Then we toured the Colosseum and Roman Forum. We had purchased a Roma 3-day pass, which allows unlimited transportation, entry into the first two museums free, with discounts after, and lets you bypass lines at big sites like the Colosseum.
The Colosseum is massive! It was completed in 80AD, and seated 50,000. There was a wooden floor over the center part, with like 40 elevators beneath to bring men and animals to the surface. In the inaugural games, which lasted 100 days, 9,000 wild animals were killed. The exits were called the vomitorium, we didn't find out why. I guess what I realized was that with both the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus just across the Palatine Hill, movies like Ben Hur and Gladiator, which I previously thought were surely exaggerated, are in fact pretty accurate. 
It was kind of cool to think we were walking on the exact same stones where the Emperors had walked. Most of the buildings were made from brick, with cement or marble faces. You can see pock marks in the brick walls where the faces was held on. Some of the columns are brick with cement exterior, but some are solid stone, not sure how they possibly could have made these by hand.
The Colosseum is massive! It was completed in 80AD, and seated 50,000. There was a wooden floor over the center part, with like 40 elevators beneath to bring men and animals to the surface. In the inaugural games, which lasted 100 days, 9,000 wild animals were killed. The exits were called the vomitorium, we didn't find out why. I guess what I realized was that with both the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus just across the Palatine Hill, movies like Ben Hur and Gladiator, which I previously thought were surely exaggerated, are in fact pretty accurate. The forum is very extensive, as you can tell by the photos. There are many temples, arches, courts, and monuments, with a central stone path, the sacred way going up the middle. They had a god for everything, even a god of fertilizer they could pray to, and were very superstitious. In posts-Roman Empire years, an earthquake partially destroyed some of the buildings, but mainly later Rome inhabitants stripped the buildings of exterior marble and stone to build their own buildings. Thankfully, they usually left a few columns standing. We were told that only a quarter of ancient Rome has been excavated. If a building was impressive enough, like the Pantheon (Temple of all the gods), it got turned into a Catholic church as is during the Christian era, with the replacement of Roman gods with statues of Saints and Popes.
It was kind of cool to think we were walking on the exact same stones where the Emperors had walked. Most of the buildings were made from brick, with cement or marble faces. You can see pock marks in the brick walls where the faces was held on. Some of the columns are brick with cement exterior, but some are solid stone, not sure how they possibly could have made these by hand.
We had internet access in the apartment, and watched a couple youtube episodes of a BBC docudrama called "Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire" (click for link, you have to find all six parts of the episode, but it's worth it). The episode on Constantine in about 300AD was particularly interesting on how the empire suddenly switched from the ancient Roman religion to Christianity. We also thought it was interesting how some of the old Roman ideas seemed to be kind of adopted into the new church.
After the forum, we went back home to rest a bit, then went out in the evening to visit the Pantheon, only a couple blocks away, and on to the Trevi Fountain, but it was very crowded. We decided that there were some things we should be seeing early in the morning.
The dome is the amazing structure on the Pantheon. It is a one-pour concrete structure, 20 feet thick at the base, and 7.5 feet thick at the top, using progressively lighter stone like pumice in the concrete as you go higher up. There's an 8-meter diameter hole in the top for light, so when it rains the floor has drains. Pretty good for 126AD.
The last photo is of the Victor Emmanuel Monument, honoring the first King of a unified Italy, completed in 1935, destroying a large area of Roman Forum ruins. I'm not sure why the later Italians couldn't just build their stuff somewhere else.
The dome is the amazing structure on the Pantheon. It is a one-pour concrete structure, 20 feet thick at the base, and 7.5 feet thick at the top, using progressively lighter stone like pumice in the concrete as you go higher up. There's an 8-meter diameter hole in the top for light, so when it rains the floor has drains. Pretty good for 126AD.
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