Tim and I enjoyed a brisk morning walk to the river and back before starting school for the day, through the street market where they are even selling wild strawberries in small punnets! I was reminded of home, where we'll be all too soon, as we have loads of wild strawberries growing in rough gravel beside our driveway at home and they seem to fruit most of the year except in the very middle of summer. They are delicious but I couldn't imagine growing them for commercial purposes as it would be so labour intensive.
We
happened to walk past the local Tribunal building where there was quite a
milling crowd. Tim and I joked that most of the hearings would be
for parking fines! The parking is SO random here! It even led to a "groan"
Mummy joke: "Why was the Smart car angry?" "Because it was parked on a
cross walk!" Definitely a Rome-centric joke! The parking still
astounds us.
After
school and lunch we ventured back to Piramide to see the pyramid
there. It is right across the road from the station and incorporated
into the Aurelian Walls. The Pyramid of Cestius was built in 18
BC to 12 BC as a tomb for Gaius Cestius. It is 37 metres high, a stark
white (recently cleaned) marble structure which looks out of place among
the ruins!
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| The Pyramid of Cestius |
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| The Aurelian Walls and Porta San Paolo with pyramid. |
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| Cat sanctuary! |
The Aurelian Walls were/are the city
walls running 19 kms and built between 271 and 275 AD during the reign
of Aurelian and Probus and enclosed the seven hills of Rome and the
Field of Mars (Campus Martius). The walls were 3.5 metres thick, 8
metres high and had a tower every 100 Roman feet (29.6 metres)! In the
4th Century, the height of the walls was extended to 16 metres! What a
building project!
By
incorporating the Pyramid of Cestius, time and money could be saved in
wall construction! It is estimated that about a sixth of the walls incorporated pre-existing structures so it was good to see an example
of this! Clever folk, those Romans!
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| Aurelian wall and guard tower |
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| A bit of re-purposed masonry. |
The Porta San Paolo, one of the
southern city gates, or as it was previously called Porta Ostiensis, was
at the beginning of the road leading from Rome to Ostia where we were
yesterday! The 4 th Century gate itself has two towers and looks like a
castle.
As
we were walking around trying to get a good angle of the pyramid we
came across Suzie, a Canadian actress living in England who is a
passionate Keats fan. She was looking for the entrance to the
Protestant cemetery so she could see Keats' grave. We were keen enough
to also look and check out a few graves and say hello to a few cats,
too!
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| Cemetery cats |
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| Keats' grave |
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| Suzie, happy to have found Keats' grave. |
John Keats was only 25 when he died of
tuberculosis and his epitaph doesn't actually mention his name."This
grave contains all that was mortal, of a young English poet, who
on his death bed, in the bitterness of his heart, at the malicious
power of his enemies, desired these words to be engraven on his
tombstone: Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
We
took a few photos for Suzie who was quite emotional about seeing Keats'
grave. She told us about her theatre in London: The Rose Theatre which
is a Tudor theatre being excavated and restored. It sounds very interesting.
Unfortunately, we have already done our London stint otherwise it would
have been great to see around her theatre and maybe even see a play she
is acting in! She did inspire us to look up Keats and a movie about him
called Bright Star (2009).
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| Suzie's hand on Keats' grave |
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| Keats' memorial |
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| So stark against the brown stone ruins |
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| At home, under a tree. |
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| Baroque angel looking lovely. |
We wandered about seeing lots of German
and English names on the graves. As far as cemeteries go, it was a
peaceful and tasteful place with probably more cats than people roaming
around.
Exiting
the cemetery, we turned left and walked around the back of the walls and
through one of the Aurelian arches. Tim spotted a Conad supermarket
where the prices were considerably cheaper than our local one. Luke was
delighted that I bought some more "space age" broccoli. We then
located the platform for our airport train when we leave Rome, so that
was good as we like to be prepared before we drag our gear about.
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| Broccoli Romaneschi or space age broccoli as Luke calls it....more importantly, Luke eats it! |
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