082 all'interno del colosseo

Last week, I finally went inside the Colosseum. Being stupid, I waited in a long line for my free ticket, when I could have walked to the left and gone straight to the entry machines because of my ticket from Palatino.

To be honest, the inside was pretty underwhelming, so I'm glad I didn't pay the 11 euros. Speaking of which, Elisabeth will be pleased to know that some obnoxious tourists that were not American joined my lists! Overheard in the ticket line: "I'm not going to pay 11 euros for a ticket! That's bloody ridiculous... What? The tour's not included? 5 more euros? Just wait until you come to London, you just remember this when you get into all of our museums for free!"

And actually, I don't think that's true - I don't remember any London museums that were free.


(above: view of Via Sacra from inside the Colosseum)

The parts of the Colosseum that I really wanted to see were the foundations and the rooms below the arena, where slaves, gladiators, and wild animals were kept. Unfortunately, this part was inaccessible. You can only walk around the entry level, and then up one flight of stairs to the second tier.

I listened in to some of the tour guides, and heard the usual stories about gladiators and animal fights. During the famed animal fights in the Colosseum - lions, crocodiles, elephants, etc - it wasn't an empty, dusty arena, as depicted in the movies. Instead, the Romans tried to recreate the natural habitats of the animals with trees, brush, and ponds, so the human hunters could hide in trees and surprise the animals, or the tigers could hide in the brush and surprise the humans.

Careful, though - don't confuse this 'good-natured' game with the plain executions. In those cases, the ring was empty except for the condemned thieves/arsonists/criminals, who had been rubbed down with animal blood to make them extra appealing to the lions or tigers, who had been starved. This pretty much ensured a quick and gruesome death.

Also, historically, the Colosseum was free to the middle and upper social classes. The Republic (and then the Empire) also supplied citizens with a free weekly sack of wheat, I suppose to keep morale up. I wish contemporary government supplied more free entertainment and food. All I get these days is a public library that isn't that great, and taxation without representation.



(above: top of Colosseum wall. These stones look quite precarious to me.)

081 crypti cappuccini

Last weekend I visited the Crypti Cappuccini - The Crypt of the Cappuchin Monks, very Nancy Drew.

The crypt is found on Via Veneto, just up from Piazza Barberini. The main church, Santa Maria della Concezione, is on the left, and a small door on the right leads into the crypt. The crypt consists of about 6 chambers in a row of varying sizes, with masonry vaults spanning each room. The visitor walks down a narrow corridor, and the crypt rooms are all on the left.

Inside each room are dead monks. There are a few hundred skeletons in each room, and over 4000 skeletons total. In most rooms, there were between 3 and 9 full skeletons wearing the Capuchin robes, some standing up, others lying down. The rest of the room were decorated with a certain type of bones. For example, there would be a wall of skulls, a vault of leg bones, and a ceiling of shoulder blades. Even the chandelier lamps hanging in the corridor were made completely of human bones.

Sorry that I can't relate the technical names of the bones, but it seems that most Americans know more about anatomy than I do, as I overheard many a mother or father telling their children: "see, there's a femur! And look, a scapula!", while the kids looked either pre-vomitatious or like this was the coolest thing they ever saw.

The visitor views these rooms via a narrow dead-end corridor, crowded with tourists (almost all American, not sure why...). So you're close enough to reach out and touch the bones. But it's not just piles of bones laying around - they have been artistically composed in abstract architectural patterns.

Most of the remains were only bone, although some cadavers must have gone through some kind of mummification process, since the skin was still intact.

I suppose the monks were reminding themselves that the physical body is meaningless after death - but whatever the rationale, it's definitely a unique place to visit.