Originally posted on July 20, 2011 by Canicus
I’ve come to the realization that the on/off tour busses may be the best way to get around to many sites of interest, particularly if I am going to keep walking to a minimum. The Metro will take you close to the Coliseum, Forum and Palatine area. If I were younger and hadn’t developed blisters on my feet I probably could have managed much of this via Metro and walking. Rome does have an extensive bus and trolley system in addition to the Metro if you can ever figure it out. I also find that the Metro and buses are extremely crowded.
The tour busses do get fairly close to a number of the sites of interest to me. Yesterday I bought a combo ticket to something called 100+ and Archeobus. The former runs a fairly standard route from Termini to the Coliseum, Forum, Palatine area to the Vatican and back to Termini by way of the Campus Martius area and the American Embassy (now that I know where that is). The latter runs from Termini to the Coliseum, Forum, and Palatine but then takes off toward the Via Appia the ancient highway south out of Rome built in the heyday of the Roman Republic, primarily to expedite movement of legions. It may have worked well for legions, carts and the like 2,000+ years ago; it isn’t designed for the buses, cars, motorcycles and pedestrians today.
Today I got off at the Baths of Caracalla, built in the early 2nd century A.D. The place was huge; it could accommodate 1,600 people in the baths proper. In addition there were exercise rooms, changing rooms rather like our exercise clubs only on a much larger and grander scale. It also included playing fields, gardens, performance area and Greek and Latin libraries — something I’ve not seen at any modern “baths.” The barbarians cut off the water supply brought by aqueducts so the thing has fallen into ruins, although hardly as badly as many other sites. What you see today are huge towering walls stripped of their ancient decorations. There is a modern stage and seating in the central part where summer opera is performed.
Most of the decorations have been raided over the centuries as is the case for most of the ancient Roman sites here. Walls have been stripped of marble, travertine, sculptures, mosaics, and frescos leaving only exposed brick for the most part. There is quite a bit of mosaic flooring that remains and has been exposed. I was amazed they even let us modern tourists walk on some of it. There are also some big chunks of mosaics that the diggers have leaned up against the walls. I’m not sure whether these came from flooring or wall decorations. I suspect the latter because the exposed floor mosaics seem to be mostly patterns, while the “chunks” are more pictorial.
Cloudy and cooler today. Delightful.