Monday 20th May

Off reasonably early to see the Colosseum as our tickets from yesterday were valid for it as well as the Forum & we could go straight in rather than queue for a ticket. We skipped the audio guide after yesterday's fiasco & were glad we did as, in contrast to the Forum, the signage & explanations are really great. The place was built for 75,000 spectators & even in its runed form is still huge by any standards, with a very complex system of hoists & trap doors for entry of gladiators & animals & there would still be lessons in it for present day stadium designers.

On one level there was an excellent exhibition on the Emperor Constantine who legalised Christianity in a declaration of religious tolerance in the 300s & who eventually, converted to it before he died. He was truly a remarkable ruler who had been well travelled & moved his headquarters to Constantinople from Rome, which itself was a radical action. The accompanying text in Italian & English explained very well how the concept of monotheism was taking off in the Empire in contrast to the popularity of a pantheon of gods. It also commented on the resistance of the rich & powerful to the acceptance of Christianity as a national faith. We both found it fascinating & many of the exhibits which had been found in the building during excavation were very beautiful & powerful pieces.

Leaving there we went looking for some reasonably priced food & drink & went off to a cafe advertising very fair prices. We each had a lasagne & a small bottle of water & were somewhat shaken when the bill of €39 ($50) & on querying it were told that the €10 pasta & a drink was ony for takeaway food. Another lesson in reading the small print first.

From there we went to see where to catch the bus for our next place, Perugia, so we took a metro to the station & eventually found the bus station. In Italy there are literally 10s if not 100s of long distance bus operators each with their own offices so we queued for about 30 minutes & asked for a timetable which was sitting behind all the clerks as if it was of great value. Some things here seem totally inexplicable & getting hold of simple data like that seems to be quite a complex process. Similarly in cafes many places the bill is paid to a particular person rather than the waiter & it can get a bit complicated. In one we had to choose the food from a cabinet, then go & pay for it before returning with the docket to get the food.

Having obtained our invaluable timetable we retired back by metro & train to Lido where for the price of a couple of coffees & cakes we spent the next hour on the internet catching up, before returning home on the bus.

Tuesday 21st May

A grey day again & relatively cool so we went through our usual routine today, took the bus & train into town & then caught a metro to Terminii, the major train terminal for the city, where we found the '100’ hop on- hop off bus for a circuit of the sites. The ride was a disappointment as first the sound system didn’t work on our seats so we moved & then the commentary was either irrelevant or out of time with where we were passing. Luckily for us we bought the tickets for half price over the internet so we couldn’t complain too much. The one thing it did was give us a general feel of where things are in relation to each other which is useful. We were glad to leave it back at the start & went for a coffee to warm up.

From there we set off to find a museum close by but instead found a huge church, Basilica di St Maria Maggiore, another vast pile with a very elaborate baroque interior which houses the tombs of 2 popes in its own Sistine Chapel. We went down to see the museum only to be taken on a guided tour of the now relatively hidden 13th century mosaic covered front, a chamber with pictures of the early popes & their robes & a Bernini designed, circular staircase without a central support pillar. Apparently the wooden ceiling of the nave is covered in gold leaf donated by the kings of Spain from their American colonies.

We then moved on Museo Nazionale Romano, another of the huge museums devoted to material from excavations of Republican & Imperial, Rome. Although most of the statues are copies of much earlier Greek ones they are wonderful to see & it holds a great series of portraits of most of the Caesars & their families. The other great contribution was the collection of mosaic & frescoes from Roman houses, particularly those of Augustus & Livia, the sites of which we had seen on the Palatine.

2 hours later we left the museum without seeing everything but too overloaded to take in much more.

The journey home was via metro & a bus which we found only took us part of the way by a very roundabout route so the whole journey took about 2 hours.