We took so many dang pictures I gotta split our time at the Colosseum into a couple posts. I could narrow down the pictures but I love that Greg, Jayse & Jaelee all took pictures too. I like to see what they thought was important to take pictures of and so I want to keep as many as possible so lots of pictures it is.

From the Trevi fountain we made our way to the Colosseum. We walked down some stairs and through this alley to this view.

Just out of the alley and to the right you see this enormous building. It’s called the Victor Emmanuel II National Monument. It was built between 1885 and 1935 to honour Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of a unified Italy.

Just before the monument we saw all these ruins in Imperial Fora.

Church of Saint Mary of Loreto

Trajan’s Column is a Roman triumphal column in Rome, Italy, that commemorates Roman emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars. The story of Trajans war spirals around the column. It was created in 113 AD.

This monument is huge! Just for perspective the statue in the front of Victor Emmanuel II on the horse is the largest statue in the city and is so big that before all of the pieces were assembled a group of dignitaries toasted the creation of the statue in the belly of the horse.

Let’s get a closer look at that huge statue.

At the top on both sides of the momument is a statue of Winged Victories – Victoria in ancient Roman religion was the personified goddess of victory.

As we walked towards the Colosseum we passed a lot of ruins in Trajan Forum.

The Colosseum, we made it! We were really early to the Colosseum and were hoping to find some where to eat along the way. We didn’t really find much when we got to there the closest thing we could find was a small food place at the Metro next to the Colosseum.

The kids got hot dogs but the rest of us got pizza. We all agreed it was one of the best from the whole trip. It was half a pizza put in the oven and then the folded it in half and wrapped it in tissue. It was so good.

After eating we went over to the Colosseum. We still had some time so we walked around looking at everything around it and taking pictures.

Next to the Colosseum is the Arch of Constantine.

When it was our time we headed to get in line, the line was really short. Thank you off season! We got in really quick. We were told to go a window because we had purchased the extra tickets to do the Underground and Arena portions of the tour. At the window they directed us to an area we needed to wait with a group to be accompanied to the underground. It wasn’t a guide but we had to be accompanied. This is where we made a slight mistake. We should of got the audio tour equipment before this point but we didn’t. We also couldn’t figure out what App they were talking about to download the free audio tour. So we went in and didn’t get any information. We’d walk into an area and the employee would say press this # on the app and the people that had it knew what this room was. We were standing there just looking at an empty room not knowing what was significant about it. It was a bit of a bummer. I would of loved to hear the information.

It was still really neat to see and experience. You could put yourself in the time and imagine gladiators down there or animals.

They recreated elevators that would of been used to raise the gladiators or animals into the arena.

After the underground we went up to the Arena and top level. I’ll continue that in another post.