And the far wall, turning right after taking above pic (amazing) . . .
and the oculus above . . .
Okay, back to the reality of modern Rome. Here is a bit of my Rome bus map. The buses can do a lot for you, but I caution you, it took me four days to understand the system, and even then . . . You need to learn the bus system because other than spagna, vatican city and colloseum the subways really don't go where you want to, and the escalators up from the depths are often broken. You have to buy tickets for the bus somewhere besides the buses. I bought a one-week unlimited
ticket and that worked out great. you have to validate your ticket on a
little machine in the bus (I rarely saw the locals bother to do this).
If the machine is broken the driver tells you to write the date and
time on your ticket. Pretty silly system. (Okay, figured it out yet?
here's how it works. let's say you're in the lower right in piazza
venezia and you want to go to the vatican. you need to find a number in
that group of numbers that matches a number up by the vatican. in this
case, you can see a #271 in piazza venezia and there is a #271 listed
by the vatican. So you find the stop (you have to decipher the signs at
the stop) and hop on and hope it's a reasonably direct route. if you
look carefully you can see the #271 all along the route. it's almost
like a board game. But obviously, the route you take varies when your
starting and end point change, as mine did hourly. took some getting
used to, but by the end of the week I was hopping on buses right and
left.)
Okay, this may not look like much (due to low light and the tungsten
film in this CVS camera) but this was the highlight of my trip--
discovering "Via Margutta-- 51." (Where the ficticious Joe Bradley
lives in Roman Holiday.) It really is there, it's a whole
courtyard leading to numerous apartments, with artisan shops on the
courtyard level (in what used to be stables I suppose-- anyway, that's
why the Joe Bradley character makes a phone call from a sculptor's
shop). This is the staircase where Joe Bradley gives the Princess a few
dollars with the old landlord looking askance. (That's the courtyard at
street level, center, at the bottom of the stairs thru the tunnel.) The
overhanging greenery has grown some in the past 50 years! No pilgrim to Rome ever had more of a religious experience than I did at this place. I sat there for quite a while, and went back again another day.
Since the stairs were all covered over with greenery I had to go down
the steps to get this shot of the balcony where the landlord stood in
the staircase shot . . . a little worse for wear I guess. But I didn't care.
Here, another staircase in the Via Margutta 51 complex . . . I should mention that most of modern "public" Rome does not have a lot of greenery. so this was a nice break from the non-stop concrete of the street. I looked around but could not find the terrace of Joe Bradley's apartment.
This the courtyard of Via Margutta 51-- note the garage doors leading
to artisan shops, where I assume Gregory Peck would have called Eddie Albert.
This is looking out to the street, the tunnel staircase is to the right
of this view. fyi,
there's an excellent vegetarian restaurant (to the right) at the end of the street!
Took some doing to find this, as it's not in many tourbooks . . .
the room which was the setting for the ending of Roman Holiday--
The Main Room of the Palazzo Colonna, not to be confused with Piazzo
Colonna . . . (!) It's only open Saturday mornings. If you go
downstairs, out the door, take a right and go four blocks, you come to
this . . . .
. . . the Victor Emmanual monument, used as a location in the scooter
sequence in Roman Holiday. (fyi, the Roman Forum is directly
behind it.) If you were to veer around to the right of it you would
come to . . .
This ruin of sorts known as the Theatro Marcello, (also used as a brief
background for one of the "scooter tour" shots in Roman Holiday)
. . . . Note the apartments built on top of the ruins. If you were to
follow the car in the shot about 4 blocks you would come to this little
parking lot/piazza
Known as Piazza della Bocca della Verità. The white building was
the Police Station in Roman Holiday. To the right, the little
tower is part of the church that houses
The famous"Mouth of Truth," which is sort of on a side wall of the front "porch" of the church. . . .
However, what was not shown in the movie is the never ending line of
tourists who, one by one, step up to the Mouth of Truth, stick their
hand in, and turn to have their picture taken by a fellow tourist. I
confess, I was fascinated by this ritual that was repeated over and
over again. I figured I just happened to be there at the same time as a tour bus, so I went by on another day to hopefully just ponder it by myself-- but the line of tourists was even longer.
A new find, this is palazzo barberini which was used as the exterior of the princess' home/ consulate. It's 2 blocks south of piazza republica, turn rt on fontana.
This is a courtyard seen through a window in the Vatican Museum.
Inside the Vatican Museum . . . . I got there at opening time at the
same time as dozens of tour group buses . . . even though the line was
about 1/3 of a mile long, they got us in there quickly. The way it
works is, even if you just want to see the Sistine Chapel you still
have to walk all the way through the museum to get there. In planning the trip I originally resented this bit of forced museum-going but once I get there, I changed my mind-- I really enjoyed it. For future travellers,
someone in my hotel reported that the lines were much shorter at noon--
which would make sense, as all the tour buses get there at opening.
