|
Mid 70s, mostly sunny (until sunset) in Rome today. I left my room at 6:30, before sunrise, and walked all day, seeing churches, temples, underground sights, monuments, fountains, Tiber Island, and the exact spot where Julius Caesar was stabbed on March 15, 44 BC. I won't bore you with the details of all 30 sights that were on my over-10-mile walk, but I enjoyed seeing all of them, many for a second more-in-depth time, and several for the first time. A half hour before sunset, I'd made my way to a spot that was supposed to have quite a view for sunset photos, with a nearby white monumental fountain and an even whiter monumental fountain in the distance on a hill, all illuminated reddish by the sunset, but for some reason it wasn't really a very spectacular sight. I took photos, but maybe because of the clouds and/or the rainstorm that developed, the fountains were never lit up by the setting sun. So I didn't take my ipad photo there, as I had planned. Instead you get the backup photo, of Caesar's assassination site, below. This is in Largo Argentina, about 4 blocks south of the Pantheon. There are 4 temples in this dug-out city-block, all from pre-imperial-age Rome, like 200-100 BC. The one called Temple B is the round one in the right half of the photo (Temple A is just peeking out at the right edge of the frame). Behind the four temples was the huge Theater of Pompey, and the back of the theater had a small meeting hall which backed-up against temples B and C. This meeting hall was being used as the Senate building in 44 BC, since their official hall had been burned in riots several years earlier, and the new Senate building, ordered by Caesar, was not yet complete. Caesar was very popular with the people for which he did much good, but very unpopular with the Senate, who correctly felt threatened that he would ruin the Roman Republic and become something like a King. So on his final day, he entered into the meeting hall (a bit back from the photo), walked to the back of the hall (which was right near the temples), and was stabbed, in et-tu-Brutus style. That spot is just a little to the left of the pine tree trunk, and a little bit back, AKA, below the exact spot I stood upon at street level, behind the railing, just left of the short white post. The corners of the foundation of the Curia of Pompey (temporary senate hall) are the brown stone cube half-way between the pine trunk and the leftmost column of Temple B, and a similar brown stone brick behind the wall at the left edge of the photo. But don't worry, they didn't get me as I stood there, and I should be able to deliver another photo tomorrow.
[Previous entry] [Next entry]
|
