I had a wretched night, what with the noise from the pub downstairs (Disco's Greatest Hits: 1977), scooters and cars in the street, people having conversations or talking loudly on their cellphones, and at one point, someone apparently pulling wheeled luggage over the cobblestones. At some point, I got up and went to sleep on the living-room couch, and discovered that by some trick of the acoustics, the music was much muted (though the conversations and traffic were just as noisy). I dozed off, got woken, dozed off again. At the end of my longest period of sleep, I awoke to discover it was 7:40. I checked the couch and discovered it was actually a sofa-bed, and decided to try moving N and I there at night.
We had planned to try to make it to the Forum by 9:00, when it opened, but we were a bit behind schedule. The public transit connections from our apartment to there were less than ideal, so we walked through the small streets east of Campo dei Fiori, emerging onto a corner of Piazza Venezia, and managing to cross at crosswalks without the assistance of lights to gain the base of the Capitoline hill.
It was about 9:30 when we got into the Forum, and though it was not deserted, there were still not a lot of people there. We made our way in by a route between the two entrances we had used before, along the Via di S. Pietro in Carcere that leads to the Mamertine prison that reputedly held Saint Peter, among many others. This brought us right to the Arch of Septimius Severus; we had the Oxford archeological guide out and made sure we knew the details of what we were looking at.
We were right by the round foundations of the Umbilicis Urbis, the point from which all distances to Rome were measured. Just behind it were the two Rostrae, the Caesarian and Augustan; Julius Caesar's will was read out here by Mark Antony. I asked N if Cicero delivered his denunciations of Catiline here, but she wasn't sure. We walked towards the Tabularium, on which the Palazzo Senatorio up on the Campidoglio was constructed; we couldn't reach it from that level, but we could walk up and around the Temple of Saturn, of which eight columns remain, though the Oxford guide informed us that these were scavenged from other monuments during a reconstruction that took place around 360 AD. (In general, the Oxford guide had a wealth of detail that made clear to us just how overlapped, altered, and reconstructed many of the sights we saw throughout the city were.)
Perhaps more original were the three columns of the Temple of Vespasian and Titus, though the one word remaining on the inscription ("restituer", or restored) was from Septimius Severus and Caracalla two centuries later.
From there we walked along the steps of the Basilica Julia (about all that remained), looking in vain for the "gameboards" scratched into them. We had bought the kids a small book on the sights of Rome designed for children, and they had it out, reading from it as they went along. We hadn't made a big deal of it, not wanting to be too didactic, but they were really into it.
We walked briefly past the Temple of Divine Julius -- behind a short segment of low wall is a round base, possibly the altar marking the spot at which Julius Caesar was cremated. It was convincing enough for some others who had left flowers on the spot, at which A snickered.
We came around the fenced-off section in the centre of the Upper Forum and went back to the Curia, the Senate House reconstructed by Domitian. The marble pavement from that time had survived, and two marble balustrades with relief scenes had been carried inside. We couldn't look at them in detail, however, as fencing prevented us from doing much more than look inside.
We perched just near the Regia for a closer look at the Temple of Divine Antoninus Pius and Faustina, the dedication to the former added above and twenty years after the dedication to the latter. We went a little bit further down to walk into the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine, one of the more complete structures on the Forum, and then retraced our steps and exited onto Via dei Fori Imperiali.
The traffic was not too bad, and we managed to cross the street and work our way along Via Tor de Conti, along the great wall (still 30 metres high) which formed a firebreak between the Forum of Augustus and the crowded tenements just beyond. From gaps in the wall we had views of what remained of the Temple of Mars Ultor. The entrance to Trajan's Markets was around and to the left. We had noticed lots of scaffolding and feared it would be closed; there was indeed restoration work going on, but most of the complex was open (though the museum was not).
Trajan's Markets are not one integrated complex, but it appears that way because they rise several stories high, in a manner that much of ancient Rome did before it was torn down and built over. The most prominent feature is a great hemicycle, two stories high, along the top of which runs a "street", the Via Biberatica, from which there are views over the ruins of the Forum of Trajan and its former colonnade; above this street rises an apartment block three stories high, set against the base of the Quirinal hill, on the second story of which is a great hall which forms the modern entrance.
We wandered around the various rooms, trying to imagine the everyday commerce taking place. This, after the Pantheon, was probably the most impressive ancient ruin in terms of completeness. (The Colosseum is grand, but clearly a shell of its former self.) The sun was full, and we had to take care to remain as much in the shade as possible. There were a few other people about, but compared to the Forum, the place was deserted.
It was still before noon when we left, and we walked down past Trajan's Column and the little round Bramante church near it. N spotted a souvenir shop selling postcards for L. 150 and the kids chose several to send to their friends and music teachers. We had time to visit one more museum before lunch, and this was the Crypta Balbi (which we'd been referring to as the "Crypto-Barbie" all week).
