Rome, If You Want To
- krolesh
- Mar 1
- 10 min read
Updated: Mar 2
January 2025
As the sun dipped below the horizon, ending another day in southern Switzerland, my bus dipped down to Munich, where I sat in a little Turkish café in the bus station and ate a borek, a Turkish cheese pastry.
Then the café closed, and I had to wait in the freezing cold again.
Munich whirring past.
I finally caught my connecting bus, and then slept, waking up as we passed through the green fields of central Italy. I'd missed pretty much the whole Alps crossing, I was a little cross about that, but was super glad to have slept.
Right: The beautiful Appenine mountain range, a group of parallel ranges that traverse the entire Italian peninsula, running for about 1200km.
They're not as tall as this everywhere though.
All Roads Lead To Rome
It was lunchtime when I arrived in the capital of the once mighty Roman Empire, the current global centre of Catholicism, and the economic and political hub of the Republic of Italy.
Left: Rome Tiburtina Station.
I slowly strolled to my hostel, nearly an hour's walk away, through a relatively new-ish district of the capital.
Every sign is a voice. Violence against women is not always visible, but it leaves deep scars. Let us not remain silent.
Great they've got posters up like this. We need to look for the signs.
I passed a major university, the Sapienza University of Rome, a major research uni.
Top Right: The men's pavilion.
Bottom Left: And the women's.
And ever the twain shall meet.
Bottom Centre: Another ancient wall. Ho hum.
I eventually made it to my district, not too far from the central station, Roma Termini.
The view from my cheap, clean and comfy hostel dorm.
Only 5 beds.
I dropped my bags and excitedly headed off to rediscover old Rome.
Top Left: Yet another Hotel Californication.
There's a few musically named hotels around here.
And incredibly beautiful classical art and architecture everywhere.
There's more columns in Rome than in an accountant's tax evading spreadsheets. Columns are one of the most obvious features of classical Greek and Roman architecture, and, whilst primarily used as supports for buildings, they evolved to become standalone structures as well.
The one below is the Colonna dell'Immacolata Concezione (Column of the Immaculate Deception, I mean, Conception).
The Piazza di Spagna, which looks out onto the Instagrammably famous Spanish Steps.
It's winter, the quietest time in Rome, but that didn't stop every girl and her cat from being here at this spot, and at one other place, which you can probably guess. If you can't, you'll find out below*
Rome has such a beautiful easy vibe at the moment. It's not crazy busy at all, unlike it may be at some other super touristed times of the year. And the city's big - way big enough for the crowds to blend in a little right now.
This is the Piazza del Popolo, and it houses the tallest Egyptian obelisk in all of Italy. It was nicked by Emperor Augustus in 1BC, in one of the many conquests of Egypt undertaken by those greedy Romans, and then it was re-erected here. Why any stolen Egyptian obelisks should still be in Italy is beyond my pay grade.
I was also actually quite disappointed because despite looking very hard I couldn't find Asterix anywhere.
Another beautiful Neptune fountain.
There's giant seagulls in Rome. Maybe you can't tell, but the large pigeons nearby are actually tiny in comparison to these gulls. Rome's not that far from the sea, only about 30 clicks, as the pigeon flaps.
Cool jigsaw puzzles.
The plain entrance to one of a million incredible churches in this holy city. You just wander in, and are consistently flabbergasted at the opulence and religious ostentation.
And this is another random church.
Too Left: Wow. I was so lucky. I was walking past and suddenly part of an ancient building broke off and plummeted towards my head. Luckily these trees saved me.
Too Right: The Palazzo Chigi, the official seat of government in Italy, and the Prime Minister's residence.
Bottom Centre: The Column of Marcus Aurelius, completed in 193 AD as a tribute to the Emperor's military conquests over the Germanic tribes along the Danube. It depicts various battle scenes of death and destruction etc.
Random book stall
Incredible spray paint artist
*Yes, this is the other spot. The Fontana Di Trevi. Everyone was there to take pics of the most famous spot in Rome, before they head off to have their aperitifs and eat pizza or pasta.
It's an amazing fountain actually, and the water is a beautiful colour (it's from a natural spring).
The tourists were just as photogenic as the fountain.
Lucky coins. Make a wish.
Amazingly grand stained glass walkways
And then I made it to the Pantheon, another incredibly famous Roman landmark.
