I have had the pleasure of walking to the MCG on the last Saturday in September when the air is thick with excitement and anticipation. When the colours of the combatants are fluttering in the breeze… the murmur of the crowd slowly builds to a roar… to see my team win... to see my team lose. But the atmosphere in Melbourne is created by the people, the spectacle, the noise, the sport, the teams. We venerate the stadium, but it’s the game that creates the emotion.
The Coliseum should be nothing more than a stadium, there are no games here anymore. It’s an enormous assortment of stones and bricks, arches and columns, piled one atop the other to
almost ridiculous height, and yet the minute you step from the Metro station and stare at it, in the twinkling brightness of a sunny Roman day, there is and atmosphere, a feeling of expectation. It is genuinely awe inspiring, it’s wonderful and like so much in Rome, so much bigger than you imagine. Its presence looms over you in a way the MGC or any other modern stadium could never do. It’s not a light weight structure. No soaring beams, canopied roofs or steel cables here, just straight up stone arch on stone arch. It doesn’t seem built on the ground; it looks more like the ground has weathered away around it leaving its crumbling form as a testament to wind and rain.Entering is like walking into a cave, the stone is dirty black and the vaulted corridors are dark and littered with fallen stones and columns, pushed out of the way to let the tourists pass. It’s almost a pity that you have to face up to the realities the bag check and ticket booth, but thankfully we were through quickly and it took little away from the mood. In typical Italian style there is little in the way of directional signage and so you grope your way through the dim arcades until you find the right stairs to the upper level and the start of the audio guide tour. You climb a flight of stairs that would meet no current regulations and just as dimly lit, but when you reach the top there are views through the outer arches to the Forum and Palatine across the piazza. And then you turn and walk out, into the stadium. Alas there was not roar of the crowd upon my emergence from the arched tunnel… but the spectacle is grand. It must have been an incredible place to enter and find your seat all those years ago – and overwhelmingly frightening if you were unlucky enough to not have a seat, but be part of the events.
We spend an hour or so wandering slowly around the terraces, looking up at the crumbling upper tiers, down into the labyrinth of passages below what would have been the arena floor and all with the most verbose audio guide any of us had ever encountered lecturing away at our ears. We were cast back out into the piazza and ready for our next adventure into antiquity.
The Forum site is handily located right next to the Coliseum – all the old stuff within arms length. Somehow we missed the audio guides, which was somewhat annoying as sites in Rome
are not flushed with information. In fact across the entire Forum and Palatine we encountered only about 4 sign boards and these were not particularly enlightening. We did manage to figure out where the Forum actually was and deciphered the negligible signage on a small hut, encompassing a small pile of stone covered in flowers, as the location of Caesar’s famous last moments at the hands of Brutus.I was surprised though, a tourist attraction in the heart of Rome, visited by millions, and the area was sadly lacking in organisation, care and attention - especially when compared to somewhere as brilliantly presented as Pompei. It appears more a big park, with some picturesque ruin, perfect for a Sunday stroll, than one of the world’s most significant historic locations. The entire Mediterranean and half of Europe was conquered from here. It marks the beginning of the rise of western civilisation, and they don’t even cut the grass.
By this stage feet all round were rather sore so we decided on lunch. We trundled across the river to a neat little café in a back street and sat down to one of the most delightful lunches I have had in a long time. The food was sensational – pizzas all round, mine was blue cheese and speck - the white wine was cold and crisp and we sat under an awning in a tiny square enjoying the Italian, spring, sunshine and I can’t even remember its name.
Having been disappointed at the Pantheon being closed the day before, we headed back that way - hopeful of getting inside this time. Open it was, and in we charged, again headlong into a milling throng. The pantheon is a bit of a tardis building. It certainly doesn’t look small from the outside, but its interior looks much to grand and imposing to be contained by the brown stone and brick surrounding it. It also seems far to magnificent to be 2000 years old. The building of ancient Rome are supposed to be ruins like the Coliseum and the Forum, not fully functioning beautifully maintained structures like the Pantheon (well, the interior anyway – the outside is showing its age just a tad) especially when it has a hole in the middle of its roof to let the light in ...and let the light in it does. The Pantheon has no windows, just the huge oculus at the centre of it splendid dome and its great entry doors. The sunshine spills into the space through the roof, creating a bright white disk of light on the internal wall which slowly moves with the sun, sparkling on the mosaics, marble, gilt and polished brass. The mathematics of the building are quite remarkable. The top of the dome is as high as the distance between the walls, the dome is a perfect hemisphere, so it will perfectly contain a giant ball – if you wanted it too. Gotta love the Romans – they built their buildings to perfection, and without a computer, or even a calculator.Two days in Rome is clearly not enough. I managed to get to the biggest and most famous of the sites but there is so much more to see. You could spend days just wandering the streets, exploring. Something for next Summer.
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