Ancient Rome

Rome was built on seven hills. Its legendary founders, the twins Romulus and Remus, were abandoned as infants but were suckled by a she wolf on the banks of the Tiber and adopted by a shepherd. Encouraged by the gods to build a city, the twins chose a site in 735 be, fortifying it with a wall that has been identified by archae¬ologists digging on the Palatine, the first hill of Rome to be inhabited. During the building of the city, the brothers quarreled, and in a fit of anger Romulus killed Remus.

Excavations on the Palatine and in the Forum area have re¬vealed hard evidence of at least some aspects of the city's legendary beginnings. The ruins on the two most historic hills the Capitoline and the Palatine mark the center of ancient Rome, capital of the classical world and center of a vast empire. The former hill held the seat of government, the Capitol, whose name is commemorated in every capital city in the world, as well as in government buildings, such as the Capitol in Washington, DC.

If you stand on the Capitoline and gaze out over the ruins of the Forum to the Palatine, with the Colosseum looming in the background, you can picture how Rome looked when it was the center of the known world. Imagine the Forum filled with immense, brightly painted temples.

Pic¬ture the faint glow from the temple of Vesta, where the vestal virgins tended their sacred fire, and the glistening marble palace complex on the Palatine, its roof studded with statues, where the emperors and their retinues lived in incredible luxury. Then think of how the area looked in the Dark Ages, when Rome had sunk into malaria ridden squalor.

The Capitoline hill is a good place to begin when exploring the city. Rome's first and most sacred temples stood here. The city's archives were kept in the Tabularium (hall of records), the tall, gray stone structure that forms the foundations of today's city hall, the Palazzo Senatorio. By the Middle Ages, the Campidoglio, as the hill was then known, had fallen into ruin. In 1537, Pope Paul III called on Michelangelo to restore it to grandeur, and the artist designed the ramp, the buildings on three sides of the Campidoglio Square, the slightly convex pave¬ment and its decoration, and the pedestal for the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.

A work of the 2nd century AD, the statue stood here from the 16th century to just recently, when it was removed for restoration and rein¬stallation in a more friendly environment inside the Palazzo dei Conservatori Even¬tually, a copy of the statue will occupy the origi¬nal pedestal outdoors.

The palaces flanking the Palazzo Senatorio con¬tain two museums, the Museo Capitolino and the Palazzo dei Conservatori, whose collections were assembled in the 15th century by Pope Six¬tus V, one of the earliest of the great papal pa¬trons of the arts. Those with a taste for Roman and Greek sculpture will appreciate both muse¬ums; others may find the collections dull but the setting impressive. Many of the statues were re¬stored by over conscientious 18th and 19thcen¬tury collectors who added heads and limbs with considerable abandon.

Originally, almost all these works were brilliantly colored and gilded. Many of the works here and in Rome's other mu¬seums are copies of Greek originals. For hun¬dreds of years, craftsmen of ancient Rome prospered by producing copies of Greek statues on order; they used a process called pointing, by which exact copies could be made.

Portraiture, however, was one area in which the Romans outstripped the Greeks. The hundreds of Roman portrait busts in the Museo Capitolino are the highlight of a visit here. In the court¬yard, the reclining river god is one of the talks Ancient Rome ing statues to which ancient Romans affixed anonymous political protests and satirical barbs.

The most interesting pieces, on display upstairs, include the poignant Dying Gaul and the delicate Marble Faun, which inspired novel¬ist Nathaniel Hawthorne's tale of the same name. Then you'll come upon the rows of por¬trait busts, a kind of ancient Who's Who, though rather haphazardly labeled. Look for cruel Car¬acalla, vicious Nero, and haughty Marcus Aure¬lius.

Across the square is the Palazzo dei Conserva¬tori, which contains similar treasures. The huge head and hand in the courtyard are fragments of a colossal statue of the emperor Constantine; these immense effigies were much in vogue in the later days of the Roman Empire. The re-splendent Salone dei Orazi e Curiazi upstairs is a ceremonial hall with a magnificent gilt ceiling, carved wooden doors, and 16thcentury fres¬coes.

