Italy 2011, Rome, Emperors and Gladiators

On the second morning there was no improvement in the breakfast so we didn’t dawdle long in the dining room, just long enough for a stodgy croissant and a couple of cups of tea and then we left the hotel and made for the station for a second time.

As it was Monday morning the train was busier today as we joined commuters going to work in the city but we found some seats and it left exactly on time again. It seemed to be an even slower journey today but once again it arrived exactly on time at Roma Termini and we were soon outside in the bright sunshine and planning a route towards the Colosseum.

There are lots of things that I would like to see and I imagine the thrill of seeing the Pyramids, The Kremlin or the Great Wall of China for example would be heart stopping moments but when viewed for the first time the Colosseum ranks with these and others as a genuine draw dropping, knee buckling event. I can remember that experience in 1976 but even now, on my fourth visit to Rome, it still produced a moment of wonderment and awe as we emerged from the narrow streets into the Piazza del Colosseo.

Two thousand years previously this had been the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman Empire and was capable of seating sixty-thousand spectators (some estimates say eighty thousand but most agree that this is unlikely) at gladiatorial combat events. I am always stunned by the size and magnificence of the place and even though there are substantial parts of it now missing I find the scale of the place simply breathtaking. We were going to make this our first place to visit and we were disappointed to see a long slow moving queue but we were quickly picked out as potential easy pickings by a girl selling guided tours which promised a speedy entrance and the services of an expert guide so we agreed to this and paid up. Suckers!

We had to wait now to be assigned a tour leader and it was just our luck to get a head-case! Silvio was a theatrical extrovert with a dramatic style and with arms flailing and occasionally getting over excited and spitting into his beard he gave us an extravagant introduction to the construction of the magnificent building and the gladiatorial combats and the shows that were staged inside. This was all really helpful background information but it did seem to drag on longer than expected and all around people began to get fidgety as individual patience tanks one by one began to run dry.

Finally it was time to push through the lines of waiting people and within just a few minutes we were inside the underground passages below the auditorium where we followed the designated route up a flight of steps where it was interesting to imagine that these had been used previously by thousands of Romans attending the games and we now were following in their footsteps. We emerged into the interior of the amphitheatre where once there were seats, now long since pillaged and removed for recycling in medieval building projects, and into the bright sunshine where we circumnavigated the arena stopping frequently to admire the views and to imagine what it might have been like to be at this very place two-thousand years ago or so in a noisy and unruly crowd being entertained by bloodthirsty and barbaric games.

Inside the Colosseum it is huge but there isn’t really a lot to see, no statues, no paintings, no exhibits, just an elliptical arena surrounded by ancient brick and concrete, so once a full circuit has been completed, although it feels as though you should stay longer, there is not a lot to hang around for. This doesn’t mean that the visit experience is in any way disappointing or less wonderful just that it seems to me that there are two types of sightseeing, the first is where we go to admire the statues, the paintings and the exhibits and the second where the experience is simply about being there, in a place that has played such a pivotal role in world history and the development of civilisation and for me the Colosseum is one of the latter.

The day was getting hotter now and it was easy to understand why inside the arena the Roman crowds were protected by giant shades made of Egyptian cotton or why even today the most expensive seats at a bullfight are those in the shade and protected from the sun. We left the amphitheatre and bought some expensive food from a street stall and competed with everyone else to find some shade while we waited for Silvio to return at two o’clock to take us on the second part of the tour up to the Palatine Hill and into the Roman Forum.

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Italy 2011, Rome, The Vatican and St Peter’s Basilica

By mid afternoon when we crossed the River Tiber over the Ponte Sant’ Angelo like time travellers we had completed the ancient, the medieval, and the modern and now it was time for the religious. Rome is the most important holy city in Christendom and St Peter’s Basilica at the heart of the Vatican City is the headquarters of the Catholic Church and is a place where some of the most important decisions in the history of Europe and the World have been made over the centuries. (A Basilica by the way is a sort of double Cathedral because it has two naves).

The route took us past the Castel Sant’ Angelo, which was the Pope’s ‘safe house’ in times of danger and into the busy square outside the Basilica where a long queue of people seemed to snake forever around the perimeter waiting for their turn to go inside. We joined the back of it and were pleased to find that it shuffled quite quickly towards the main doors and soon we were inside the biggest and the tallest church in the world that has room for sixty-thousand worshippers at one sitting and even Micky overcame his usual reluctance to visit the inside of a religious building and joined us. It was busy inside but not uncomfortable and we soaked up the atmosphere as we passed by chapels with precious holy relics, the tombs of dead Popes and rooms with glass cases full of religious artefacts.

