The Eternal City, the Second Babylon, the Heart of the World – how has Rome not been called in its thousand-year history? The capital of Italy, which gave rise to many trends in painting, music, drama, architecture, sculpture …
The list can be continued indefinitely.
In this city you want to die, forever remaining among the embodiment of beauty, but even more you want to live in it, or at least come here as often as possible. Rome, no doubt, is included in the list of cities that have retained their originality today.
Ancient streets, ruins, hills, still remembering Tiberius and Caligula, will captivate you for a long time, calling even after a few years: come back! There’s so much we haven’t told you yet! You can wander in the Eternal City for a month and still not see all its wonders.
The majestic Colosseum, the ancient Capitol, the Sistine Chapel, remembering the hands of the great Botticelli, the palace of one of the bloodiest and most controversial emperors in Roman history, Nero – all this is imbued with the spirit of antiquity, the memory of great victories and no less great defeats and events that influenced the course of life throughout Europe.
The Vatican also deserves special attention – the state in the city, the heart of Catholicism, the residence of the Popes. The beginnings of the Crusades were blessed here, the bloodiest of the pontiffs, Cesare Borgia, ruled here, and the most beautiful monuments of architecture and painting are still preserved here. To visit Rome and not visit the Vatican is to leave the idea of this beautiful city incomplete. The Sistine Chapel, built in the 15th century by Pope Sixtus IV, whose ceiling was painted by Botticelli himself, still functions as a religious building, showing tourists the beauty of its frescoes on biblical subjects.
You can’t miss the Capitol. This hill is not only considered the “reference point” of Rome, hundreds of events are associated with this place. There is also a statue of a she-wolf, who, according to legend, the founders of the city, the twins Remus and Romulus. From this hill began the triumphs of the most famous generals in history, this place became for many millennia the heart of Rome, and from the Capitoline meetings began its democracy, its greatness and its upsurges. Here, at one time, the famous tribune Gracchus spoke, great speeches were made here and great decisions were made.
The Colosseum, built by Nero for gladiator fights, needs no introduction.
Its openwork walls are known to most of the inhabitants of the globe. It is worth visiting it, first of all, in order to see with your own eyes what Rome would not have been possible without: gladiatorial arenas, where blood was shed for centuries and jubilant cries were heard. “Bread and circuses!” flying from the past will come by itself.
Rome is also rich in triumphal arches, the most famous of which were erected by the emperors Constantine and Titus. The ensemble of antiquities will be wonderfully complemented by the Baths built by Caracalla, and numerous columns erected in memory of victories, such as Trajan’s Column. By themselves, they are very beautiful, and this beauty is set off by the consciousness that the columns were set in the past era, having passed practically unscathed through the centuries.