Travels Around Roma Part IX: Firenze Di Nuovo

In case you're wondering, Di Nuovo means again in Italian. So this is the continued story of my Florentine travels. I left off at the point in time when I exited the bus. I was in a general bus area and they guys pointed me in a general direction. Well it turned out that they gave me good directions because I saw some shops open and activity and people walking around. I followed the road and to my surprise I saw this...

La Basilica di Santa Croce (Basilica of the Holy Cross) is purposely designed to take you on by surprise. You see it all at once and you don't see it coming up ahead. Also it is designed so that you can't take a full picture of it or see it fully easily. It's kind of a facade because like many churches in Italy its not as tall as it appears from the front. Thus I have different pictures from different angles. But for good pictures of the full front and the inside (which I couldn't go into) go here.

The Golden Door is directly in line with the front door of the Duomo and you cant really go far enough to get a good view. But I got some good views like these. This is the front but you can't see how far wide the Duomo extends...

This is the view to the left of the door. And by the way the level of detail and decoration is not done justice by these pictures. Each of the statues was hand-carved and placed really high up, for example, and everything else was done by hand. It's a lot to think about all at once.

Here is a view of the middle portion again but magnified. The Duomo was completed in 1436 after 16 years of construction and its really amazing literally how they built a huge cathedral like this. I couldn't do it now without power equipment, especially the frescos and statues that are really high up.

And here is a view from the right side. Notice the bell tower and dome behind the main entrance. I regret not being able to go inside because it looks amazing from pictures, but then again nobody could go in. And seeing the exterior was good enough. I'm not complaining...

Firenze is a cool city because this is where the Renaissance was born, and it has almost as much history as Roma itself. The Duomo rivals Roma's best churches in sheer beauty.

If you remember I said the Golden Doors were blocking you from getting a good view. Well at the time I had no idea what the Golden Doors were. All I saw were people gathering around and taking pictures, so I did the same. As usual I got a slightly blurry picture but just squint your eyes and it's clear...

After doing some nifty research (just now) I now know that these doors are the gates of paradise.

For an actual clear picture you can see this, which I took off the internet from the website www.HawkeBackpacking.com. Pretty clear, no? This door has David beheading Goliath (after he beat him), Noah and his family emerging from the Ark after the flood, the creation of Eve, Moses recieving the 10 Comandments on Mt. Sinai, and basically the whole shabang of significant holy art. And its gold. Thats a winner in my book.

One regret I have is not having a better camera during my trip. My camera ran out of batteries if it was turned on too long. Literally all of these pictures were a struggle because the camera would shut down if it was on for like 30 seconds. It was fine during the beginning but as the trip went on it got bad and then it just stayed that way. There are some pictures of me floating around on other people's cameras but they're lost in the ether right now. I don't know where they are. And once it shut down once I had to wait a while before it would muster enough battery power to take another picture. Literally thats how EVERY picture was made. I didn't really get to take spontaneous pictures but instead I had to plan out each picture and sometimes if I screwed up (like the Golden Door above) I just couldn't take another picture and I just had to go with it. Needless to say I threw my camera in my room and I haven't used it since I got back. Damn that thing. The only good thing is that it was free.

Well after wandering around I went here. This is Palazzo Vecchio, or Old Palace.

But first I believe I actually got to Piazza San Lorenzo. I bought some souvenirs and presents for people and then I saw a certain statue. It had this inscription. As you can see it is dedicated to San Lorenzo, and it was restored in the year 1850 (look for the Roman numerals). My Italiano isnt that good but it also says that he was the leader of the black parties. If I can translate more of it I will update this post.

And after the drama here is the statue itself. Sorry but its not that great, especially for Italia. But it has history so thats cool.

This is Piazza della Signoria, or the Piazza of his Lordship as it translates out. This is really cool because its also an open air museum (more on that below) which was a surprise because you don't get those for free as nice as it was in Firenze.

Here is more of the same, but a different building. You can already see some statues and the museum is just to the left. This also has various historic coats of arms of Florentine families of the past (the same ones Jupiter's moons are named after) so thats cool. And yeah Galileo was from Florence so when he discovered Jupiter's moons he connected them to his hometown and named one of them Io, which of course is the word "I" in Italian like "yo" in Spanish.