Outside we saw the Swiss Guards in their medieval uniforms of blue, red and yellow and the Vatican post office doing a brisk trade in post marking letters and postcards. The Vatican is the third smallest state in Europe after Monaco and San Marino and its status is guaranteed by the Lateran Treaty of 1929 when Church and State, who had been squabbling since Italian unification, finally thrashed out a compromise deal that was marked by the building of a new road the Via della Conciliazione which, I have to say, to me seems rather sterile and lacking any real character. It is expensive however and from a street side stall we bought the dearest water I have ever had at €4 for a small bottle. We weren’t going to fall for that again so later on Kim refilled it from a public fountain by the side of the road.

The Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II took us back over the River Tiber and not unsurprisingly onto the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II which leads inevitably to the Vittorio Emanuele monument at the other end. As it stretched out in front of us there was about a kilometre and a half to walk and all of a sudden my itinerary looked for the first time to be overly ambitious. We had seen everything that we had planned to see but now there was a long walk back to the train station and everyone was hot and tired.

This long road is flanked with Palaces and Churches and Piazzas but our muscles were aching and it was desperately hot so all we wanted was a bar and a cold drink even if it did cost another eye-watering €25 for five drinks. We found a place about half way along the road and stopped for half an hour to rest and recover in the comfort of an air-conditioned bar and yes, sure enough it cost us €25.

No one complained but none of us were looking forward to the last stage of the walk when we had finished and paid up and returned to the street. We walked down to the busy Piazza Venezia overlooked by the monument commemorating Italian unification exactly one hundred and fifty years ago and then threaded our way past Trajan’s column, around the back of his market and onto the Via Nazionale with a long final energy sapping incline up the Esquiline which is the longest and highest of the seven hills. It had been easy this morning when we came down but going back was an altogether different matter. I took up the pole position and set the pace and Micky and Sue, who was suffering the most of all of us, followed shortly behind but Kim and Christine lagged behind, not from tiredness or fatigue it has to be said but because they were constantly distracted by souvenir shops looking for the presents that Christine had promised to take back home.

Eventually we arrived back at Roma Termini and having established the return train time we looked forward to sitting down for an hour and the journey back to Albano. Unfortunately the train didn’t leave from one of the main platforms that were reserved for the glossy high speed inter-city trains and the Eurostar so we had to walk a final four hundred metres to ours where the graffiti decorated transport was waiting for us.

It was still oppressively hot when we arrived back in Albano where the dusty streets baked in a lazy Sunday afternoon stupor and after we had negotiated the hill leading from the station to the town we stopped for a drink at the place we had enjoyed lunch the previous day where we sat in the garden, drank large glasses of beer and didn’t complain about the prices which were much more to our liking.

At the hotel the resident neighbour was sitting outside at his ‘privado’ table, presumably making some sort of statement of ownership but it didn’t matter to us because our plan was to go out as soon as we had showered and changed and return to World Pizza where we had enjoyed last night’s meal. We were more adventurous tonight and moved on from pizza to pasta dishes and other local specialities and we washed it all down with house wine and even though, much to Christine’s relief, the local character didn’t make an appearance tonight we had a second excellent meal and a thoroughly enjoyable evening.



Italy 2011, Not One Of The World’s Great Great Train Journeys

In the morning there was further evidence for why this hotel was so cheap – the breakfast was truly dreadful, probably the worst hotel breakfast that I have ever had with no buffet to speak of, no fresh bread just some dry toast biscuits and no butter to make it remotely edible and some pre-packaged croissants. On the positive side there was plenty of hot water so we could drink as many cups of tea that we wanted.

When we had finished we made final personal preparations for the planned trip to Rome and we set out for the train station. It was very warm already and even after a short walk we were rather hot and bothered so sat in the shade waiting for our transport to arrive.

What a shock that was as a Trenitalia train, at least forty years old and liberally covered in graffiti, creaked into the station and pulled up at the platform. The hiss of the doors opening could well have been mistaken for a sigh of relief at the end of a heavy chore. Inside the carriage it was clean but uncomfortable with utilitarian plastic seats that made your bum sweat and a worn out air conditioning system that rattled and groaned with old age.

It was punctual however and the train left Albano precisely on time on a journey that was scheduled for fifty minutes which seemed unlikely to me as it travelled ponderously along the single track making regular stops at towns along the way. An examination of the map revealed that the track didn’t go the most direct route towards Rome but first of all followed the shoreline of the lake and then made an extravagant loop as it passed through more towns on the way. The reason it had to go slowly was because the track looked to me to be some way past its sell by date with decaying wooden sleepers and old fashioned rails which made a reminiscent and satisfying tch tch, tch tch, tch tch, tch tch noise in the way that I remember that trains used to in England before all of the track improvements were made.