But, who knows.
The ceiling of one hallway in the Vatican Museum (the gallery of
maps) was made up of all these amazing sculptures . . .
This was the NORAD of its day, the paintings are topographical military maps of
all the pope's renaissance-era territrories.
At the end of the vatican museum tour you finally come to the
Sistine Chapel which . . . what can I say? I was awestruck. I kept thinking I was done and tried to move on but I went back four times. This is a pic
(borrowed from another website) of what i found to be my favorite part
of the ceiling: Jonah and the "great fish." (The chapel is very echo-ey, was very crowded when I was there, and the crowd's talking gradually crescendos, until a guard says "SILENZIOOOOO" . . . and you're not allowed to take pics inside the Sistine Chapel-- so when the guard sees a camera, he chants "NO PEECTURES . . . NO VEED-YO . . .")
Borrowed from another website, a shot looking down on the back of
St. Peter's. Bear in mind, the church is laid out like a big cross and
this is just the top of the cross, in back of the main alter, so this
doesn't really show you the immensity of it, but . . . My pix of the
inside of St. Peter's didn't come out, not sure they would capture it
anyway-- SIX ACRES of floorspace. The interior of this church was more
spacious than most of the exteriors of Rome.
A shot from the front of St. Peter's-- there were thousands of chairs
set up for some event, I know not what. I really tried but failed to
capture the immensity of the space of the place.
Well it took 3 frames but i almost got all of the front of St.
Peter's in here (slide your browser bar for the full effect-- it's a
whole lot bigger than it looks here. Apologies for the photographic
distortions). Turns out Michelangelo, the original designer, wanted the
main church to be a Greek cross (same size up and down as left to
right) but some Peter Keating-type added an extra hundred feet or so to
the front, which makes it a lot bigger obviously but really makes the
front look kinda strange with the dome so far back from where it was
supposed to be. The Sistine Chapel is next to the main hall of St.
Peter's on the right side. You enter the Sistine Chapel from what was
once the Pope's bedrooms, so the effect of coming into it through the
public entrance is now lost-- it's a magnificent upward-climbing marble
staircase, which you now see only as an exit.
In the foreground is one of the 13 Egyptian obelisks that there are in
Rome (in all of Egypt there are only 5). You can see the view
from the top of the dome here,
in a pic that will also show you how densely built the city is and how
few trees there are.
The one one thing I couldn't stop pondering was, how in the world
did they build such mammoth structures using nothing but ropes and
horses??? Well I guess there's no limit to what you can do if there's
no union demanding overtime.
While the grand entrance to the Vatican and St. Peter's is supposed
to be "all welcoming," here is what the rest of the Vatican looks like
from outside . . . a rather nasty-looking fort. I tried to find the
"wall where wishes come true" but could not, HOWEVER, a wonderful fellow in rome (check out his website: www.conciergeinrome.com) found what he thought was the wall and sent me a pic of it . . .
It was part of the Aurelian Walls, and is on "Viale del policlinico," southwest of the Villa Borghese. The votive plaques are no longer there, but i hear you see the holes left in the walls.
Update: I found this pic of piazzale brasile in an old rome picture book
I don't think this is THE wall of wishes place from the movie, but the little roofed inset in the wall is similar to what was in the movie, so I would guess it might be around here someplace.
The Vatican Police in their bizarre uniforms.
One of the many bridges on the Tiber, this one connects to an island
(Isola Tiberina) that connects on the other side to Trastevere.
In the many the churches of Rome (and there is one every 45 feet)
you will come across all these artifacts from the New Testament. It really is an experience to encounter such things up close and personal, you would think these things would be locked up in a vault somewhere but instead they are just sitting out there in the open. In a
church across the alley from my hotel you will find part of the post
that Christ was tied to when whipped by the Romans. You can put 50
cents in a slot and its little alcove lights up.
In another church down the block you can find a set of chains that
apparently were used on St. Peter himself.
The Castel de Sant' Angelo. The bridge with its statues was part of
the barge dance scene in Roman Holiday. It is now closed to vehicles. I
was surprised at how narrow it was, just barely wide enough for 2 lanes
if that.
Taken from the bridge shown above, for Roman Holiday Fans,
this is the staircase that led to the barge dance on the Tiber.
Unfortunately, the river was at least 12 feet above normal levels when
i was there, so this was a big disappointment for me . . . sad to say everything was under water, including the place downstream where they kiss for the first time . . . if they had fallen in the river the day I took this pic I suspect that would have been the end of the story as, the current being what it was, they both
would have been drowned and washed out to sea! Fellow Roman Holiday pilgrims, brace yourselves if you go here, another big
disappointment of this day was the unpleasant stink I encountered here.