Firenze was buzzing that night. Lots of people were on the street. Among them were protesters, specifically a pro-Palestinian protest, and a quadrilingual protest at that. The translation is the same except that va means go and distrutto means destroyed.

And here is more of the protest. The words aren't clear enough for me to translate, but its more of the same. Of course when I saw this protest I went up to this man who was holding a sign and talked to him, and he spoke enough English that we could communicate effectively. About 20 min later I really got nowhere, I got yelled at by some random woman with a sign who found out I was American and accused Obama of being corrupt and deceitful, and it was basically the same conversation that I've had in the USA; it seems that abroad some things don't change. I won't exactly get into the details of the speech though. It wasn't pretty but the guy was friendly (I called il mio amico, or my friend, to make sure there was no tension) and ultimately nothing happened, although I was careful not to tell him too much.

Finally I got to the open-air museum. Here it is. Pretty cool for a free museum. You don't get that everyday.

Here is some guy beating up a centaur. As I recently learned this is a statue of Hercules beating up the centaur Nessus, as according to mythology.

More statues. I really have nothing to add other than I like the shadows. I only really remember seeing the centaur and these images are practically new to me. Yay centaur!

Here is a replica of the David statue by Michaelangelo. When I heard there was a free replica of the statue and I didn't have to pay out 15 euro to see some statue, I got really excited at the opportunity not to spend money in another museum. Score!!!!

Here is another parade, this time of the musical variety. The music was pretty good from what I remember. As quickly as they came as left so I got a picture of them before they left.

This is a picture of the Arno River, or il fiume Arno. It apparently looks a lot better at daytime, and it would a look better if the picture wasn't blurry. I actually didn't know Florence had a river until I took this picture.

And of course the Louis Vutton shop. I checked out the Puma store and it was really nice and two stories. Ditto for the Nike store.

Well thats all for Firenze. I might have missed my train but I'm not going to relive that here. Ciao and a presto!!!

Travels Around Roma Part VIII: Firenze

Okay this doesn't really qualify as "around" Roma but whatever. Due to certain circumstances I had to go to Florence, or Firenze kinda impromptly. As the story goes, it was about three weeks before my program and my stay in Rome ended and I was out Friday night with my roommates like usual. Then I remembered that I had to get a purse for my sister or else she would kill me. I had already been asking girls where the best places to get purses are and they all said Firenze since they actually make leather there. Thus you have the best quality and cheapest prices. Florence is also a cool place to so I realized that I had to go tomorrow early. Since you can't really get someone to go with you with a night's before notice, I decided to go solo.

Now keep in mind I knew nothing about Florence and I only knew that trains from Termini, the main train station in Rome, went there. So I woke up early and took the metro to Termini. I only had a backpack with some food, some water, and a jacket and a class reader to read on the train, an Italy guide book from my roommate and of course my camera. That and my handy Italian skills. Oh and my wallet and cell phone and keys. I also had my handy gloves because of course it was winter time in the middle of November 2009 and it got kinda cold. My flight home was December 12th.

So I woke up around 8:30 and I got to Termini around 9:30 with time to eat breakfast and get ready since it takes about 20 min to get to Termini on the metro. I just generally made my way to the trains and I asked people Come vado a Firenze? (How do I go to Florence?) and I eventually made my way to machines that sold the tickets. The machines all have an English feature so that wasn't a problem. They were probably tired to tourists who only speak English trying to buy tickets so they stuck the machines right next to i binari (train platforms). I saw that there were two options, a €16 option that took like 3 or 4 hours and a €32 euro ticket that only took an hour and a half. Also the earliest train had left like 15 min ago so the next train left at 11.15 (remember, no am or pm here). So of course I got the cheaper ticket and I waited. Eventually the train came, I got on, and then I'm pretty sure I tried to read but I fell asleep (with my backpack in hand of course). But I set my cell phone (I bought one for Rome, not my normal one) alarm to wake me up before the train got to Florence. My next memory is at the train station is Florence after I got off. No tourist section. No maps. Practically nobody there. I was kinda screwed. The guidebook didn't really help, and come to think of it I only had the guidebook in Tivoli and not even in Florence. So scratch that. No guidebook or map or anything in some random city. All I have is my Italian and my intellect. I remember by the time I got there it was 14.00 (2 pm) so I had some time before I could catch the late train back to Rome that day because I didn't book a hostel or any sleeping accommodations. I just wanted to make it a day trip. Umm that didn't quite happen...