The Pantheon was originally a Roman temple, dedicated in about 120 AD, and eventually became a church in the 600s. It's incredible.
Around the back
Left: Part of the Roman Forum. The Forum was the centre of day-to-day life in Ancient Rome, the site of triumphal processions, elections, public speeches, criminal trials, and the nucleus of commercial affairs.
Centre: A poster I saw for sale at some stalls, which depicts Ancient Rome.
The Forum is the really long thing that looks like a stretched out sporting arena.
Later on I'll show you pics of much bigger parts of the Forum which still exist.
This absolutely huge and incredible monument was built between 1885 and 1935 to honour Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of a unified Italy. It was built as a neoclassical version of the Roman Forum, and is truly spectacular in its scale.
Below: Looking over to parts of the ancient Forum, on a stroll over to the Colosseum.
An' thar she blows!
The Colosseum is the largest amphitheatre ever built, and, despite its age, is still the largest standing amphitheatre in the world. It was completed in 80 AD, and was was used for gladiatorial contests, executions, animal hunts, re-enactments of famous battles, dramas based on Roman mythology and even mock sea battles.
It held up to 80,000 people, and the scale of the entertainment devised by the Emperors to publicly display the power of the Roman Empire (and their own personal sadistic imagination) makes the mind boggle.
Gladiatorial battles were epic, with gladiators fighting each other to the death, or until one submitted. The animal hunts sometimes involved the whole floor of the Colosseum being converted into a forest, with real trees brought in, and hunters stalking bears and leopards (who were also stalking them). Sometimes the hunters won, sometimes they were lunch.
Animals were brought in to hunt each other, with bears fighting lions, rhinos getting all horny with horny bulls, and elephants and tigers fighting to the brutal death.
Lunchtime was execution time, with the emperors also devising particularly cruel methods of execution, such as prisoners being ripped to shreds by bears or lions, or being made to wear the waxed wings of Icarus and then pushed from platforms high above the ground and splattering to their bloody deaths, or swinging from ropes above lions and bears, every swing getting lower and lower.
Vendors would go around serving food as the crowd gleefully watched, the snacks sometimes cooked from animals that had recently died in the arena. How appetising, to eat tiger flesh while a human animal is being chewed by a lion.
They were so bloody gruesome in those days. We would never be so brutally cruel to people anymore.
Well, except in Gaza. Um, or in Yemen, or South Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine, Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc etc bloody etc.
We just disguise it way better. Sometimes.
Wow. Rome is massive. There's so much to see.
And that was just one afternoon.
Roman Holiday
I've gotta say that I really like my hostel here in the Italian capital. It's got a good vibe. It's well located. It's cheap. And it's quirky.
I got up, had brekky, and immediately headed off to explore more of the amazing city of Rome, after already going on some big adventures yesterday.
Papa Francesco is the current Pope. He's actually Argentinian, which is quite a break from tradition, given that nearly all previous popes have been European, almost exclusively Italian. He's the first Pope from the Americas, and the first from the southern hemisphere. But his heritage is actually Italian.
He's shifted the church's position on certain issues, like calling for more tolerance for the LGBTQ crew, and has overseen changes to give more power to women within church structures. And he didn't move in to the official Papal apartments when he was elected Pope, but just stays in the Vatican "guest house," where he can receive guests.
But he's been a huge disappointment for some people, as change during his papacy has been very slow, and relatively minor.
The Catholic Church remains one of the wealthiest, most conservative, and most sexist institutions on the planet. And most of the old men wanna keep it that way.
Rome was quiet, because it was still before 10am.
Below is part of the Forum of Trajan, the last of the big forums built in Ancient Rome, on the order of Emperor Trajan. It's a massive structure, and was built in the early 100s AD. As I mentioned earlier, it was used extensively for public events, military parades, elections, etc.
This whole section is just a side portico, and a sign showed what it once looked like.
Bottom Left: The Pope looking to the heavens for, um, divine affirmation, I mean, inspiration. This is the third book the Pope has published in the last three years, and is an autobiography called Spera, which means "hope."
Yeah, me too.
Below Centre: The Fontana della Torrina, the Fountain of the Tureen, the soup dish.
Below Right: There's not so many homeless in the old part of town. They're elsewhere, in the rundown parts of the newer city, I came across them later on.
