These are some of my random travels around the Foro Traiano, or Trajan's Forum, and the Vittorio Emanuele II National Monument on the Capitoline Hill. Vittorio Emanuele II was of course the first King of Italy after it unified in 1870 and he is Italy's George Washington, more or less. He even has a famous road named after him, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, which runs from the Tiber River near Castel Sant'Angelo and goes although through Rome to his own monument. My school is also located there off the street, and it is the main traffic school because all the other roads around it are from the Medieval times and are too narrow for modern car traffic.
Right after I was done with seeing Santa Maria Maggiore I'm pretty sure we all went to the Foro Traiano which is right outside. This link has a model of what it looked like back in ancient Rome, and today the few remaining columns don't do it justice. It also says that people entered the Forum through the fornix, or singular passageway under the triumphal arch. This is where the term fornication comes from because certain things happened under each fornix. Ancient Roman emporers had their own massive columns that were stiarcases with a good view at the top, and Trajan's column is in his forum. Each column is carved spirally throughout the whole column, usually with war scenes depicting victory, and how this was done during ancient times is beyond me. Same with how they built the Pantheon, which I will show later. Trajan's market is located across the street from the Roman Forum ruins as well. Trajan got around.
Here is Trajan's Column, erected in 113 A.D., and since I took a bad picture you can't really see how tall it is (125 feet)or that it has windows on top and a large statue of Trajan himself. Medieval pilgrims were charged to go up the columns, but today sadly it is not a tourist attraction like that anymore. I would have paid.
Here is the same picture but more of the Forum remains in the background. For a better picture go here. Ancient Roman ruins are dispersed throughout Rome, and are always my favorite.
This is the view of the Vittorio Emanuele II National Monument. It was completed in 1935. It combines different aspects of Roman architecture all in one and is highly symbolic as well. It has a tomb of an unknown soldier and each column is for each region in Italy. There is a statue of King Vittorio on a horse, and the winged chariots above were added by Mussolini later on. There are also many reliefs or war scenes and the Risorgimento, or Re-Unification Museum is in there too. All the other buildings around it were demolished and the monument is surrounded by Piazza Venezia, the biggest piazza in Rome.
Here is a closer view. A little of the detail is more apparent. Also, there are stairs to climb to the higher stories and there is an elevator to go to the roof. I went there later on and look out for that in a later post.
This is still another view, but this time with the national flag streaming in the wind. You're are not allowed to talk loudly when you climb the stairs and you are expected to dress appropriately. There were signs in english telling me this which were directed towards American tourists obviously. But everyone who is there is a tourist and is taking pictures, so its a little bit of a lost cause. There are nice views of the Colosseum and Forum ruins from the monument as well.
What's this around the monument???
But there is something I haven't shown yet. With any national monument, you're always going to have... protests. While we were visiting the monument a protest was taking place so we decided to go check it out.
Here is their main protest sign. They would also follow chants from people on a loudspeaker and the crowd backed up pretty quickly to form the circle seen above. There were also media and people filming and taking pictures. This was the only protest I really took pictures of, but any popular piazza or open space always has them. My Italian isn't that good to translate this or even understand what it means, but using a dictionary is says... " The truths are out! Out goes the red agenda. We are with Antonio Ingroia (whoever he is?), Sergio Lari, everyone of the honest judges, Salvatore Borsellino and Gioacchino Genchi." Apparently its a protest against corrupt judges, because I don't remember what it was about when I was there.
Here is the protest in full force. It was pretty loud but fun to be a part of, and by that I mean yelling their chants for a while, taking pictures, observing them, and then leaving.
Here is another similar picture. The sign says "Open the eyes, observe... don't close the ears... listen... only so (I can't see the rest of the line)... The fresh perfume of liberty.
After that I went near the Spanish Steps area on my way back home. Someone made the life mistake of getting married, and here is his Rolls Royce parked outside of some fancy hotel waiting for him. I also saw people getting married in Orvieto and in front of the Capitoline Museum.
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