But first things first. I get out of the train station and its a standard neighborhood. Not in the middle of the city or the tourist district or anything like that. And of course nobody is there. Since I was taking Urban History class in Rome I noticed that one road was kind of wide and was the main road leading away from the train station; I walked down that road. Since it was Saturday at around 14.00 many things were closed and not too many people were on the streets. Or so I thought. As I continued walking I saw a bus stop with two guys. The guys were around my age so I asked them "Come vado al Duomo"? The Duomo is of course one of the main attractions in Florence and I wanted to go there and see it and probably get a purse from around there also. I actually don't remember what I first said them but that was probably it. A lesson to be learned it to blog soon after something happens and not on Jan 19th 2010 like I'm doing now. But oh well. Well anyways it turns out that they spoke English (well at least enough) and one of them wanted to practice so it was all good. But the bus came pretty quickly and they said this was the bus that went to the Duomo and they were going on it too so I got on with them in the rear entrance. I said that I had a buss pass, but it was my Roma buss pass which was invalid here. They said I should go to the bus driver and buy a ticket for around €3 or something like that. It was funny because the guys (especially the one guy who wanted to practice his English) wanted to use his bus vernacular with me. He kept saying "Come si dice scendere, scendere"? (How do you say exit, exit?) and as soon as I heard him say scendere I said "exit" and he knew. He wanted to say ticket but I kept saying il biglietto, which is the ticket in Italian, and he just nodded yes. And the other guy was calling the guy who wanted to practice his English "estupido" and giving him a hard time, which was kinda funny. It turned out my exit was two exits away so I wasn't going to go to the front of the crowded bus to buy a ticket. In Italy there are random searches of all passengers to see if they have tickets and if you don't you get fined €50. The bus driver isn't responsible for you getting a ticket and I even saw signs saying please do not talk to the bus driver. When it was my exit I got off, thanked the guys, and went in the general direction they pointed me to shortly before I exited. To be continued (very soon)...

Travels Around Roma Part VII: Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Mirafiori

Here are some more travels around Rome. Even though these visits are all out of chronological order, here they are anyways. First off is the Trevi Fountain. This of course is the famous Baroque fountain by Bernini himself (Rome's most famous architect and sculptor) and is truly breathtaking. It features Oceanis, the god of all water, and is the terminus of the Aqua Virgo, the only aqueduct line still remaining from ancient Rome (all others were destroyed by the Goths in 537 C.E.). There are other figures in the fountain all with historical/mythological significance, but Oceanis (not Triton) and other mythical figures riding winged horses and blowing conches is definitely the main attraction. At night it's even more amazing than the day. Truly breathtaking.

First up is the Pantheon. Most people think of Greece, but there is something called the Pantheon in Rome. But what is the Pantheon you say? Well the Pantheon is an ancient Roman pagan temple completed in (as my internet source says) 27 B.C.E. It was rebuilt in 125 C.E. and of course it was converted to a church in 609. Paganism isn't that big in Rome where everyone is Catholic, so that's no surprise. For more info and better pictures than what I took go here. More on the Pantheon below...

Next up is the Trevi Fountain, which is ALWAYS packed. There are tourists around it all the time. The tradition goes that if you throw a coin over your head with your back to the fountain you will return to Rome. All the masses of coins in the Trevi fountain are donated to charity. Before Italy converted to the Euro, the lira were magnetic and this homeless man famously used a magnet to fish out the coins. But the story goes that he stayed homeless because he helped other homeless people and used the money for the greater good of others. Well he was caught and banned from the fountain and now Euro coins are non-magnetic anyways. It looks like times have changed.

