided we would walk in the direction of the Mouth of Truth and stop at the first restaurant that had kid friendly food. We found a gelato shop and got all the kids gelato and made our way to the Mouth of Truth with much happier kids.
There was a long line to get to the stone statue, but we were here and wouldn't be coming back, so we stayed in line to wait our turn to see if we would all keep our hands after placing them inside the stone mouth.
We all kept our hands, so I'm happy to say there are no liars in the Rasmussen house. Our adventures in Rome are to be continued...
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