Sicily -- Agrigento & Casale

Perhaps it was foolish, but we "did" Agrigento and the Villa Romana del Casale in one day. We didn't get to see all of Agrigento and we got to Casale pretty late, but we saw enough for one day.

If you remember that map of Sicily, Agrigento is on the SW angle of the triangle, very near the Mediterranean coast. It was a bit of drive from Ramona's house, but the borrowed Tom Tom got us there and home with only one minor glitch. It helped that Ramona had been to Agrigento before.

As with many sites, these Greek temples are on the top of a hill. I'd read that Sicily has the best preserved Greek ruins outside Greece, and this site would verify that.

Ramona dropped Aidan and me off at one entrance. She and Trout went to the one we where we would exit. The first temple we saw was the Temple of Juno. It's at the highest point. This is a view into the valley from it.

We couldn't not take a picture of at least one of the large prickly pears complete with fruit that we saw. Maybe that's why I felt so at home in Sicily.

Here are Ramona and Aidan heading up the hill to the Temple. Note that very old olive tree on the left side of the picture.

This close up of Aidan makes her look like she's learned that Italian "you talkin' to me" attitude.

This is a slightly different view from the Temple. I suspect it didn't quite look like this during Greek times -- about 450 BC.

Now to the temples. The best description I found of them is in the form of a self walking guide. They were built of limestone tufa and covered inside and out with polychrome stucco, although there are few traces of color left on them. Wood, tiles and marble were used for the roofs over time.

This is a view of the Temple of Concordia from the Temple of Juno.

Some of you may recognize these characters. Aidan took this picture.

And this one.

Mine turned out very blurry, but this one I took of her is okay.

Sicily is so hilly that many of the highways are elevated. That also allows what's on the ground (ruins, houses, fields) to not be so affected by the road. This was the best shot I got of an elevated highway.

This is the Temple of Concordia close up. It is probably one of the best preserved Greek temples because it was converted to a Christian church around 597.

The arches inside formed the walls of the Christian church.

This is a view of the modern city of Agrigento. High rises everywhere.

These tombs were near the Temple of Concordia.

This is some interesting floor detail of the Temple of Hercules.

This small hound kept us company while we explored.

Yeah, it was raining off and on.

This is one of the atlases (telemones in Roman and Italian terminology) now on his back. They were used as columns to support the roof of the Temple of Zeus. The female version is called a Caryatid. Atlases are often carved as holding things up with great effort. Caryatids do it effortlessly. Need I say more?

Here's another strong guy. Trout's almost 6 feet tall, so the large scale is amazing.

Ramona's been here before and wisely insisted that we see the telemon. As of our trip there, she still hadn't seen the whole place and all the temples.

Tom Tom sent us on a winding back road to the the Villa Romana del Casale. We were afraid we were lost because it took so long, but Trout did get to see an old paved road racing track enroute.

The site is constantly being researched and preserved. This is what it looks like outside. It was built around 340 and the mosaic work is described as being done by North Africans -- considered to be the most skilled mosaic artists of the time.

Most of the pictures I took were from the scaffolding throughout the rooms. We were up and down the stairs and at every vantage point all three of us were saying "WOW" or left dumbstruck. I had seen some of these images in art books, but as always, nothing prepares you for seeing the thing in person.

Every floor was covered.

Even those of the toilets. Remember, the Romans had very sophisticated hot and cold running water systems. They weren't exactly flush toilets, but they weren't pit privies. Communal pottying was not unusual either.

I took this picture especially for the quilters who might see it.

This is probably the most famous of all the mosaics. Often cited as the Bikini Bathers, it actually shows women representing athletic exercises in the clothing they wore for them. The Villa is close to the town of Enna which has a very good description -- maybe better than the one of the official website I linked to above.

The white at the top of some of these pictures is a drop cloth.

Due to the late hour and the weather, most of the vendors were closed along the road from the parking lot to the Villa when we arrived. Since it was so close to closing, we went to the villa first, hoping to hit the one coffee shop with walls and a toilet on the way back. By the time we got back to it, it was closing up, but they did allow me to use the toilet and us to get something to drink.

It was dark when we got back on the road. It took a long time to find our way to the autostrada, but Ramona once more did a great job of driving, and we got home just in time to have the tasty dinner Jason cooked for us.

It was our last night in Sicily and it was an early one because we were leaving early the next day from Catania to head back north.