Some mimes who spookily looked like sculptures outside castel de
sant' Angelo. It's worth mentioning that as this photo illustrates, Rome doesn't have a lot of greenery. Tired travelers take note, park benches are also a rarity.
The Spanish Steps . . . Another open space where people congregate. This was also a location for Roman Holiday, but the two towers behind it were being renovated, so it didn't quite have the visual effect it usually has.
The view of the Spanish Steps from yet another narrow little Roman
Road, Via Condotti, which is also the poshest shopping street in Rome.
(Note the typical narrow canyon street, and the cars and pedestrians
jostling for space-- I just couldn't get used to this) I discovered that in this area there is a whole
latticework of little streets and alleys with all sorts of little shops
(the closest i came to finding a mall). Some of the shops were not so
good -- I don't recommend Botton Down Roma or The Tie Shop, I had not so great experiences there. Robert Serafini seemed like a good guy, sold me a great tie, he's moving his shop tho, so no address to give.
FYI, shop carefully, as in Italy it is actually illegal to give a refund on a return. I learned that the hard way. Don't buy anything if they won't let you try it on first.
A little sadder-but-wiser advice about the VAT tax refund: first, you only get a
refund on the VAT tax (it's only about 12% if that) if you spend at
least 155 euros in ONE SHOP.
I had a lot of trouble with my VAT tax refund. Got one from one place, but it took 6 months to get the other from Botton Down Roma after much complaining and aggravation. And the check was dated months beofre, so I had just enough time to cash it before it went stale!
There may be other ways to do it than what I did - I suggest doing some research on it. You might be able to bring the paperwork home and do it through your credit card company. If you do it like I did, i.e., immediately, you have to fill out a form from each vendor with your credit card/ passport number, etc., have it stamped at the airport, and mail it in. Note the mailbox in the Rome airport was completely full, I had to stuff it in. Different vendors in Rome use different VAT tax refunders, and i get the sense they are like rebate fulfillers here in the USA-- no one rewards them for giving money away, so be alert.
What a pain.
Pardon the photographic flaws . . here is of course inside of the
colloseum on a rainy day . . . The colloseum is made up of 3 concentric
ovals. This, the seating area, fills the inner oval. The inner oval is
all still there but the middle and and outer ovals are missing from all
but a third of the original exterior. You can see part of what's left
of the outer oval at the top right. I was intrigued to discover that
while the exterior is made of cut stone, much of the seating area of
the colloseum you see here was made out of bricks, which were used to
make forms for poured concrete. While you can still see the bricks,
much of the moss-like greenery at the tops of the of the sloping
seating area is the slowly eroding concrete.
Here, from outside rather than inside, you can see the same edge of the
remaining part of the higher outer oval (and the middle oval which is
the lowest) . . . Note the sloping brickwork at the edge that holds it
up. fyi, most of the stone from the outer walls was carted off to build
other buildings, as I guess it was cheaper to do that than quarry new
rock. Also, if you look at the top you can see a little guardrail where
they stood for a shot in Roman Holiday, but i am not sure if
you can get up there nowadays.
Here you can see the exitways that are between the inner and middle
ovals.
Again, like so many Roman ruins (and St. Peter's), the pictures you see
do not capture the sheer immensity of the buildings . . . take a good
look at the size of the crowd here compared to the building. Just a
theory of mine, but when you look at these few extant Roman buildings,
you get the sense, not that they are overly large, but that YOU are
overly SMALL. Both the ruins and St. Peter's had this effect on me, of
making me feel that they are the dwelling places of beings much larger
than myself. I can't help but think that was the intended
propaganda-ish intention of the builders. If it was, it works.
A nifty trick I learned, if the lines are long at the Colosseum, you can get the same ticket at the entrance to the Palatine Hill, which includes both. And I recommend touring the Palatine Hill, it was interesting.
If you were to do an about face from the Colloseum you
would be facing the entrance to the Foro Romano, i.e., the Roman Forum.
Before I get there, for a little intro, here is an engraving of what the forum may have looked like in its heyday . . . I was totally unprepared for the forum, it was one of the most interesting parts of the trip, so if you go there I strongly recommend reading a book or two about it, as just going there with a basic tourbook won't really give you very much of the depth of history that is sitting before you. A lot of the columns in the forum are just stumps now, but quite a few buildings are
still standing, more than I expected from the references I had seen in Rome tourbooks-- enough that you can get a sense of it being a city square. It didn't look anything like I was expecting, so I wish I had gone back a second day to ponder it. So much history. When you walk through the forum, the incomplete bits and pieces of buildings play on your imagination;
there's enough of them still standing-- in the same spot they have been for 2,000 years-- that your sense of time and space gets really twisted. Anyway, if you look at the pic above, just to the right of dead center you can sort of make out an archway, and . . .
