More Rome…Palatine Hill, the Forum, and the Colosseum

I’ll share with you a tourist secret that I learned from my daughter: when you want to visit the Colosseum, go and visit Palatine Hill first. The line there is shorter, and the pass you buy will get you into the whole area. When you do make your way down to the Colosseum, you’ll be able to get in the shorter line

And Palatine Hill is well-worth the visit anyway! It’s gorgeous. You can see the ruins of all the Caesar’s houses, and there are some rooms that have just opened up for public viewing recently with frescoes on the walls. Amazing! You can’t take pictures of the rooms, but the outside area is all fair game, and very picturesque. Mike and Dani pose so you can see the scale:

From one of the walls of the hill, you can look down into the Forum. We didn’t go down that day because Rome was having a heatwave, and the temperature had soared over 100F by 10am. Here’s the Forum with all the “modern” buildings in the background:

In one of the corners as we went to leave Palatine Hill, we came across this many-breasted sphinx:

The Arch of Titus is one of the large show-off pieces that were built by different rulers. I thought this one was moving, because it shows the sacking of Jerusalem and the Romans making off with the Temple items. However, they didn’t seem to know how many arms the candlestick should have…

Finally we made it to the Colosseum. I am so annoyed with myself, because I took a sweeping panoramic video of the entire structure inside, but I did it in vertical format, so it doesn’t load to YouTube properly!! Oh well, I’ll just have to go back and try again

Here’s another shot of the Colosseum for you!!