15 Oct 2022
Giuseppe, our guide, was extraordinarily knowledgeable and passionate about the foci of our tour. I found it all--what I saw, what I heard, and what I learned--to be wondrous and a bit overwhelming.
I cannot imagine trying to visit, especially, the Palatine Hill and the Forum without first having a guide to introduce and help interpret these vast places that are bursting with remains, each with a story or many stories to tell.
The visit to the Colosseum seemed to last longer than those to both the Palatine Hill and the Forum. Had this been a situation where we voted, I'd have voted to spend the least time at the Colosseum. It is much easier to "hear" its story and there is less to interpret, whereas the other two are as large as amusement parks but ones where the rides are in various states of decomposition, where pieces of them have been stolen to create other rides outside the parks, and where newer rides have been built over or alongside the remains of the original ones, oftentimes incorporating structures of the older rides to complete the newer ones. One often does not know what one is looking at, what it would look like if it were still extant, and what its purpose was.
I decided rather than try to see it all after the tour ended I would pay for another visit on my own and, now that I know better what to expect and how vast the space is, plan to arrive as soon as the venues opened with the knowledge I may not see everything.