After half an hour the train pulled into Ciampino and I estimated that in distance we were about half way there and surely behind the clock but here the line joined the modern high speed track and out of the station the train gathered speed and the tch tch, tch tch was replaced by a whoooosh as it speeded up on the modern streamlined steel track that now followed the same route as a two thousand year old Roman aqueduct that told us that we were getting close to the city.

It was about now that I realised that although we had bought the train tickets I had forgotten to stamp them in the machine that validates them for travel and with hefty fines for travelling without a date stamped ticket I fretted about this all the way into Roma Termini where despite my doubts we arrived dead on time. No one checked the tickets so we had made a saving there because we would now be able to use them again tomorrow.

Roma Termini was heaving with people and activity and mindful of the advice to be on the lookout for thieves and pickpockets we clutched our bags and wallets tightly and made our way through the concourse and into the busy streets where people tried to sell us bus tour tickets and others offered us taxis but we didn’t need either because it was our plan to walk to the main attractions and unlike the day before this time I had a map and a plan.



Italy 2011, Albano Laziale and a Bandit Hold-Up

Located in the Castelli Romani region of Lazio, Albano is a busy commercial centre, a virtual suburb of Rome and one of the most important municipalities of the area. For a Saturday afternoon however the town was curiously quiet as we wandered along the main shopping street looking for somewhere to eat and then drifting into the side streets full of ancient buildings that betrayed the town’s almost secret Roman heritage.

Because of its close proximity to Rome it inevitably has a history that is closely linked to the famous city and everywhere there was evidence of a varied and interesting past. Albano is located in the area in which, according to the legend, the son of Aeneas, Ascanius, founded the city of Alba Longa, which was one of the main cities of the Latin tribes and, again according to the legend, the birthplace of Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome. As we wandered through we could fully appreciate that the town has its fair share of ancient buildings with the remains of an amphitheatre, Roman baths, catacombs, tombs, towers and villas.

Pompey the Great had a villa here, the Albanum Pompeii, and a villa belonging to the writer Seneca was discovered within ancient ruins found on the south ridge of Lake Albano, bordering the town of Ariccia. All of these residences, at the time of Domitian, were appropriated and owned by the Emperor’s within which they erected a monumental imperial residence, with the ruins today mostly contained in the Villa Barberini at Castel Gandolfo and is now a part of the Papal Palace as we have seen previously. Around 202 the Emperor Septimius Severus had installed in place of the old town huge camps for Roman Legions that remained in operation until the end of third century. Albano developed from this settlement and the streets still follow the ancient infrastructure and design and remains of the large baths built by Septimus’ son, Caracalla, are still visible at one of the road intersections.

Micky and I identified a place to eat, the extravagantly named Pizzeria La Bufalina di Cristiano Erminia, but it was ruled out by the girls because behind the bar it had a microwave to heat up the self-service food selections which was considered unsuitable (Micky pointed out that if the microwave wasn’t in full view in the bar it would be in the kitchen anyway!) so then we continued on a fruitless trek around the streets to find something they might approve of. On the positive side we found the train station and I established where to buy tickets so on the way back we purchased some from a supermarket for only €1.80 each return for tomorrow’s intended train journey to Rome.

And so after a circuitous route we found ourselves back at the place Micky and I had found earlier and despite the microwave issue everyone reluctantly agreed to eat here. I’m not sure exactly what the problem was because the food turned out to be very good indeed, the place served large glasses of foaming cold beer and we had a nice seat in the garden outside with a canopy of trees to shade us from the seering hot sun.

Following the late lunch we went back to the hotel and I started to identify all of the things that were wrong with it. The rooms weren’t actually in the hotel, the air conditioning in our room didn’t work and it was stiflingly hot, we had been allocated the wrong rooms which upset the financial arrangements and Micky’s TV remote control didn’t work. I complained but was stonewalled by the man at the desk who explained that the hotel was full (it clearly wasn’t) and that he thought it was best for us to be in the annex because a party of students were staying in the hotel (they weren’t it turned out) and this irritated me because I like to make my own assessment of what is best for me or not. We eventually agreed a reduction on the room rate where Sue and Christine were staying, he promised to have the air conditioning promptly repaired and he found a TV remote controller that worked for Micky.

After we had sorted all of this out we went back out againand looked for a restaurant for later and having found somewhere promising off the main square and quite close to the hotel we returned to the Pizzeria La Bufalina di Cristiano Erminia and sat and enjoyed the warm late afternoon sunshine and the pleasant atmosphere of the little town.