Rome with Ron

Although we spent 3 days and nights in Rome, we still opted to spend one whole day, September 17th, with a private guide, Ron in Rome. He's an American living in Rome with his wife. It was a jam-packed day from 9:00 in the morning until after 5:00 pm. We walked, took a bus and the Metro, and we were exhausted by the end of the day. We hit the highlights I arranged in advance with Ron via email, and it was great hearing about living in the city, warts and all, from a fellow American. One of the hassles is that he can't own a vehicle.

He came to our hotel which was quite close to the Roma Termini. Once again I opted for a reasonably priced location close to a central transportation hub. He took us inside the station, we bought transportation passes and we were on our way to our first stop. It was great having him take us around because we didn't have to think about or figure out how to get to places, at least on that day.

We were on a bus and we got to see some pickpockets at work. We were fortunate that we never experienced that first hand (in our pocket) anywhere on the trip. Ron pointed out one guy who got on, sized us up and moved to another part of the bus. The pickpockets tend to be very well-dressed men who speak pretty good English. A different one went behind us to get off, but he picked the wrong place to get off because his victims also got off there.

The pattern is for the pickpocket to do his job and then get off at the next stop, assuming that the victims won't notice their loss until several stops later. However, the Japanese tourists he hit figured out what happened right away. They got off the bus at the front and watched him go to the back. They were waiting for him when he got off.

It also happened that the stop was at a construction area where there were local cops and a local cop station, so one of the tourists ran to get a cop before the guy could get away while the others confronted him and yelled at him -- in Japanese, of course. The cop led him and them to the cop station and that's the last we saw because the bus continued on. The pickpocket seemed very nonchalant about the whole thing, and Ron said nothing would probably happen to him so long as he gave what he took back.

Our first stop was the Pantheon. I love this building. Dedicated to all the gods, it was originally built in 125 AD and was converted to a Christian church in 609. It is the most complete ancient building in Rome.

This opening in the ceiling is the same as it was 1800+ years ago.

The floor is amazing.

Here Ron tells Trout about the building and its history.

These photos are from the inside looking out of the entrance.


Some of the nice things about having Ron show us around were surprises that we could stop into along the way. This is the Baroque organ of a little neighborhood church near the Pantheon.


Also in the area was the home of Tazza D'Oro, famous coffee roasters. I took a potty break there, and it was awful. The shop was great, but the toilet facility, at least for women, was disgusting. I was glad I was carrying a roll of TP and wipes.

As Ron told us about where Michelle and the girls had gelato when the Obamas were in town, we walked through the Piazza Navona and the Campo de Fiori. The Wikipedia link has better pictures but these are mine.

This is the monument to Giordano Bruno, famous Italian philosopher and mathematician who was burned at the stake for heresy in 1600.

The market doesn't just sell flowers. It's the most famous market in town, but there are many others. After this one closes up, all these tents and stalls disappear and for a few hours the square is empty. Then as evening comes, the restaurants in the area set out their tables and it becomes a very lively nightspot.

This is a typical small and narrow street in the area.

There are constant archeological digs in Rome, and new finds occur regularly. This is the Largo de Torre Argentina.

On our tour, it was famous for two things -- a famous cat sanctuary...

...and the steps where Julius Caesar was killed.

From here we walked through the Jewish Ghetto.

The area is heavily protected and rumor has it that of any four young men you see in the area, one is Mossad.

This is the Synogogue. There are guard stations all around it, including one right behind where I was standing to take this picture.

Next we walked over the Tiber River to the Isola Tiberina. This is the oldest bridge over it, or at least the section on the right is.

Flooding in December 2008 brought the river up to just below the small windows in this picture and threatened the integrity of the bridges.

This is the bridge we walked over both directions.

Back in the main part of Rome, these are part of the buildings near the Theater of Marcellus.

And here it is. It may resemble the Colosseum, but it's the Teatro de Marcello, and those are aparments in the top. How cool would that be -- to live in a 2000 year old building.

I'd been to Rome twice before, but I never took the time to actually walk through the Forum, so that was a major part of this tour. We started with the Palatine Hill.

The Palatine Hill was the location of the homes of some of the emperors and other Romans of distinction. This was a special performance area just for them.

The construction of these buildings was interesting to us. Those holes in the wall were used to create scaffolding to build the wall higher. They put beams in the holes, lay the walkway along them and built their way up. When they finished all the work they started at the top and removed them on the way down. The holes were filled in and covered up and didn't reappear until the walls lost their marble coverings.

