With my usual precision – we had transport booked for 9:30am so we were off the ship a little after 8am. A good thing as our driver and the others were not far away and we were heading to Rome by 9am.

We had a couple of hours to kill before we could check in to our accommodation – so we found somewhere to store our bags and went for a wander and stopped into a couple of the little cafes in the backstreets for coffee and lunch, and watched some steet artists.

Our main activity today (other than just getting here) was a Colloseum tour that included the Colloseum and Roman Forum – I must say I’m loving having archeologists as tour guides as they can really bring history to life. Our guide today, Dennis, was fabulous and it was like we were sitting in the sofa chatting but we were wandering through ancient ruins of a past era.

The scale of the Colloseum is amazing – completed in 80AD after only 8 years (workplace health and safety probably wasn’t a big concern) with 5 tiers of seating capable of seating 70,000 spectators. And it was in operation for nearly 500 years.!

That’s like us going to an arena to watch a show built back in the renaissance.!

Interesting fun fact – all the holes in the exterior are from people digging into the sandstone blocks to get out the linking metal. And strangely that weakened the structute.

The interior and seating was all marble – but it was all been taken (many many years ago) and recycled and used through the city but mainly in the churches.

But this was a grusome place of entertainment with an estimation of over 1,000,000 people killed or executed in the name of entertainment.

The other ruins we looked at was the Roman Forum and it was interesting to learn about the history of the making of the republic.

Photos of the Roman Forum

And some photos from the Colloseum.