The Capitoline's church of Aracoeli was one of the first in the city built by the emerging Chris-tians. It's known for Pinturicchio's 16thcentury frescoes in the first chapel on the right and for a much revered wooden figure of the Christ Child, kept in a small chapel in the sacristy.

The Campidoglio gardens offer the best view of the sprawling ruins of ancient Rome. Caesar's Forum lies below the garden, to the left of Palazzo Senatorio. It is the oldest of the Imperial Fora, those built by the emperors, as opposed to those built during the earlier, Republican peri¬od (6th1st centuries BC), as part of the original Roman Forum. Across Via dei Fori Imperiali, the broad avenue created by Premier Benito Mussolini for his triumphal parades, are, from the left, Trajan's Column in the base of which the emperor Tra¬jan's ashes were buried, Trajan's Forum, with its huge semicircular market building, and the ruins of the Forum of Augustus.

Now turn your attention to the Roman Forum, in what was once a marshy valley between the Capitoline and Palatine hills. The shortest way down is Via San Pietro in Carcere actually a flight of stairs descending to the church that e stands over the Mamertine Prison, a series of gloomy, subterranean cells where Rome's van¬quished enemies were finished off. Legend has it that St. Peter was held prisoner here and that he miraculously brought forth a spring of water in order to baptize his jailers. Donation re¬quested.

From the main entrance on Via dei Fori Imperiali, descend into the extraordinary archaeological complex that is the Roman Forum. This was the civic heart of Republican Rome, the austere Rome that preceded the hedonistic society that grew up under the emperors in the 1st to the 4th century AD. Today it seems no more than a baffling series of ruins, marble fragments, isolated columns, a few, worn arches, and occasional paving stones. Yet It once was filled with stately and extravagant buildings temples, palaces, shop sand people from .all corners of the world.

What you see are the rums of almost 900 years, from about 500 be to AD 400. As the original buildings became too small or old-fashioned, they were pulled down and re¬placed by more lavish structures. Making sense of these scarred stones is not easy; you may want just to wander along, letting your imagina¬tion dwell on Julius Caesar, Cicero, and Mark Antony who delivered the funeral address in Caesar' honor from the rostrum just left of te Arch of Septimius Severus. Entrance on Vta dei Fori Imperiali, Piazza Santa Marta Nova, and Via di San Gregorio,
Leave the Forum by the exit at Arco di Tito (Arch of Titus), which is at the end of the Forum away from the Capitoline. From here, the Cli¬vus Palatinus, an ancient path, leads up the Pal¬atine hill, where the emperors built their palaces.

From the belvedere you can see the Circus Maximus, where more than 300,000 specta¬tors could watch chariot and horse races while the emperors looked on from this very spot. The Italian garden on the Palatine was laid out dur¬ing the Renaissance. Leaving the Palatine by way of the Via di San Gregorio exit, you'll come upon the imposing Arch of Constantine, erected in AD 315 to commemorate Constantine's victory over Maxentius.

Just beyond is the Colosseum, the most famous monument of ancient Rome. Begun by the Flavian emperor Vespasian in AD 72, it was inau¬gurated by Titus eight years later with a 100¬day program of games and shows. On the open¬ing day alone, 5,000 wild beasts perished in the arena.

More than 50,000 spectators could crowd into the 573yard circumference, which was faced with marble and boasted an ingenious sys¬tem of awnings to shade them from the sun. Originally known as the Flavian Amphitheater, in later centuries it came to be called the Colos¬seum, after a colossal gilded bronze statue of Nero that stood nearby.

It served as a fortress during the 13th century and then as a quarry from which materials were filched to build sumptuous Renaissance churches and palaces. Finally it was declared sacred by the popes, in memory of the many Christians believed mar¬tyred there. You must pay admission to the up¬per levels.