Ancient Rome was a impressive empire, encircling the Mediterranean sea, and it's centre was no disappointment. We went to Rome with our grand-dad (we call him Dapa) who was over for the week. It was lots of fun. The first thing we did when we got to Rome was actually to go to the Vatican. When we got there, we walked around listening to our audio tour and enjoyed the area. However, we did not go in the St.Peter's cathedral because by the time we got there we were tired and there was a long line. In the end, despite not seeing all of it, I thought it was a cool place with lots of history.
On the second day, we went to the Forum. We split up into two groups, Dapa went with me, and Papa went with Nina. We walked around listening to our audio guide, learning about one of two triumphal arches (We did not get to see the other arch because it was under construction, so we just skipped it. The one we did see showed the conquering of the Jews), the burial site of Julius Caesar, and many other important temples. Personally my two Favourite parts were the gigantic basilica of Constantine and the roman bronze doors.
The Basilica of Constantine was created during the Roman empire, emperor Maxentius started construction in 308 AD but, the basilica was finished by emperor Constantine in 312 AD (After he defeated emperor Maxentius). When we walked onto the open platform, I saw a few random columns and a corridor that was running parallel to me, interestingly one of the two walls of the corridor was made of arches. The corridor looked like in the past it had many many many seats and I assumed that it was a big version of the centre isle in one of those three corridor churches. To me, it seemed like one of those things that's so popular and everyone thinks it's more important and amazing than it actually is(don't get me wrong they tend to be cool, but not as amazing as they are portrayed), so when you expect to go there soon, you get super excited and expect it to bee super cool. When you actually get there, it is a disappointment. No one had told me about the amazingness of this particular peace so i was not that disappointed, even so i was sad that it was not somehow more important.
as we were turning to leave our tour person said something like "OK so this is a building with lots of history, but what makes it stand out from the other buildings is not it’s history, but it's size.” we were confused, at its tallest point it rivalled the centre corridor in the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (also known as the cathedral with the duomo on it in Florence). But i mean seriously a building built in the height of the roman empire was around the size of a building built at the end of the dark ages? It was called the dark ages for a reason, the Romans should step up there game! then he goes on to say "you see that isle, now look at the arches, and up to the top now look for a part that sticks out it should bend towards you a little, good. now look across the square for a column, now imagine that the bit sticking out of the corridor was a arch that stretched all the way to that column." it turned out that this was indeed one of those three corridor churches (or basilica), but the corridor that i had assumed was the main corridor, was actually just a side corridor, the whole basilica proboli could have fit two of my houses in it esely! (that's prboli the best i could do at describing it's enormousness, really you have to see it to understand its colossal size)
As we walked around, our audio guide told us to stop in front of a pair of bronze doors, it told us that these brons doors were made by the Romans! Our audio guide also mentioned that the whole area, before they figured out what it was and dug it up, was actually underground. He showed us a door on the third or fourth floor of one of the taller buildings, he said that when the area was filled in, some people had made a church out of the old building. I wondered how the bronze doors survived so much dirt pushing against them.