Here it is today. Shot from a different angle . . . it is called the Arch of Septimius Severus. Roman
Holiday fans: Immediately to the left of it is the spot where
Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn first meet in the movie. There used to
be a road thru the forum, it was where I stood to take this pic (in the
movie you see the taxi drive on it) but it is no longer there.
Turned to the right from the previous pic, here is another shot of
the Forum, looking toward the colloseum. The forum is laid out in sort
of a long rectangle, and this sort of gives you a sense of looking at
it lengthwise toward the colloseum (the opposite angle from the drawing above). The Palatine Hill section (an even
older part of the forum, and while the forum is free, you have to pay
to get in to that part) is on the center/right. There is a better pic
of it at greatbuildings.com
(click on "continue to image")
Well those are my Rome pics . . . I don't want to dissuade anyone
from visiting the eternal city, and I admit I was in a somewhat
stressed and fatigued state when I got there, but I feel compelled to
caution you, it is a very URBAN environment, with lots of traffic and
cheap pizza places and hucksters everywhere. You have to have the nerve
of a bullfighter to cross any main street-- I would just wait for a
local to cross (and let them stop the crazed constant oncoming traffic)
and duck in behind them. The public transportation is a disgrace-- the
subways and buses are incredibly crowded. You should take the warnings
about pick-pocketing seriously-- even if you are extremely wary, the
fact that you are so severely crammed into the buses and subways makes
it impossible to know if you're just being bumped or if your pockets
are getting picked. I had no problems, but I think i was mostly lucky.
I can't fully describe the experience of riding the subway in Rome, it
was like the biggest game of "Twister" you can imagine. People just
piled in every which way.
My own impression of Rome, of going from site to site, was that it in many ways has become a sort of public amusement park . . . There
are more tourists than residents, or so it seems, and while there are many wonderful things in it, I found it was, for me at least, not a very pleasant place to be. I was truly astonished by tourists who would walk, by the hundreds, in and out of churches and wander about like they were at a mall, taking flash photos while an actual service was going on . . I am not making this up.
I found most Romans to be just barely tolerant of the tourists . . . I often felt like an unwelcome guest, being politely ignored. My fellow tourists were a
whole lot friendlier than the locals. To be fair, some Romans were helpful, but they were always in a rush to get somewhere. As I have thought about it, I
realized that the tourist industry has probably taken much of the
housing of Rome and turned it into cheap hotels, driving average people
out of the city. I never saw any school-age children in Rome. I think
people still live in Rome but, like the folks in modern day via
margutta 51, they live behind walls in gated communities that protect
them from the hordes of tourists. Seeing all the sights was fun but I
felt really frustrated in that there was no "culture" of Rome to
experience, everywhere I went I encountered more tourists. Perhaps if I had had more time I would have discovered that part of Rome, but . . . I didn't.
The rank and file Romans themselves, I have come to feel sorry for--
I could sense, from riding the buses with the working class folks in the afternoon, a tremendous collective eagerness on their part to get out of the city as
soon as possible.
I really didn't feel like I had gone to a foreign country-- just
about everyone speaks english, and all the signs are in both english
and italian.
I will admit, my assessment of Rome is strongly influenced by the
fact that the trip was mentally exhausting . . . this was not a vacation. I went there to learn, and in that sense, it was very successful trip. But trying to grasp all the historical information coming at you at every turn of the road
is very taxing. The influence that ancient, renaissance, and modern
Rome continues to have upon all our lives is just so immense that I
find I am still processing it, and I may never finish the job. This trip had a profound effect on me, and I am still assimilating it. I think it is always good to replace ignorant imagination with fact whenever possible, and this trip
certainly did THAT. We have all heard about Rome through history
classes and books and movies, so it is impossible to go to Rome without
a lot of pre-conceived notions about it; for me, encountering so much
conflicting reality was a little jarring, to say the least.
It WAS occasionally very sweet to feel a little bit like I was
stepping onto the set of my favorite movie here and there.
fyi, if you aren't suffering from a Roman Holiday fetish like me, and you only have a day, my recommendations are: Vatican Museum and St. Peter's in the morning, the pantheon for lunch, and the colosseum and forum in the afternoon.
If you decide to go, I hope these pics were of some use to you!
Bye for now -- JL
Please check out my book about my life playing bass with the Boston Pops!
PS
For a professional concierge to aid you in your trip to rome, visit,
My friend antonio's website! it's an extensive on-line tour guide!
A very comprehensive study of the Roman Holiday movie locations
My trip to Paris
My trip to Rio
For more info, questions, etc.,
email me at justinlocke1@gmail.com