Left: The Castel Sant'Angelo, which was originally commissioned by Emperor Hadrian as a mausoleum for himself. It was later used as a fortress, then became a Papal prison for all those infidels who questioned the Pope's authority, and now it's rather a grand museum.
Centre and Right: The River Tiber, which runs through Rome to the Tyrrhenian Sea, a part of the central Mediterranean, which isn't far away from here.
Crossing into the Vatican City. Basilica Di San Pietro, St Peter's Cathedral, is in the distance. This is the centre of Roman Catholicism in the world, the place where the Pope lives, and the place where all the important Catholic decisions are made. By conservative, old, and nearly all white, men, of course.
It may not look that special, but wait till you go inside.
When you see the vastness of it all, you just get totally blown away by the scale, the riches, the art, and the detail.
It’s impossible to describe the size of the inside of this cathedral, and the incredible exquisiteness of the art in it (and on it). It’s absolutely huge, and has so many different wings, alcoves, chapels, altars, statues, paintings, sculptures, walls, ceilings, religious structures and random other art works.
They’re everywhere. Wherever you turn, there’s more magnificence. It’s absolutely over-the-top and, in fact, the opulence and ostentation of buildings like this, and the ridiculous wealth of the church, was one of the drivers for the Reformation movement of Martin Luther and others in the 16th Century.
The basilica can hold 60,000 people. That's really a lot for a church. They could easily have a cricket match in here.
Vatican security is provided by what’s called the Swiss Guard, which operates within the borders of the independent city-state of the Vatican.
Yes, the Vatican’s a separate country, so the laws of Italy don’t necessarily apply here. They decide which Italian laws they want (and which they don't).
Top Centre: Priest and gladiator pinup calendars. What’ll they think of next?
Back in the beautiful Piazza Navona, with its gorgeous Fontani dei Quattro Fiumi (the Fountain of the Four Rivers).
This church had a door open, so I strolled in.
As usual it was the bomb.
Sorry if you’re sick to death of classical beauty by now
Modern fridgeware.
Above Left: Photobombed by a bus.
Above Right: Hollow Pope. This is John Paul II.
Cinema is the most direct way to compete with God. Federico Fellini is probably the most famous of all Italian directors, and one of the most influential of all time. His most famous movies include "La Dolce Vita," "Nights of Cabarita," and "La Strada."
I walked through the gardens towards Villa Borghese, until I noticed a large disturbance up ahead.
There were cops everywhere, with their riot shields and vans and big dogs, and gangs of guys all herded into certain areas, chanting slogans I didn't really understand. Hmmm, maybe it's a neo-fascist rally.
I'd already noticed loads of German guys heading towards the area, and soon realised that the guys chanting were actually football fans, who'd come all the way to Rome to support their team, Eintracht Frankfurt, for a game against AS Roma, which was happening later that night.
Lots of the guys were holding beer bottles, and some were obviously drunk. And the reason for the heavy police presence? Well, later my Roman friend told me that two years ago the same fans went to Napoli for a game, and mobs of them went crazy in the city, smashing up the place and causing a lot of injuries and damage? The Rome cops weren't gonna let that happen again.
Interesting. Some guys, prone to violent behaviour, join football fan clubs not really because of the football per se, but because it's an excuse to engage in mob violence.
Anyway, I didn't hang around too long, as nothing much was happening. By the way, Rome won the football game, 2 - 0. The Frankfurt yobs wouldn't have been happy.
I strolled back to watch the sunset from the top of the Spanish Steps.
Below: That magnificent monument again. This time I climbed way up. It's really special up there, especially at dusk. The Rome skyline's really dome-inated by churches
Super cute Fiat 500. You can hear them before you see them. They sound like a cross between a lawn mower and a motorbike, with their two-stroke engines.
Pizza with local greens. It was amazing.
A Universe Unto Itself
I love this city.
It's grand.
It's historic.
There's so much here to explore.
I'm looking forward to staying here longer, especially because I'm planning to meet up with my dear Roman friend Fabio.
I met him in the UK a little while back, with his partner Hayley, at Tom and Rosie's in Brighton, and I'm really looking forward to meeting up again, and doing whatever he wants to do.
Cos I wanna do as the Romans do❤️
And, by the way, thanks for the idea Rich:
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