Colosseum and Palatine Hill

Posted: June 01, 2022

We saved the Colosseum and Palatine Hill for our last day. For no reason in particular other than those were the tickets we could get. We booked a tour with the Colosseum directly through the official Colosseum website, co-op culture, which gives us access to both the Colosseum and Palatine Hill, with a tour of the underground and the arena at the Colosseum. Getting tickets from Co-Op Culture is incredibly difficult, and we got our tickets out of blind luck of being on the website at the right time. I had woken up 1 month in advance at 3 am to try and get a ticket, but they weren't released at that time, but when I checked back a few days later in the morning they somehow still had availability for the day we wanted to go. My understanding is that local tourism agencies snatch up these tickets quickly for resale, so we got the tickets at a reasonable price of around $35 each (although that's still more than double what I paid for the same ticket in 2016).

Our tour was the first tour of the day, the 9:05, and got to the Colosseum just a few minutes early. Despite the Colosseum opening at 9:00, there wasn't that long of a line to get in. We got in and went to our tour spot, but before ran out to a place where we could take a few snaps of the Colosseum without anyone in it. Frustratingly, we got to our tour meetup point right on time but it didn't actually start for another 15 minutes - which means we could have gotten a few more shots with little to no people in it. But oh well, not getting those shots was worth not stressing about it.

The tour was great, I especially liked the tour of the underground. When I went 8 years ago, the underground portion was just walking down the stairs to the underground and then walking back up, but now they let you walk through the center of the area and all around, so that was quite special and a different experience. The lighting was harsh, so I'm sure the photos are terrible, but I like taking the photos to remind me of the real memories in my head. If my camera captures them, then that's great, otherwise, I'll have to try and remember how it looked in real life instead.

After the Colosseum, we went back to our Airbnb for a quick break before heading to lunch at Doppio Malto. Yesterday, we saw a brewery in the middle of Rome that we wanted to go back to, so that was today's destination for lunch. The beer was pretty good and expensive compared to the wine in Italy (although pretty on par for the cost of craft beer in America), but nonetheless, it was a good beer experience and a nice change from drinking wine at lunch the past few days. The food at the brewery wasn't all that great, I got an Italian burger that was decent, but nothing spectacular. Katie got some pasta that was drastically lacking salt and didn't have very much flavor to it. But I guess we went there for the beer and they delivered on that menu item. In addition to being disappointed in the food, the service wasn't that great either. The water took our drink order and when he came with the drinks he said he would be right back to take our order. 15 minutes later we flagged someone else down to take our order. I guess that's part of the culture in Europe, but I felt like there was something left to be desired in both the food and the service (but not the beer).

After lunch we walked to a gelato shop, Gioletti, which is highly rated and it was pretty good but incredibly busy and a little overhyped for the quality. Then we walked to a small kitchen shop for me to get a few things. At the kitchen shop, called Container 4, I bought two pasta-making tools, first a round ravioli stamp so that I can make half-moon ravioli which allows me to have a greater filling-to-pasta ratio than a traditional square ravioli. The second tool I bought was an Attrezzo per Malloreddus, which literally translates to "tool for Malloreddus (pasta)". Malloreddus is a thumbprint pasta, basically a shell-like pasta but Malloreddus has grooves on the outside to hold the sauce better than a traditional thumbprint pasta or shell. The wooden tool is just a flat piece of wood with grooves in it, and you use it by smearing your thumb over the pasta sitting on the board which creates the shell-like shape with the grooves on the outside. I plan on using it for rolling grooves into gnocchi, but I also certainly want to try making the Malloreddus pasta as well. I have been wanting these two tools for a few months, and they were something Katie was going to buy off Amazon for me for my birthday, but there's something special about buying these tools while we're in the pasta capital of the world. These tools I bought are no different than ones that I could buy off Amazon and aren't special in any way other than the fact that I bought them in Italy. They hold sentimental value in that these souvenirs will make me think of our trip to Rome every time I use them.

Our final item to check off the list of things to do in Rome was to visit Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum which was our plan for the late afternoon. Overall, we were a little underwhelmed. The lighting wasn't that great and we were completely exhausted from walking a lot the past several days. To make it worse, they started closing sections of Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum about an hour before they closed, so we didn't even get to see everything (since we arrived around 5:30 and they closed at 7:15). But that's okay since the lighting wasn't that great and we were tired and ready for dinner anyway.

