Rome's colossal spectacle - sans Russell Crowe

Another hot summer’s day in Rome and another day marvelling at the city’s architectural feats. Is it possible there's too much to see here? After a bit of emailing, we’d found a spot on another Walks of Italy tour – this time an early morning visit to the Colosseum. In an attempt to beat the heat and crowds, our tour started at 8.30am. Once the gates to the 2000-year old icon opened, we were in.

I knew very little about this place before the tour - basically what I had seen in the shorts of Gladiator. Although after learning only a fraction of the building’s history from our guide, Jos, I could see its appeal to Hollywood. An initial one hundred days of games, exotic animals, duels to the death, slaves fighting for freedom and 55,000 Romans enjoying the fun. Would anything else on earth have been such a spectacle? It’s no surprise the Colosseum’s popularity lasted centuries.



Although there were a number of other tour groups in the Colosseum at the same time, it was not remotely crowded. Again being in a small group (this time there were nine of us) helped. We spent about an hour in the Colosseum before moving to Palatine Hill – where Rome began. The rest of the three-hour tour was spent on Palatine Hill and through the Roman Forum. Whenever I travel in Europe I’m always amazed at how old everything is. An Australian’s idea of an historic event is when cricketer David Boon drank 52 tinnies (beers) on a flight from Sydney to London. That was 1989. One of Australia's most prominant historic attractions is Port Arthur - the penal colony in Tasmania. That was settled in 1830. The Colesseum was finished in 80AD. We really are a baby of a country. 

But in Rome, the current city is built on top of another city…which is built on top of another city. The history here is amazing - and you can still see it. The Romans live on it and in it. You don’t need pictures of what it looked like thousands of years ago….just visit the right places and you can see for yourself.





While the Colosseum is impressive in size, without Jos it would have just been a well-kept pile of ruins. This was our second tour with Walks of Italy and both have been great fun. Jos, from Holland, moved to Italy for one year...that was nearly three years ago. He started leading tours in the Vatican before branching out. He was a great guide - very funny and not afraid to let his personality show, whether it was sharing opinions or his own theories of why things happened the way they did. A special shout out to the girls who handled our bookings. We booked our Tuesday Twilight City Stroll tour only hours beforehand by email and our Thursday tour on Wednesday afternoon. Everything was organised super quickly.

At the end of the tour we headed to Travestere, a trendy area across the river for a quick walk before returning to Campo de' Fiori for the Euro 2012 6pm game. Italy was playing Croatia and we wanted to enjoy it with people who could understand the commentary. Every café and bar was showing the game and by 6pm you were lucky to get a seat, but we arrived early and scored prime viewing. The game was a draw, despite the encouragement from the Italian fans.