Sam, I am: April 2014

Flavian Amphitheatre or the Colesseum at Dusk

...Rome, the eternal city. I have no idea why but I fell in love with Rome on my first visit, because it was noisy, dirty, pushy, and even overwhelming at times. To be blunt, cigarette butts can be found just about anywhere and the crazy traffic; well traffic is a way of life in Rome and there are more mopeds (as well as crazy drivers) than Paris (I never imagined that was possible, but it is). Definitely not any reason to love it. So what was it about Rome that captivated me; the food, the wine, the history, the ruins, the cobblestone streets, the fountains, the piazzas, the art, the music, the fashion, the attitude, the passion or the people. All of the above and so very much more. I think it's an inherent zest for life, while mixing the ancient and the modern in a spellbinding manner.

In Rome, history and culture embraces you at every turn. The "downtown of Ancient Rome" includes the Colosseum, Roman Form and Palatine Hill which are must sees of any visit and can be viewed together. Give yourself several hours to view all three and use the Roma Pass or another ticket format that allows you to skip the lines. The Roman Forum and Palatine Hill will get hot and dusty, so morning visits are the best. Now if you are in Rome for a short time, add the Capitoline Museums after exiting the Roman Forum. The nice thing about the Capitoline Museums is that they are not large museums, not crowded, contain some of Rome's iconic ancient statues (she-wolf, colossal statue of Constantine, Dying Gaul), have beautiful renaissance and baroque masterpieces (Caravaggio, Rubens, Titian, and Tintoretto) and are a great introduction to the fine arts for all ages. These museums can easily seen in a couple of hours.

St. Peter's Basilica

No visit is complete without a visit to the Vatican. The only way to visit the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel while maintaining any resemblance of sanity is to pick a day before you travel and pre-book your tickets. The lines are long and you can wait hours in line to get a ticket (guide books and travel sites mention one hour as the standard wait time, but when you read travel forums or have seen the lines, you quickly realize that it is often much longer than that). So even if you travel by the seat of your pants, this really is the one time and place to pre-plan (the Louvre would probably be another). Regardless of your personal philosophy with respect to religion; St. Peter's Basilica is a late Renaissance/early baroque masterpiece of architecture definitely worth a view. The great architects of Italy's 16th and 17th centuries have worked on it including Bramante, Raphael, Peruzzi, Michelangelo, Maderno, and Bernini. The entire interior of St. Peter's is beautifully decorated with marble, reliefs, and architectural sculpture. The basilica contains a large number of tombs, many of which are outstanding artworks (my favourite is the tomb of Alexander VII by Bernini). There are also a number of sculptures in niches and chapels, including Michelangelo's Pietà, his only signed piece and in it self the reason to visit St. Peter's Basilica.

The forum gets brutally hot and dusty in summer (especially August), so visit in the cool morning, wear a brimmed hat, and bring bottled water. - See more at: http://reidsitaly.com/destinations/lazio/rome/sights/forum.html#sthash.FgnKRdOz.dpuf

Pantheon at Sunrise

Other note worthy attractions in Rome include the Pantheon, the most preserved building of ancient Rome with architecture that boasts of mathematical genius and simple geometry yet still impresses architects and visitors alike. The fountains of Rome including but definitely not limited to the Trevi Fountain, the Piazzas, other museums (my personal favourite is the Borghese Gallery), the churches (over 900 but who's counting anyway, we know there are lots), the food and the shopping; are all good reasons to visit Rome. In many ways Rome is a city frozen in time and I think our illusion of Rome tends to obscure its reality. At some point all roads do indeed lead to Rome; how we get there or what our expected outcome may be is irrelevant, as the outcome or destination is the same. They say Rome wasn't built in a day, seeing it in a day is impossible but then again Rome will always be there (at least in my lifetime).

View of the Roman Forum from the Capitoline Museums
(The Arch of Septimius Severus, the Temple of Vespasian and Titus and the Temple of Saturn are visible in the foreground)