We slowly wandered over to the Travestere area again for dinner to find that all the places we wanted to go were booked solid. I don't know if it was just that area or those highly recommended restaurants or if it's because the next day was a holiday and there were more tourists and/or locals in the area eating dinner in Travestere. So we picked a restaurant that had seating and ate some dinner. Our final meal in Rome was at Vascellari, and I had Ravioli with Amatriciana sauce and it was wonderful. It was backwards to a typical ravioli dish with the red sauce inside the ravioli and aerated ricotta cheese on top. Katie got Carbonara and it was pretty good, but the bacon (also on my dish) was way too salty and tasted like it was double fried - it just didn't taste right. We shared a bottle of wine with dinner that was a little too acidic, but overall it was an excellent final meal to close out the Italy section of our trip.

Since the next day was a holiday, our Airbnb host told us that the Colosseum metro station would be closed. This wasn't ideal for us getting to the airport, so we ended up getting a taxi to take us (which the Airbnb host kindly arranged for us). Taxis have a flat rate of 50 Euros to go from the city to the airport, and even though it was a little more expensive it was well worth not having to haul our bags to the closest open metro station. Our Taxi driver drove like crazy weaving in and out of traffic and getting us to the airport in record time, and we ended up having quite a bit of time waiting at the airport. But getting to airports is always a hurry-up-and-wait situation and I'd rather be early than being tight on time.

Morning Sunshine

While we waited for the Colosseum to open, I took photos of the sun through the openings in the third tier.

UNder an Arch

The underground of the Colosseum was filled with arches, and it's no surprise since that's the only way to create a load-bearing opening without using cement or other modern ways.

Uneven Arches

None of the architecture in the underground of the Colosseum was the same. The Romans we focusing more on structural integrity rather than aesthetics.

Old Writing

I wasn't paying enough attention when our Colosseum tour guide talked about these signs.

Underground

This was one of many rooms that was hiding underneath the Colosseum.

Colosseum Panorama

I took many panoramas at the Colosseum, but most of them (including this one) were pretty bad because of the harsh lighting.

Outer Ring

This is taken just inside the outer ring of the Colosseum.

Gorgon

This is a Greek sculpture from the late 1st and 2nd century that made its way to the Colosseum.

Marble

The marble slab on the left is from Turkey and the slab on the right is from Tuscany.

From the Second Tier

Because of the harsh lighting, looking to the West was the best photos since we were at the Colosseum in the morning. Even though the light was behind us, the harsh shadows made it extremely hard to capture how impressive the Colosseum is.

From the Floor

There wasn't a lot of space between the arena and the area that people would be watching form. During any event in Roman times, there would be archers ready to kill any of the animals that might jump into the crowd. It seems like that could have been mitigated by lowering the floor by several feet.

Beer and Popcorn

We went to a brewery for lunch, which was hard to come by. The beer was great, and they even served the beer with a cup of popcorn that Katie was pretty excited about.

Italian Burger

I ordered an Italian burger at the brewery that we went to for lunch. It's not authentic Italian food, but it was distinctively different than the burgers back in America.

Roman Forum

From on top of Palatine Hill we could see the entire Roman Forum. Again, because of the harsh lighting, large panoramas of the area were hard to do justice to how cool it was in real life.

Bridge to a Hill

I wonder what's buried under the mound?

Courtyard

This photo was particularly hard to edit because of the harsh shadows. I think I did a good job mitigating the harshness of the shadows, but I still would have loved for it to have been an overcast day. I don't think there are many of those in Rome in the summer.

Soaking up the Sun

I was taking photos of Katie and she needed to close her eyes to not blind herself when I got this shot. Even when she's trying hard to look at the camera in full sun her expression shows that she's in pain.

Roman Flowers

These flowers were growing everywhere on the brick. They were climbing up the brick and were stunning.

Newer Facade

This is the Santa Francesca Romana, a Catholic church inside the Roman Forum in Rome. The Facade was updated relative recently in 1615. All the newer churches in Rome had statues on top of them like this one, so this church stood out as one that didn't belong in the Roman Forum.