Third is Mirafiori. This isn't exactly the tourist landmark of Rome, but its a nice park on the North East side of Rome near Piazza Bologna. I volunteered for an English conversation class and there is an extension of La Sapienza University (the biggest university in Europe, which is in Rome and was originally built by Mussolini). I'm pretty sure this extension only teaches language mediation, because those are all the classes I saw there. That and literature classes for other languages. All of my students were language mediation majors and a lot of them were also studying German, Spanish, English, and some other languages. It was really interesting and fun to talk to Italian students my age (in English, because I would get lost in Italian) and see what life is like from a Roman point of view (and a lot of students commuted to Rome from towns in the Lazio region). It also feels cool to be revered for speaking English and helping others out. And believe it or not most Roman students don't speak Cali English. Shocking. More on Mirafiori down below...

Here is a window from slightly outside the Pantheon. If you look closely you can see ancient Roman ruins through the reflection. These king of things are kind of common in Rome. In Largo Argentina, for example, there is a tram line that runs right next to ancient Roman ruins that are sequestered off. Once you live there you get used to it. There are also remnants of the Acqua Virgo around Rome, and ancient Rome still breathes heavily in modern Rome.

In case you don't know, the Pantheon is a perfect hemisphere with a hole in the roof. And almost everything is marble. The walls and floor are marble but the roof is not. And by marble I mean the most exquisite and elegant and expensive marble knows to the ancient Romans. For the floor alone different types and color marbles were imported from Greece, different parts of the Italian peninsula, and literally from the whole Mediterranean. And this was in ancient Rome nonetheless. Of course the Roman Empire conquered all of the Mediterranean at the time, so that helped. All around the wall are extremely significant tombs, sculptures, paintings, etc. Here is one of them. You can even notice the different colors and types of marbles on the walls.

When I said that the Pantheon is significant, this applies to all of Italy and not just Rome. That's because the grave the Vittorio Emanuelle II himself is here. He of course was the first president of modern Italy in 1870. Basically he's the modern day George Washington for Italy. Here is his grave, which of course under his name says Father of the Country. The picture is a little blurry but I tried using my camera with the indoor setting and that was a mistake. This is the best I got. Oh well...

Here are some of the insciptions on the marble next to his grave. I can't really make them out because they are in Latin (you can tell by using the letter V instead of U), but I thought they were pretty cool. You also see a lot of these in Rome, so if you go brush up on your Latin.

What other all-star cast in buried in the Pantheon? Why none other than the famous artist Raphael himself. Who is Raphael you say? Well he was an artist during the Italian High Renaissance, a true genius as they say, and like many important men (Caesar, Augustus, Bernini, he went by one name). That's enough for me. He is buried here, and you can see his name on his tomb below.

Here is his tomb a little below ground level. The picture above is a magnification of the rectangular tomb. For a better picture but without the nice lighting of this picture, look to the next pic.

Here is another view of Raphael's tomb, which was taken out of the ground and verified in the 1800s to make sure he was actually in the tomb. In the Pantheon there is a poster telling people this and a reproduction of a painting showing the moment his tomb was taken out. The Pantheon looked exactly the same in the painting as it does now. Indeed, the Pantheon is timeless.

The Pantheon is famous for its roof. It's roof is a perfect hemisphere shape with hole right in the middle letting in sunlight. You can tell the time of day from where the light shines on the roof if you want. Many pictures of Italy show this shot and its worth it to see in person. Pretty amazing. But what happens if it rains? Well the rain actually goes into the Temple, but the ancient Romans built the floor slightly convex so the rain eventually goes into the sides. I missed going to the Pantheon while it was raining, but I heard it was an amazing sight to see. It's also worth noting that the ancient Romans built a massive temple in the shape of a perfect hemisphere with of course ancient technology. The story goes that Romans in the Middle Ages simply looked and Pantheon and had no idea how to build it because the building methods were lost. That and the imported exotic marble from far across and Mediterranean make the Pantheon a keeper in my book. If only it didn't have so many tourists though...