This was on our combined ticket, but with no explanation. We found it in the Oxford guide: the Theatre and Porticus of Balbus, the third free-standing theatre in late Republican / early Imperial Rome after Pompey's (now reduced to the outlines of some streets east of the Campo dei Fiori) and Marcellus's (which we had seen, to the southwest). The site was apparently the focus of intense excavation starting in 1981, but the Oxford guide said it was closed to the public. None of our guidebooks mentioned the new museum.
It turned out to be much in the style of the new Baths of Diocletian complex, with a focus on the strata of the city back to the 9th century BC and forward into medieval times. There was an extensive expository section, and a timed entrance to part of the excavation in the basement. Besides our family, there was one other person along on this part, and to be honest there was not much to see besides some foundations -- no wall texts, and just a bad single-sheet photocopy of some Italian explanations handed to us (which we had to return). The expository sections were much more worthwhile; the highlight for me was not the original materials from the site, but a cast of the part of the Marble Plan (a 1:250 map in marble of the city in late antiquity, like a giant incomplete jigsaw puzzle) covering the area where the theatre had been located.
It was quarter to two when we left the museum. Our first attempt at lunch was at a rather upscale restaurant called Vecchia Roma, but we were told the place was fully booked; the outdoor seats were completely empty, so I'm not sure this was fully accurate, but at any rate it was perhaps a little too posh for us (not in terms of expense, which we could easily afford, but in terms of dress and attitude). We continued down towards the Via di Portico d'Ottavia; Da Giggetto was always a possibility, but I wanted to check out another place, Il Pompiere, a bit further southwest.
We found the door, very discreetly marked, and went up to the second story. The place had an upscale style similar to Vecchia Roma, but it was almost empty, and they seated us. The food was slightly more expensive than we had been having, but the portions were also more generous and quite tasty, so in the end it was a mystery why it was so empty.
I had my own carciofo alla guidea (deep-fried artichoke) to start; A and Z had linguine al pesto, and N a risotto with shrimp and papaya -- the latter a bit of a departure for such a traditional place, but it worked really well. The kids split a mixed grill of fish (which we had to eat most of) and I had trippa alla romana, which came in large triangular portions covered with tomato sauce and cheese. We drank two whole bottles of mineral water to replenish our fluids; the house white wine was the usual Frascati, but unusually good.
The kids could very well have gone home and played for the rest of the day at that point, but we convinced them that we were close to the Capitoline museums and could see them fairly quickly. Along the way I showed them the Fontana della Tartarughe, in the middle of a small nowhere piazza, with its basin supported by four young men appearing to help four turtles (a later addition) into the water. I thought they might find it cute, but they were not impressed; A was particularly scathing.
We climbed the Cordonata and went into the museum, recovering from the climb by descending into the basement, the Tabularium. The main advantage of this ancient building, with its great halls of indeterminate function, was its coolness, and the views over the Forum, now fairly busy with tour groups. We also got a closeup look at what appeared to be another section of frieze retrieved from the Temple of Vespasian and Titus, with its pattern of bull's skulls and implements of sacrifice, and a glimpse of the excavated Temple of Veiovis, a Republican temple now buried deep under the present Palazzo Senatorio.'
The Capitoline Museums turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, There were some nice pieces -- the colossal head and foot of Constantine, the She-Wolf which is the symbol of Rome (though the babies Romulus and Remus are a Renaissance addition), some very fine mosaics which a casual observer might mistake for paintings. But there were also a lot of restored or simply overblown pieces -- the "Capitoline Venus", a hideous baby Hercules, and rooms with dozens of unlabelled busts of Emperors and philosophers arranged on shelves.
The problem, I think, is that the curators are trying to remain faithful to several periods, and end up slighting modern sensibilities in favour of preserving arrangements created in the Baroque period. The Capitoline Museums are the oldest public museums in the world, supposedly, but that seems to be more of a millstone than a reason for celebration.
The kids had been exceptional thoughout a full day of puttering around objects two millenia old, and we treated them by taking them up to the little bar Pascucci, on Via di Torre Argentina, and getting them frullati (fruit milkshakes).
On the way home, N became concerned that we didn't have enough mineral water, fruit, or bread to last out our Sunday. We stopped at a small supermarket; I bought prosecco, spaghettini, and some cookies for the kids, but didn't want to haul water from there, and there wasn't any real bread to speak of there. Much closer to home, just across the Ponte Mazzini, I found us an open panificio, but they had only a few dry rolls; still, we bought them, and I grabbed a six-pack of small mineral water bottles, which turned out to have more of a mineral taste than anyone cared for. In the confusion, I left my sun hat behind, and had to do without it for the next little while.
I let everyone else into the apartment and went down into Trastevere in search of fruit. The fruit store I found on Vicolo del Cinque let me pick my own, a bad sign, and in fact the fruit turned out to be unexceptional and too unripe to eat on Sunday anyway. (Being allergic to peaches and apricots, I don't know how to pick them). But on the way back Panificio La Renella was open, and I bought half of a very large loaf of what turned out to be exceptional bread.
For dinner, I made spaghettini cacio e pepe (with grated pecorino and ground black pepper), and we had more rocket salad, tomatoes, cheese, and bread, plus the bottle of Prosecco di Valdobbiadene.