Back at the hotel we found an outside table to sit and chat and play cards and then curiously a door opened and a man emerged and gave us a cold and unwelcoming glance as he walked past us and towards the hotel. It turned out that he lived in the annex, which seemed a rather odd arrangement to us (a bit like the major in Fawlty Towers) and this was his personal outside table and that we weren’t really supposed to be using it. We worked this out while he was away and when he returned we apologised for our mistake and he explained several times that this particular spot was ‘privado’.

Having upset our unexpected neighbour we returned to the town which was much busier now, the square and the town gardens were full of pedestrians, the roads were throbbing with impatient traffic and all the bars and cafés were open so we joined the local people on a Saturday evening stroll along the streets to work up an appetite.

The trattoria that we had selected was called World Pizza, which didn’t sound very thrilling but it turned out to be a splendid choice. It was a traditional sort of place that reminded me of the restaurant where Michael Corleone assassinated the gangster Salazo and the Chief of Police in the Godfather film. It had two rows of tables, simple furniture, white tablecloths and pictures of old Albano on the walls. The food and the house wine was excellent and the highlight of the meal was the arrival of the town half-wit who came through the doors in cowboy outfit and mask and staged a theatrical hold-up with a toy pistol. Later he played harmonica in return for a couple or Euro payment and he stayed with us for a while because we gave him a glass of wine and indulged him in his fantasy game.

Christine however, didn’t find him all that amusing!

Italy 2011, Lake Albano and Castel Gandolfo

The small café was opposite the entrance to the Papal Palace which is where the Pope spends his summers on the shore of the lake ostensibly to avoid the oppressive heat of Rome. I’m sure that this probably isn’t strictly necessary anymore because I imagine that the Vatican will have more than adequate air-conditioning facilities these days but nevertheless it still remains a nice place to spend the summer. The Catholic Church owns this splendid Palace thanks to the Lateran Treaty of 1929 when Italy recognized the full ownership by the Holy See of the Pontifical Palace of Castel Gandolfo.

The villas and the grounds in which they stand comprise about fifty-five hectares, which makes it eleven hectares bigger than Europe’s third smallest sovereign state, that’s the Vatican itself. Just over half of the grounds comprise a garden and they rest are used for orchards, vinyards and for farming. The entire papal residence enjoys all the privileges of extraterritoriality and the properties which make up the villas comprise the Papal Palace itself, which includes the Vatican Observatory, the Barberini Palace, housing for twenty-one employees, an electrical plant, offices, farm buildings and stables. The villas possess their own pumping station providing water from the lake for plumbing and irrigation, as well as an aqueduct that carries drinking water from the nearby springs of Palazzolo, which are also on property belonging to the Holy See.

As we enjoyed a Peroni beer it started to dawn on us that we hadn’t planned terribly well for this little walk, we weren’t really sure where we were going, we didn’t know with any degree of certainty how far it was, we didn’t have a map, it was thirty five degrees centigrade and we hadn’t used or brought with us any sun protection cream. Regardless of this we walked a little further and began to catch sight of Lake Albano sitting in a sort of volcanic bowl or natural amphitheatre with steep densely wooded slopes on all sides and marine blue water throwing back the reflections of the highest of the hills on the other side and the Papal Palace and the observatory close to where we were standing.

Because of the steep slopes this meant that there was a long walk down to the water’s edge which involved negotiating a winding road with a succession of tight hairpin bends as it made its way down to the shoreline below. We gamely set off but after a hundred metres or so it became obvious that without protection from the sun and with Sue starting to turn an alarming shellfish pink across her shoulders that this was rather reckless so after a short debate common sense asserted itself over midday madness and we returned to the road and found a second bar for more Peroni, which was a far more sensible option.

We knew that there was supposed to be a bus service around the towns surrounding the lake but we couldn’t see any bus stops and we had no idea of the frequency or the schedule. The lady serving in the bar told us that this spot was the bus stop and if we wanted to catch it we had simply to flag the driver down as it approached. She couldn’t help with the timetable however so we ordered more drinks and put Kim on look-out duty to keep an eye on the road.

There seemed to be a worrying absence of public transport and it began to look as though we may have to walk back but eventually a blue and white bus appeared so we leapt into the road and the driver swiftly applied the brakes and brought the thing to a shuddering standstill and with a hiss of hydraulics opened the door. We climbed on board and it was only then that we realised that we didn’t have any tickets. They cannot be bought from the driver and travelling without one can involve a hefty fine but we were only going a couple of stops so we would have been unlucky to have been caught and we made it back to Albano without incident.

At the hotel our rooms were now ready but they weren’t quite what we were expecting because instead of accommodation in the hotel with the splendid views over the countryside which it boasted on its website we were allocated rooms in an unusual little annex about thirty metres away that had the look and feel of being seldom used. More of this later but we accepted them at this point and quickly reassembled in the courtyard to go out again and explore the town of Albano.