Walking Rome

Walking Rome

Today was our day to just walk around central Rome. Nothing fancy to see…just walking. Of course, you can’t walk anywhere here without seeing ancient Roman buildings more than 2000 years old, or incredible Renaissance works of art, literally on on the corner, or churches filled with Baroque wonders and artifacts from the ancient Christian world. Yep…just a walk.

Statuary like this is seemingly everywhere.

Our hotel is right off XX September Avenue, so named because this is the street that the victors over the papal armies rode after the final battle for Italian unification. Just a block away from our hotel is an intersection where large bas relief sculptures are on all four corners. Each sculpture is a fountain representing key Italian rivers and goddesses. This is just how it is in Rome…there are statues and fountains everywhere! Here’s one of the four:

Once of the “four rivers” fountains.

Walking on, we are in the Presidential Complex…lots of highly armed and serious looking men around here. Some of them are the Corazzieri, the elite presidential guards. This elite unit’s regimental headquarters is directly outside our hotel’s windows. We’ve seen them come and go on their horses and we’ve seen them inside the entrances to the key governmental buildings. These guys are kick ass…minimum height is 6′ 3″ and they are highly trained. You can’t miss them on duty as they are dressed in old-style uniforms with plumage and all. I’ve been repeatedly warned not to joke with them…and not all of the warnings have come from Monte, Aleta and Mona.  Zoom in on the pic below and you’ll see two of the Corazzieri.

Corazzieri at the Presidential Complex

Our first major stop of the day was Trevi Fountain. Yes of course, we threw coins in the fountain…why would you not?!?!?

Trevi Fountain
Three coins in the fountain!

There are a lot of cool street performers in Rome. We hope this was one of them:

Our next major stop was the Pantheon…the engineering here is beyond compare! This structure is about 2000 years old and is still in great shape. I won’t bore you with all the incredible details of this awesome building but suffice it to say that no other dome like it was built for over 1000 years…not until the Duomo in Florence which used this dome for a model. The dome itself is made of concrete with a base 20 feet thick…narrowing as it goes up.  The only light is from a 30 foot circle at the top…the ocular eye…and it’s wide open to the elements. The floor is concave to drain away the water.

I could tell you lots and lots about the Pantheon, but I’m restraining myself.  How about one more picture then I’ll move on.

The Pantheon – home for all gods

Our next stop was Piazza Navona. This was our favorite place from our first visit and we were so glad to be back. This used to be a chariot racetrack but it’s now filled with beautiful fountains, artists, restaurants and tourists. It’s simply delightful!

Piazza Navona is one of our favorite places in Rome!
Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of the Four Rivers)
I made new friends while at Piazza Navona

Love love love this place. We’ll be back!

How do they do this?!

We then walked across a bridge over the Tiber and walked on the other side for a ways.

Bridge over the Tiber

Then back across to end up at our final destination of our walk…The Spanish Steps. Here we relaxed with a few thousand of our closest friends.  What an incredible place for people watching!

People watching on the Spanish Steps

Our walk ended with a ride home on the Metro where we encountered a team of pickpockets. During our visit we had two encounters with pickpockets. This one where a team boarded a crowded metro and tried to use distraction to get what they wanted. Two people did the distracting and another had a cloth draped over his arm so he could hide his loot. Two of us on the train saw what they were doing and raised the alarm and the pickpockets ran off as soon as we got to the next stop.

The second encounter was at a Metro station. We were looking at the map on the wall and a “normal-looking” guy walked close to us while appearing to read a folded up map. He kept getting into my personal space so I turned around and confronted him. Almost simultaneously a Metro officer walked up and grabbed the man’s arm and walked him away.

The day had a good ending and we lost nothing. And our encounters didn’t stop us from continuing to wander about the city. However, these incidents illustrate that Rome has pickpockets and you need to take precautions. No bulging wallets in back pockets, no dangling purses and no flashy jewelry.  Here’s a great article for anti-pickpocket tips:  Forbes Pickpocket Article

Ending another great day with wine on the terrace.

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