Now we get to the Trevi Fountain. La Fontana di Trevi, as it is called, is worth flying into Ciampino or Fiumicino airport at 6am tomorrow to go see. I would do that if I could. Here is one of the best pictures ever taken by man. It is of one of the men with his winged horse blowing on his conch. That and the waterfall perfectly falling into the water make the Trevi quite beautiful.

Here is a more zoomed-out view of the Pantheon. No more commentary needed for this one.

Another view of the Trevi, with a clear view of Oceanis himself. He has some sort of rod in his hand, and even my Urban History professor didn't know what it is when she was describing the Trevi Fountain for the class. The inspiration for this? I say yes...

And a zoomed-out view of the above picture. I'm not done with the Trevi yet...

Here is another view of the waterfall in the Trevi, which I really like. I would like Bernini to be resurrected and make me a Trevi 2.0 Fountain in my backyard. Being in Rome made me realize the things I really want in my backyard like the la fontana di Trevi, il Colosseo, la piazza di San Pietro, etc. It could happen...

And one more picture of the Trevi using the blue-green color function of my camera. As a final note you can notice the different types of columns such as the Doric and Corintheon columns, and the rocky motif that accompanies the fountain. Other buildings around the Trevi also have the rocky motif, which is pretty cool. When I return I want to actually swim in the Trevi fountain. Maybe at 5am if nobody is there...

Now on to Mirafiori. This is less about the pictures and more about the experience of teaching an English conversation class in Rome. When I first got there I had some time to spare and I went with my camera. I was surprised to see bamboo trees in Rome. They are pretty rigid and since it rained earlier if you shook them water drops came down. Needless to say I shook a lot of trees like a kid in a candy shop.

Another picture of the bamboo trees. Then I met some talking pandas and we had lunch at this really good Chinese restaurant in the middle of the Colosseum. Apparently Roman pandas speak fluent Italian and can even understand my Italian. Who knew?

Okay here is the actual school. There was a movement in the early 20th century to go away from the common marble and travertine look and go to more earthy terra cotta looks and colors. And mirafiori got this treatment. You can see the fascist architecture by the repetition of rectangles and arches, although there is no giant M in the building. I taught my class on the other side of the building, and it was a unique and interesting, not to mention fun, experience.

What is English conversation class like in Rome? My program offered us a volunteer option to sign up to teach these classes, and I couldn't resist. I taught my classes in the evenings with my friend Geleen. There was no lesson plan or script to the class. I winged all of it as I went along. The students there were taking it for some credit but no grade, so all they did was sign in and then just talk. Basically every class started with me introducing myself as a student studying abroad from California. Then I made everyone introduce themselves every class (they hated this because by the third week I knew the familiar faces), but oh well since I'm one of the teachers. Usually my and my friend split the class up after initial introductions so we could get as many students to talk. Believe it or not, Italian students aren't exactly inclined to speak English when they get credit just for showing up. So every class started with me saying "What did you do during your weekend?" and them saying "Not much." I taught two classes in a row and by the second class a lot of people left or didn't show up, so the class was small and we could talk about other stuff like politics, gay rights, cultural differences, etc.

What I learned is that nobody likes Burlusconi, the Prime Minister of Italy. He owns multiple TV channels and newspapers and thus controls the media more or less. He hires cronies in political power and is trying to change the constitution so he can stay in power forever. He is the second richest man in Italy (behind the guy who owns the chocolate company that makes Nutella and Ferrero Rocher) and he also publicly cheats on his wife and publicizes this. I was told that imagine if Obama did this and got away with it, then you would hate your president too (even though Burlusconi is not the President, he still has a lot of power).

I also found out that some people hate the Pope and the Vatican in general because they hold too much political power, are racist, don't support equal rights, have too much money and political power, and brainwash the masses. Some of these are actually true to certain extents, but how much I don't really know.

