Day 3: The Via Appia, the Baths of Caracalla, Ancient Sculptures, and Delicious Food

Circus of Maxentius.

Day 3 was when our jet-lag really hit us. I set an alarm for 6:45 am, but when it went off, I groggily turned it off and we slept for another hour. We therefore had a later and more tired morning than we planned on! Our goal for the morning was to head out from the city center to the ancient Via Appia, the famous Appian Way. This road was one of the first and most important of the ancient Romans' major highways. It ran southeast from Rome, connecting the city to the important towns of southern Italy, including Brundisium, a port on the heel of Italy which was the gateway to the east. The first section of the road was completed in 312 BC and throughout the Roman Republic, it became an important burial area. For the Romans, it was a big no-no to bury people inside the city and so the roads out of any city would be lined with tombs and funerary monuments. Another thing the Via Appia is famous for is the crucifixion of 6,000 slaves along the first 120 miles of the road following Spartacus' unsuccessful revolt in the 70s BC (remember the ending of Spartacus with Kirk Douglas?).

Lisa wins!

There's a fair amount to see along the Via Appia, but it can be difficult to get there using public transportation. The main bus line that runs out that way only operates once every half-hour or so. Therefore, we restricted ourselves to only seeing two sights relatively close to the city: the Circus of Maxentius and the Tomb of Caecilia Metella. We didn't have to wait long for the bus going out and we got off near the third milestone out of the city at the Basilica of San Sebastiano (which apparently has a lot of early Christian catacombs, but we didn't go in) then walked to the Circus of Maxentius. This was actually a complex of buildings consisting of a chariot track, a villa, and a mausoleum built by the emperor Maxentius in the early fourth century AD. He lost a civil war to Constantine, the first Christian emperor, and so this complex was pretty much abandoned after he was defeated. The only part that's really open today is the Circus, with its huge walls, the remains of the starting gates, the emperor's box, the spina (the long line of bricks that runs down the center of the track around which the chariots race), and the victory arch. While it had rained earlier in the morning, it was now just overcast, but the grass which grows over the entire site was quite wet. But we were the only people there in the quiet mid-morning and it was very peaceful - full of birds and flowers, many of which live nowhere else in Rome these days because of all the modern development. Lisa and I walked all the way down the track to the victory arch and back.

Inside the Tomb of Caecilia Metella.

Next, we walked a couple hundred yards further down the road to the Tomb of Caecilia Metella. She was a first-century BC noblewoman who was married to the son of Crassus, the richest man in Rome at the time. Her massive tomb was turned into a fortification in the Middle Ages, so it's now sort of a hodge-podge of things, but we got to see a lot of inscriptions and fragments of funerary monuments that used to line the Via Appia as well as an ancient quarry that originally lay underneath the site, complete with wheel-ruts worn into the stone.

A cat at the Tomb of Caecilia Metella.

The Via Appia Antica.

From there, we continued walking up the road to a cafe recommended by Rick Steves' guide where we got a take-out lunch of sandwiches and cake. We ate the sandwiches as we walked back to the bus stop. Mine was so-so, but Lisa reports that her eggplant, tomato, and cheese sandwich was delicious. We waited about 45 minutes for the bus back into town, part of the time with a family of German tourists. As we got closer to the city, more and more people got on - clearly, a lot of people had been waiting quite a while for this bus! We got off at the Baths of Caracalla, a bit south of the city center, but still well within the ancient city walls. Before we went in, we ate the yummy chocolate cake (it had raspberry filling!) we had bought at the cafe.

The Baths of Caracalla.

Mosaic fragments at the Baths of Caracalla.

