Three Different Days and Three Different Views of the Roman Forum: Photo Gallery

After we went to St. Peter’s Basilica, we decided to walk to the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. It’s a long walk…it takes about 45 minutes to get to the Colosseum and the Forum, but we decided that walking would be more pleasant than taking an taxi or the metro.

You can see the Colosseum from quite a distance. If you look closely at this picture, you can see it up ahead.

This was the second time that we’d seen the Roman Forum. This view was from above the forum. We stood for a while and just looked at it from this relatively private place. It was fun to imagine the ancient Romans going about their daily business in this old, ruined city.

We wondered if the ancient Romans who once lived here could have ever imagined the modern day city that grew up around their once-thriving metropolis.

Behind us, there were more ruins of the ancient city across the street.

Isn’t it amazing how green it is here? When these pictures were taken, New York was in the middle of a major snowstorm and it was freezing cold in Nebraska. But Italy is closer to the equator than Nebraska, so it’s warmer there. And Rome is near the Mediterranean Sea too which helps to keep the temperature from becoming too extreme.

These photos were taken on our first day in Rome. We’d wandered around the city just to see what we could see.

We happened to find the Roman Forum, but we approached it from a completely different direction.

Lydian was really excited to see the forum. It’s something she’s read a lot about.

We stood on this side of the forum for a long time admiring it.

When the ancient city was built, architects really liked to build things with columns.

As we stood at this overlook, we wondered how the people down there got inside. We didn’t have a map and we weren’t sure where the entrance to the Roman Forum was located.

The weather forecast said there was a good chance of rain.

We decided to go back the way we came and see if we could find the entrance.

We went down some steps…

And found yet another overlook…

…but just as we stepped out to see this new view, it start to rain…heavily.

On the day we visited the Colosseum, I took this photo of the Arch of Constantine. Constantine was the first Christian Roman emperor. The arch is situated between the Colosseum and the Roman Forum.

By the time we got to the bottom, the gates were closed….we’d have to go back yet another day to see the inside of the Roman Forum.

We went back to the forum the next morning, on our last day in Rome.

We were able to walk through the ruins of the city and see some of the decaying buildings up close.

There were plaques in front of some of the buildings telling us what was important about each one. We read some of them, but also tried to just imagine what it would have been like to live in a place like ancient Rome.

The Roman Forum was a place where the people of the city would gather and have government “discussions” (today we call them “protests”). Right before a big event at the Colosseum, the gladiators would march through this area on their way to the Colosseum.

This part of the city was once a marketplace, like a strip-mall (sort of).

The stone pathways were hard to walk on. The stones were so big and irregular that it was hard to avoid tripping!

It’s fun to explore ruins and see how people lived from long time ago. We take a lot of comforts and technologies for granted.

We were satisfied after we’d seen the forum from the inside. It was time for us to get ready to leave Rome to take a train to Venice the next day.