Well, looks like we lucked out again! Our tour guide for ancient Roma and the Ruins was phenomenal... an American history-buff originally from Napa, California. Having an American tour-guide certainly made the tour more relatable and humorous for us. Graham told us that when he gives tours of various of Rome he always finds it challenging to keep up with the most recent news... since the city still thrives, not everything has been discovered or dated yet - it's constantly being excavated and discovered. Everyday, historians learn a change to their past knowledge due to some new discovery.
Walking around the ruins we learned the history of Rome in both a mythological and interpreted sense. The former walls around the Palatino hill and the story of the orphaned twin brothers who fought each other until death over the construction of the wall was certainly entertaining. We saw a variety of ancient Rome's most important areas - the senate house where the republic would vote on laws and taxes for the empire as well as the stage and forum where the emperors and senators could address the public and generate change in the city. Rome was the first city to reach a population over 1,000,000 people thousands of years before any other city could come close to that size. During the collapse, the city was destroyed and cut to only 6,000...wow! The temple dedicated to Julius Cesar was strategically placed just behind the forum because of his closeness to the people and his common time spent addressing them in the forum. When Julius was killed, his ashes were scattered in the temple.
There were tons of other things I learned about and the guide truly took us back in time... one of the things I most vividly remember was the history of how Roma got it's name... Amor in Latin is "love" and Amor spelled backwards is...ROMA! So simple but awesome.
As far as the Colosseum goes, I could dedicate a whole other entry rambling on about it's beauty but in all honesty the beauty can only speak for itself. I'm sure most know the history of the colosseum and about the 100 days of gladiator entertainment games that occurred there each year. The most remarkable aspect of the tour was learning the arenas transformation from a amphitheater to family owned property to a "home depot" where Romans could come take iron (200,000 tons total was removed and has had a large part to do with the crumbling of the landmark) to a holy historical site (stopping the tampering of the property).
Loved this tour!
Graham's Contact Information:
www.tibertoursrome.com, tibertours@gmail.com
+393473959540 or +393392266321
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