As the Wind Blows

You can’t escape ancient Rome in this city. It’s everywhere! There are ancient structures or ruins just lying around or being excavated at the speed only Italians can complete a job. Famous ruins like the Colosseum and the Roman Forum are of course well preserved, but the other ancient buildings/ruins have just been cordoned off waiting to be restored or at the very least, not destroyed further.

I now understand why Roman Baths were so famous. It’s because it can get so ridiculously hot in Rome. Wandering through the Roman Forum with the sun reflecting off the white sand is definitely a way to get a tan. I think my sweat glands must have frozen in London, because they wouldn’t even function to cool me down. Instead I had to keep sitting down on these ruins of temples in order to attempt to concentrate on the guide’s non-stop commentary of what each of the ruins used to be and the reason they were built and what happened to them afterwards. All I gained were that there were a lot of temples built and then they were converted into churches later instead of building new buildings. Romans are big on recycling.

Speaking of recycling, the reason the Colosseum is half destroyed is because the stones were used to build churches during the Renaissance and during medieval times the Romans dug holes inside the structure in order to pilfer metal. How resourceful! Or lazy depending on how you look at it.

At least the Italians openly admit that they stole the 13 Basilisks from Alexandria in Egypt. It’s quite surreal to randomly stumble across a Basilisk happily situated in the middle of a piazza and usually accompanied by fountains on either side.

Recycling is still big in Rome these days but it’s restricted to paper, plastic, glass, compost and non biodegradable material. So essentially each day you have to put out one type of rubbish to either be recycled or thrown into the tip. I’d prefer our method of just having one recycling and one non-recycling bin.

I don’t think modern Rome would survive without Ancient Rome and the tourism it brings; people from all over the world who love to see dilapidated buildings, ancient dilapidated buildings at that. Rome may have past its Golden Age but just wandering through the cobblestones streets, the paint peeled houses, the piazzas with fountains or obelisks (‘recycled’ from Egypt)in the centre I doubt much will ever changed dramatically in the Eternal City.