Todi to Zagarolo (Rome)…..and a very cool adventure

October 11th

Cool morning and sunny we are pumped ..Laura arrives exactly on time and ferries us to the parking lot …nice lady, we say goodbye and we are off. It is approximately 150 kilometers or some 2.5 hours to Zagarolo which is a suburb of Rome.

The drive is pretty good as we use the Autostrada part of the way as using secondary roads is both slow and frustrating. we are staying at Olive Tree B&B, actually in a cottage. The owner (Ivano) who is Italian built the cottage for his wife (Tehri) who is from Finland to make it resemble as best possible a typical Finnish wooden cottage.

We did not want to stay in Rome as it would be a major hassle with the car….here we are 30 minutes by train from Termini Station in Rome and the deal was that Ivano would drive us to from the station.

Aside from running the B&B Ivano is passionate about the history of Italy, in particular Rome and its environs.  He acts as a guide and organizes various tours. We became intrigued by one called Night Tour of Rome and after much debate signed up, actually, it ended up being a private tour. When we got there Ivano spent about 1.5 hours speaking ways to tour Rome, and history and explained how the night would unfold. So we ate supper at 18:00, went to bed at 19:00, and met him for a wake-up coffee at 24:00, we then drove to Rome and spent about 1.5 hours hopscotching from site to site…he would park anywhere, and we would the walk to the site while he explained in capsule form the history and some interesting anecdotes…since I have never done any night photography so some of the results are not stellar but the idea is to impart the feel of what we were seeing (please click images in the galleries to enlarge):

The construction of the Colosseum began in the year 72 under Emperor Vespasian and was finished in the year 80 during the rule of Emperor Titus. At the time Rome’s population was in the order of 1.5 million. After completion, the Colosseum became the greatest Roman amphitheater with a seating capacity of 60m, measuring 188 meters in length, 156 meters in width, and 57 meters in height… not bad considering they had no heavy equipment such as cranes, trucks, etc. In comparison, Rogers Stadium in Toronto seats approximately 50m, took 3 years to construct and is 213 meters in diameter.

The Palazzo Venezia or Palazzo Barbo, formerly Palace of St. Mark, is a palazzo in central Rome, just north of the Capitoline Hill. In the image below the window flanked by grey/blue bunting is where Mussolini made some of his speeches…

Largo di Torre Argentina is where the archaeological complex known as the “sacred area” in the center of the square was discovered during construction works began in 1926. That’s when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini razed many sections of modern Rome to unearth the archaeology underneath to tangibly tie his dictatorship to the might of the Roman Empire. In the area, the remains of four temples have been found, which represent the most important complex of sacred buildings of the Middle and Late Republican age. It is also where Julius Ceasar was murdered (Pompey Curia)… as Ivano noted the irony is that this is less often mentioned than the story of the many stray cats who make their home nearby…

Trajan’s Column is a Roman triumphal column in Rome, Italy, that commemorates Roman emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars.

This is the front view of the City Hall and was originally designed by Michelangelo. This Renaissance palace built in the 13th century stands atop the Tabularium, which had once housed the archive of Ancient Rome.

Next, we headed for the Vatican, parking the car and sauntered down the Piazza Pio XII where we were almost the only ones  save for some homeless sleeping under the porticos and the police keeping watch…

Saint Peter’s Basilica & the Vatican (reddish building RHS)

We then began a 2/3 hour walking tour of key sites in Rome which normally are besieged by throngs of tourists, often we were alone or in the company of young folk out and about…suffice to say we were the oldest night owls out there…

The Jewish Quarter…… where as we walked down one of the via’s Ivano pointed out the metal plates embedded in the walkways in front of the doors where Jews were taken from their homes never to return…in the night’s silence one could almost hear the anguished screams of those lost souls…interestingly, there were a number of  Carabinieri posts on the perimeter of the Jewish Quarter

A few streets later we stopped at a bakery and got some thin-crust pizza slathered in a lovely tomato sauce.. a nice treat and a welcome pick me up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Pantheon is cylindrical with a portico of large granite columns (from Egypt), and a rectangular vestibule links the porch to the rotunda which is under a concrete dome, with a central opening to the sky. Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon’s dome is still the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome. 

In the calm of the night, this was a breathtaking monument that can only be truly appreciated in person…it is actually huge….Ivano demonstrated this by walking from where we were standing at the edge of the piazza to stand beside one of the columns beside which he looked tiny (see pic above) !!! We stood there imagining how each column which measures 39 feet in height and 5 feet in diameter could first be transported to this location and then placed in perfect symmetry with the other columns…keeping in mind they weigh 60 tons each…The cylindrical interior is perfectly proportioned in that it is equal in height to the diameter of the dome, which is 43.3 m (142 ft)

Piazza Navona is one of the most beautiful and well-known squares in Rome, a splendid Baroque masterpiece adorned with a complex of three fountains. the centerpiece is the Fountain of the Four Rivers (Nile, Danube, Ganges, and Rio de la Plata). This scenographic work was built by Gian Lorenzo Bernini between 1647 and 1651 and features an obelisk that rises to 16 meters.

Before we were done for the night we turned a corner and were gobsmacked by the sight of the iconic Trevi Fountain. Although the fountain was built in the 18th century, the site has a long association with water. The Aqua Virgo, constructed in 19 BC, was one of the ancient city’s most important water supplies. Nicola Salvi came up with a brilliant design that fused the massive classical façade of the Palazzo Poli in the background with behind an immense fountain, a mountain of porous Travertine stone fully 86 feet high and 160 feet wide.

One can only sit, stare and listen as the water gushes out and cascades through the rock cliffs…..this is one tourist site that surpasses expectations particularly when you do not have to share the spectacle.

Then back to the car as night slowly starts to dawn and the drive back to Zaragolo…lots of traffic en route as Romans head for the city and the start of their work day. For us it is time to head home to bed and dream about this epic night!!!