I also found out that Roman students have pretty much the same life as I do. Which involves studying and going to school and then maybe going out once or twice during the weekend to have a little fun, and then repeating the week. I always started the class off by asking people what they did during the weekend, and I got a lot of short terse answers because of either "nothing much" or some variation of that. I also found out that American English is a lot easier to understand than British English. What I heard is that when you watch an American movie you can understand like 90% of it but when you watch a British movie you need Italian subtitles or else you are completely lost. I guess American English is pretty trashy, and I agree. Its not exactly Shakespearean English.

One of my students was a rapper (with his own self-made "album" and he said he has listened to a lot of Eminem, especially when the Marshall Mathers LP came out. Overall the class was pretty fun to each because people actually look up to you for speaking English when you dont even have to think about it. I started correcting people's mistakes a lot and they told me I was "good" so I guess I did an okay job. And I also tried teaching Cali slang like "later...", "sup?", "cuz" but that didn't really work out too well. I also got some funny mistakes like instead of turning on the TV you put yourself in the TV, or something like that. People also made their grocery shopping (a direct translation from Italian) and made their exercise instead of going to exercise. They said that next to Japanese Italian is the hardest language to learn all the way through because there are about 20 different tenses and even native Italian speakers don't know them. It was funny to learn that since all the clubs are 18+, the clubs are open in the afternoon for the teenagers like 13-15 and then the clubs open up for the regulars on Saturday night. One of my students said that you come out of the club at 4am while they come out of the club at 4pm. Then I asked the class if they did that back in the day, and they all laughed and said they had too much pride to do that. There was also one time when the class demanded that I speak Italian to say what I did during my second travel break, and I agreed. Of course I used really simple past tense and all I said is that I visited this, I saw that, and I forgot a lot. Then when I made one mistake, literally everyone yelled the correct verb at me all at once. It was a little scary.

They also said people will look at you funny when you use formal Italian instead of informal, which might have been useful to me earlier because I thought it was good to use formal sometimes to be polite. But apparently if you're not talking to someone really important it doesn't really matter. NOW I know that...

Travels Around Roma Part VI: A.S. Roma vs. Bari

For my Culture and Identity class I had to do an ethnography on some aspect of Italian culture. So naturally I chose calcio, or more commonly known as soccer in America. Surprisingly nobody says futbol. Its always calcio, with the second c pronounced as as "ch" sound of course. And to "study" the sports culture naturally I went to an A.S. Roma game. The game was A.S Roma vs. Bari, a team from the eastern cost of Italy south of Rome. The game took place on Nov 22, 2009. I didn't know how popular the games are and how heave the traffic is going to the game, so I was late. In fact, I had to take a the metro to Barberini and then follow the crowd into a PACKED bus. It was like cattle. I couldn't move and people were all around me. When the bus turned I didn't have to hold on to anything because the people stopped my momentum. Of course the captian of A.S. Roma is number 1o, Francesco Totti. Or more commonly known as Totti. He also plays for the (currently) defending World Cup champion Italian National team. He plays forward, which basically means he's the one that shoots the most and scores the goals. The glamorous position of the team. He's basically an A list celebrity in Roma, and has his own (shoddy) clothing line. He's also the subject of jokes about dumb Romans because he speaks Roman dialect instead of standard Italian, which would be like a Michael Jordan speaking with a hillbilly accent on national TV all the time. Totti himself even published a book of Totti jokes. Also, Totti got banned 3 games while playing Denmark for spitting on a player. You can play the online Totti spitting game here. Just click gioca, or play, to start. Apparently when he hits 11 Danish players he leaves with his famous girlfriend Ilary Blasi.

Well anyways I came a little late to the game and I remember getting there in the 14th minute. I had walked into one the greatest (regular season games) that Totti would ever play... Totti scored a hat trick (3 goals) in the first half alone. His first goal was a penalty kick in the 5th minute, and I walked in just as the crows was celebrating his second goal. He has his own chant and Romans raise both hands in the air in their Totti celebrations. This was my view from the seats next to Curva Nord, which is the visitors section. But security took a lot of steps to seperate the Roma supporters from the Bari supports. Curva Sud on the south side of the stadium has all the hard-core Roma fans, but that was sold out. I was about to buy the cheap Curva Nord tickets but a local behind me advised me not to out of personal safety. It's a form of suicide to go support Roma in the Curva Nord section. You can see a Roma fan with a Totti jersey in the middle of the picture in the Curva Sud section.

