Sightseeing in Rome — Festina Lente

19 November 2023 – Rome, Italy

We arrived in a marina at the mouth of the Tiber river in the middle of the night on Tuesday, having sailed all of the previous day from Corsica. The marina is in the town of Ostia, near Rome, where I had a lot of sightseeing planned.

The first place we visited was Ostia Antica, the ruins of the ancient port city of Rome. We decided to get there using public transport, as there was a bus stop near the marina. It was around a twenty minute bus ride to the train station, and from there the site was only a few stops away. Ostia Antica is one of the best preserved ancient cities in Italy, so it was possible to wander through the remains of streets and crumbling buildings with a feeling for what the city may have been like when it was inhabited. As the main harbour and port city of Rome, Ostia Antica was used for trade and as a military base from the seventh to the second century BCE before the harbour started silting up and its 100,000 inhabitants began to abandon it. Even though it was the first sight we saw, I think it’s one of my favourites because it wasn’t only the remains of one grand building but a whole city of them, containing many houses, a theatre, baths, temples, warehouses, mosaics, and a forum.

Thermal baths in Ostia Antica – Ostia, Italy

The next day, we rented a car so that we could see various sites along the Via Appia, arguably the world’s oldest surviving road. Commissioned by Appius Claudius Caecus in 312 BCE, it reached over 300 miles and connected Rome with more distant parts of the empire all the way to the boot of Italy. The road was used for primarily military purposes (Julius Caesar marched his army along the it) but was also useful for the transport of goods into the city. My dad drove the car along it to reach the sites and even though it felt like we shouldn’t be allowed to do that, Via Appia is still in use as a road today. In some sections the original stones are still in place. The drive along the road was very scenic, as it is cobblestoned and lined with trees with a great view of the Roman countryside.

Our first stop along the road was Villa dei Quintili, built in 153 CE for the Quintili brothers, Roman consuls. They were killed on the orders of Emperor Commodus in 182/183 CE on charges of plotting against him, after which the villa was taken as imperial property and became the residence of several emperors over the years.

Next, we drove to the Mausoleo di Caecilia Metella, the third largest mausoleum in Rome. It was built between 30-10 BCE as a mausoleum for the noblewoman Caecilia Metella, daughter in law of the general Marcus Crassus, in the style of Augustus’s mausoleum. The mausoleum consisted of an eleven metre high cylindrical body crowned with a carved marble frieze. It was much bigger than I was expecting; instead of a small tomb by the side of the road, it was a large circular tower that had been further fortified in the 14th century. We were able to go inside, which also wasn’t what I expected. Inside the circular mausoleum was a big empty space rather than rooms. Caecilia Metella’s body would have been placed in the centre of the conical burial chamber.

The following day it was time for our excursion into downtown Rome to see the most famous sites like the Pantheon, Colosseum, and Roman Forum. We took the bus to the train station again, then rode the train for forty five minutes, then switched to the subway which took us to the Colosseum, then took another bus to the Pantheon, which was where our first tickets were booked for. The total trip about two hours in total, and as it was rush hour it was very busy. We probably shouldn’t have been allowed into the last bus because it was so full that me and my dad were blocking the doors from being able to open and close properly. Despite all this, we got to the Pantheon without incident and on time for our ticket slot. The Pantheon is probably the most impressive site we visited, as it is the best preserved building from ancient Rome and has remained almost intact throughout the years. The current temple was renovated by Emperor Hadrian in 125 CE, and in 608 CE, Pope Boniface IV officially converted the Pantheon into a Christian church, which kept it maintained and in use throughout the years. It was very grand and majestic both inside and outside, especially the domed roof with the oculus (circular opening) in the centre. The beautiful tiled marble floors are original to the temple from Roman times.

From the Pantheon, we walked to the Colosseum, an arena built in first century CE. The arena was used for public entertainment and blood sports like gladiator fights and wild animal hunts and could fit 50,000 spectators. It was the biggest of its kind at four storeys tall and 45 metres high, with eighty entrances and a roofed awning of canvas. The floor of the arena was often landscaped with rocks and trees to resemble exotic locations during the staging of wild animal hunts, and could even be flooded for mock naval battles. Today, the floor is gone, exposing the maze of small compartment rooms, corridors, and animal pens beneath. The scale of it is huge and it almost felt like being in a modern sports arena, especially because it was still mostly intact.

The Roman Forum was the religious, administrative, legal, and commercial centre of the city. It was difficult to fully appreciate the scale and grandeur of how it must have looked because of just how many tightly packed ruins there were. It felt as though any one of the buildings there would be a major tourist attraction all on its own in any other place. The forum contains the remains of massive triumphal arches, the Temple of Saturn, Temple of Castor and Pollux, the house of the Vestal Virgins (priestesses of the goddess Vesta and guardians of Rome’s sacred hearth), and much more.