This is where the emperor sat to watch the show.

This is a close up peek at the wall painting toward the bottom center of the picture above.

This is some of the marble that sheathed everything. It's easy to imagine how this area would gleam in the sun when all the exterior surfaces were covered with white marble.

This is a peek at more wall painting inside the palace.

This was a garden in the bath area.

This was the children's bath.

This was a passage used to bring the emperor from the house to public areas in a secure way.

It's paved with tiny mosaics.

The walls are covered in very small stones.

It's amazing how some of the vistas seem so familiar. The trees are the same as in many paintings.

This is the burial site of Julius Caesar in the Forum. People still bring flowers to it.

The entire Forum is viewable from the Palatine Hill. This is the Basilica of Constatine. It was the largest building in the Forum and is now only about 1/3 of its original size. See how it compares to the people below the trees.

This is the Arch of Titus. It's the trimphal arch into the city. Roman soldiers would come through it after their battles.

It's pretty narrow, so it would take a long time, providing lots of entertainment for the people along the parade route.

The ceiling is covered in flowers, representing those that were strewn for the victors. One of their successful excursions was the sack of Jerusalem. On the right is a representation of them carrying off the spoils of their plunder.

The Romans were very advanced in the use of water -- in bringing it to the city, using it and disposing of it. This is an original sewer manhole cover.

This is a view down the main road.

These are parts of the Temple of Saturn. It is about 2500 years old. Saturn was a favorite Roman God.

And this is the stone that marked the center of the Roman Empire. Distances to Rome are still measured to this stone. The latin is literally "navel of the city of Rome" but for hundreds of years it was truly the navel of the world.

Once you've marched through the forum to all your screaming fans, you gotta go out another arch to officially end the spectacle. This Arch of Septimus Severus served that purpose.

This shows more excavation of the Forum. We just passed by this on the way to the Colosseum. The Forum is a prime example of how time, neglect and flooding can bury and hide the past. Apparently, at one time the Forum was a cow pasture with just a few odd stone things sticking up out of the ground.

So we left the Forum and headed down the street to the Colosseum. There was construction work going on to repair places like this in the road, one cobblestone at a time.

This mural showed the development of the Roman Empire over time, and these are some typical cars. The smallest car we saw was in London, but Rome had more small cars than any other place we went -- and way more motorcyles.

Now we're in the Colosseum. Just imagine an enormous football stadium that would seat 50,000 spectators. This wall shows some places where gates or marble or statues of gods were attached. The Wikipedia article has a great cross section of the levels of the Colosseum.

The spectators would walk under and through these arches. Imagine it with food vendors and all the same kinds of kitsch of a stadium of today. On the top levels there were even enormous cloth covers that could be adjusted to shade the spectators.

The "performers" would stay below the main level until time to come out.

This shows the white marble over some of the seats. This was not the nosebleed section. The people who sat here were of the higher classes.

Over time the building was quarried for the marble and brick, but these are original and restored areas.

These steps are gated off for that reason.

Here is Trout pretending he's about to go into the arena. The ground was covered with sand to soak up any blood from the activities there. Arena is from the Latin, harena, for sand.

Outside the Colosseum is this massive Temple of Venus and Rome. It was the largest temple in Ancient Rome.

Another good example of Roman engineering were these gutters inside the Colosseum. They carried rain water away so it wouldn't puddle or flood the seating.

Ron took this picture of us, one of the few of both of us on the trip.

Our last stop with Ron's guidance was one of my favorites in Rome. It's the Basilica of San Clemente. This was the best example of reuse of a sacred site we saw on the whole trip. It's a 12th century Christian church built on a 4th century Christian church built on a 1st century pagan temple to the Roman God, Mithras. The website has great still and video of the place. Be sure to go to the Tour link, click on the Levels from different centuries and then click on the high resolution pictures. I put links to some examples here. There are many more great pictures. No wonder they didn't want us to take pictures. This is one of the best websites I've seen for both information and creativity.

After San Clemente, we started to get on the Metro back to Roma Termini, but it was rush hour. The Metro was literally like those pictures you see from Japan where people are stuffing themselves onto the train. It was hot and the route we would take had no air conditioned trains. I told Ron I couldn't do it.

So we came out of the underground and took a bus. I thought it was a great tour. We definitely learned a lot and got our money's worth for such a short time.