The above picture was from the standing section more or less ( I don't really remember). Once I got into my seat I had to sit behind a plexiglass "wall", and this the picture I took. I really couldn't see all the fingerprints when I took the picture though.

And another picture of an A.S. Roma goal kick. The A.S. Roma wears black and A.S. Roma wears red while Bari wears white. If you right click on the picture and choose open link in new window. you will get an enlarged picture and the leftmost Roma player right on the mid-field line is number 10 Totti himself. I was trying hard to get a good Totti shot but I never really got one because he was on the opposite side of the field playing forward. Ehh but this is good enough.

And here again is another field view. There is nothing really original here, but enjoy anyways.

A.S. Roma and their inter-city rivals both play in Stadio Olimpico. Since Italy is divided into different regions, regional identity is a strong mainstay of Italian culture because before Italy was united in 1870 each region was its own kingdom. Each region has its own dialect, food (Milan eats pizza, not rice for example) and its own culture. However since Roma is the capitol of Italy and founding city of the Roman Empire, it thinks highly of itself, even if it is in the Lazio region. Basically the Roma-Lazio rivalry runs through the entire city. Taxi drivers pledge will let you know you are in the wrong cab if you say you like Lazio. You should apologize immediately and say your a tourist.

Anyways, Stadio Olimpico was built my Mussolini as a symbol of nationalistic pride, like everything else he built. It has shape-like fascist style with an attempt to reconnect with ancient Rome, which he tried really hard to do. Hence the arches, square shape, and the olympic rings.

Around the actual stadium is a mini-stadium that is lined with marble statues to show off. Here it is. The statues look nice but knowing they are from Mussolini kind of spoils it. There are also in the stadium big M shapes and mosaics of Italy conquering Ethiopia from the 1930's. Nobody has really taken them down yet, even though everybody hates Mussolini. Strange.

Here is another picture of the statues with Stadio Olimpico of course in the background.

And one more picture looking from the North side of the field. You can see how many statues there are on the left side of the field a little bit. When in Rome. Quando a Roma...

Now back to the stadium. Basically the way it works is that I load up all the pictures first and then caption them. I really didn't rearrange these pictures in chronological order, as you might be able to tell from the color of the sky. Also all the picture outside of the stadium were taken as I was leaving the game. But this picture is of the young A.S. Roma fan with the beanie and flag.

Here is a picture of the scoreboard. Totti scored three goals in the first half and Bari added one meaningless goal in the second half. You can see its the 78th minute and the score is Roma 3 Bari 1. And I guess its just some ads also. My Italian isn't good enough to translate.

Here is a view of Curva Sud with the Bari fans waving their flags even though their team is getting destroyed. Security was present to prevent any fights, but some flair fires went off in the crowd. That and that section had a chant where they all lifted their Bari scarves in the air at the same time (everyone has team scarves, especially in the winter). That and of course taunting directed towards my section. They also have organized chants and songs like Roma.

Here is a view of the Curva Sud section with the A.S. Roma fans with their flags. That is also where they do the Roma, Roma, Roma chant. However I did hear that at the end of the game and again when I went to another game (keep a look out for that post also).

And here is the max zoom view of the Curva Sud section. It was pretty crazy there, especially when Totti scored his goals. Everybody immediately got up and celebrated, hugged each other, the whole shabang. And then the Totti chant came on the loudspeakers and everybody did that. Needless to say I was a little bit lost and confused.

Another view of the Curva Nord Bari supporters. They were pretty into the game even though last time I checked in their division Bari was ranked 11th out of 20 (and Roma 10th). Imagine how crazy it would have been if the teams were good or at the Roma-Lazio game (which only Roman citizens are allowed to attend and from what I was personally told is crazy and violent).

And one final view of the crowd. I can never get enough. Roma is definitely one of my favorite club soccer teams. Lazio sucks. As they say, Forza Roma!!!!!!! (Go Roma!!!!)