House of the Vestal Virgins in the Roman Forum – Rome

On Friday, we rented a car again and drove to Hadrian’s Mausoleum on the banks of the Tiber river. It was built between 135-39 AD under the emperor Hadrian who wanted a funeral mausoleum for himself and his family in the style of the emperor Augustus’s - it was second only to Augustus’s mausoleum which I wanted to visit but which was unfortunately closed. The mausoleum is so massive that I wouldn’t have guessed it was a tomb but rather was a castle. Inside then giant circular base was a maze of corridors, at the centre of which rested Hadrian’s urn, as well as that of his wife and adopted son. Now called the Castel Sant’Angelo, it was converted into a fortress in the fifth century during the plague, when Pope Gregory had a vision of the archangel Michael on top of the mausoleum marking an end of the epidemic. Instead of the original statue of Hadrian in a chariot, the mausoleum is now topped by a statue of Michael. I was aware that it had later been turned into a papal residence, but I was surprised by the sumptuous Renaissance decorations in the rooms built on top of the mausoleum where the pope lived. The walls and ceilings were entirely covered in paintings of classical scenes, and we even noticed the words “Festina Lente” engraved in the corner of the ceiling.

Hadrian’s Mausoleum/Castel Sant’Angelo – Rome

Papal residence in Castel Sant’Angelo with “Festina Lente” carved into the corner of the ceiling – Rome

The plan was then to drive to a restaurant for lunch and then a department store which hid an aqueduct in its basement. Unfortunately, this resulted in us accidentally driving into the heart of downtown Rome and getting stuck in the little crowded streets where we definitely weren’t supposed to be. My dad was trying to get out of there but Google Maps kept taking him in a loop and couldn’t seem to figure a way out. Eventually, we made it back to the river without being arrested or hitting anything, at which point we decided it was probably best to scrap the restaurant and department store idea and just head out of the city to another site, the Baths of Caracalla.

It’s so hard to choose, but the Baths of Caracalla may be my favourite site that we visited. They looked majestic and almost ethereal as we walked through them, with towering crumbling archways and big open rooms. The baths were built around 216 CE at the request of Emperor Caracalla and are one of the largest and best preserved examples of Roman thermal baths. They contained two gyms, a frigidarium (cold baths), tepidarium (warm baths), calidarium (hot bath), and a natatio (swimming pool). It wasn’t only a place to bathe but to also a place to practice sports, take care of one’s health, study, and rest, kind of like a resort. Although most of it is gone now, the floors would have been covered in beautiful mosaics, the walls would have been painted, and the whole complex would have been elaborately decorated. Even without most of that, the baths were still very impressive and felt almost ethereal.

The final stop that day was the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, where we were taken on a guided tour through the underground passageways. The catacombs were used by Christians and Jewish people as a place to bury their dead, as the Romans typically cremated the bodies. Because it was forbidden under Roman law to bury the dead within the city limits, they dug an extensive and layered network of tunnels outside of it. Niches were dug into the walls where the bodies were placed, then sealed with an engraved slab of clay or marble. About half a million people were buried in the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, including sixteen popes.

On Saturday, our last day in Rome, we drove east of the city for about an hour to visit Hadrian’s Villa. The villa was intended as a luxurious retreat from Rome for the emperor Hadrian that combined Greek, Roman, and Egyptian architectural styles in what he considered to be the ideal city. Built between 117-138 CE, it contained over thirty buildings such as residential complexes, recreational areas, gardens, pools, and libraries. The guest building had some of the best preserved Roman mosaics I’ve seen, each room having a different pattern of geometric shapes and curling plants. The villa also had multiple theatres, two libraries, a temple to Venus, residence for the emperor, quarters for guests and a hundred rooms for the enslaved people who ran it. It reminded me a bit of Ostia Antica only in the sense that in both places we weren’t visiting one building or site but what felt like a whole town covering a large area and with many different buildings.

The last site we visited wasn’t Roman but Etruscan, the pre-Roman people of Etruria from the eighth to the third century BCE. We drove north along the coast to the Necropolis of Banditaccia, arriving just before they closed after being held up due to road blockage. The necropolis belonged to the wealthy Etruscan city of Caere and comprised about 2 kilometres of round stone tombs. While they were much older and seemed simpler than the Roman sites we had been visiting, they were still very impressive. The necropolis is a whole town of circular stone graves topped with a dome made of earth, laid out along streets in a grid pattern. The graves imitate Etruscan houses for the living, with doors, windows, columns, and furnishings. We were able to climb into a few and see the places where the bodies would have originally rested on carved stone beds.

It’s almost impossible to pick my favourite sites that we visited, but I think the Baths of Caracalla, Hadrian’s Villa, and Ostia Antica are my top three. The Pantheon is my parents’ favourite. Jonas was pretending not to be bored most of the time but the thing he got the most excited for was when he saw a new Samsung that someone had in the Pantheon.

We left Rome this morning and are heading to the island of Ponza. We’re heading for the Golf of Naples to visit Pompeii and Herculaneum before strong headwinds arrive.