The Baths of Caracalla are one of my favorite places in Rome because I'm just amazed at their overwhelming size and the amount of effort that went into building them and the number of people who had to work there to keep them running and the amount of wood burned every day to heat the water inside. These baths were built in the early third century AD by the emperor Caracalla and were among the biggest in Rome. Even though it was cold, cloudy, and spitting rain, Lisa and I spent a couple of hours wandering through the gardens around the outside of the site, then the bath complex itself, admiring the height of the vaults (which were originally over 100 feet tall, although the roofs all collapsed long ago) and the beauty of the preserved mosaic floors. Since I was last there in 2003, they've opened some of the underground tunnels which would have served as storage for the wood to be burned and also general service tunnels. They've put a number of architectural and sculptural fragments down there, some of which are quite interesting. For instance, there a couple of carved marble column capitals, one of which is more detailed than the other. The reason, according to the explanatory sign, is because the detailed one would have been quite visible at about 15 feet high while the other one would have been on top of a column 40 feet tall - and who's going to be able to see the detail at that height? - so the sculptor didn't bother to make it overly detailed.

The Capitoline Museum.

When we finished at the baths, we took another bus back into the center of town and went to the Capitoline Museum, a complex of three buildings on the top of the Capitoline Hill that house a huge amount of ancient Roman sculpture. Like the Vatican Museum, it can be an overwhelming place, so we decided to start by going to the very top and getting coffee and a snack at the terrace cafe. From there, we got some amazing views out over the city of Rome. By this time in the afternoon, the clouds had finally started to break up, the sun was coming out, and while it was rather windy, Rome looked beautiful.

Rome from the Capitoline Museum.

The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.

Face-off.

Back in the museum, we saw lots of fascinating sculpture and inscriptions. Among the highlights are the second-century AD bronze equestrian statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius; the Capitoline Wolf (a sixth-century BC bronze sculpture of the wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome; in the Renaissance, little baby Romulus and Remus were added to the ancient sculpture); the Capitoline Venus (one of the most-copied ancient depictions of Venus); fragments of the colossal statue of Constantine (which were under plastic because of construction work going on above them); and the Marforio fountain (a colossal ancient sculpture turned into a fountain in the Middle Ages). Another cool thing about the Capitoline Museum is that the palazzi that house it are built on top of or into several Roman ruins. It's built on top of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus ("Jupiter the Best and Greatest") which was the biggest and most important temple in Rome. It was originally constructed in the sixth century BC but because it was so big and because it was built on top of a tall hill, it was repeatedly damaged by lightening over the years. Today, you can see some of the foundations of the temple inside the museum. Another part of the museum is built into the ancient Tabularium, a long and tall first-century BC building that was the record house of ancient Rome. It's built on the back of the Capitoline Hill facing the Forum so today you can walk through the long gallery and get some great views looking out over the Forum. By the time we saw it - late in the afternoon, with the sun fully out - it was absolutely enchanting.

Constantine's head, under wraps.

One of the nice things about the Capitoline Museum is that it's open late, till 7:45 pm, and we used almost all of that time. Once we left, we walked down the hill and took a bus back to the Monteverde neighborhood to drop off our stuff (we'd made several purchases at the Capitoline gift store!) at the hotel. On the walk from the bus stop to the hotel, we were treated to another great view: a block down from our hotel, the street abruptly plunged down the side of the Janiculum Hill which meant from where we were standing, we could look down the end of the street and see the city center beyond, with sun-colored pink clouds blowing in over the Alban Hill and a full moon above. It was another amazing view in a day full of them.

Good night, Rome!

For dinner, we went to Il Focolare, a restaurant just around the corner from the hotel. There were a few tourists there (including some Germans who were also staying at our hotel) but it was a very local place. Really, that makes sense since we weren't in a very touristy part of Rome. Also, we found that if we went to dinner closer to 8 ("Italian dinner time"), most of the tourists had cleared out by then and the clientele were almost all Italians. At any rate, it was an excellent restaurant. They had a delicious antipasti bar with all kinds of grilled and sauteed vegetables. Lisa had penne all'arrabiata which she said was one of the best she'd every had. I had fettucine alla carbonara (my favorite Roman dish) and it was THE best I'd ever had. For desert, I had tiramisu and Lisa had torrone gelato. It was all fantastic. After savoring this delicious food, we headed back to the hotel to bed.

Coming next time: an inconvenient bus strike, a new hotel, the Galleria Borghese, a political rally, and SUN - all day!

The Forum Romanum from the Tabularium.

Lisa and the Marforio statue.

The Capitoline Venus.