Aroma ROMA

'You've never been inside The Sistine Chappel and have no idea about how it feels standing there', says Robin Williams to Matt Damon, in Good Will Hunting. We'll Will might have not known, but I do!

Roma was on my list from the time I've been here. The hype added to fire and called I it time, only next to my trip to Paris. There was a map, and there were we. No direction boards and bad connectivity, walking on our divine feet (as people did long long time ago) we kinda patroled the whole of ancient Roma. First on the list was, ahem.. No prizes for guessing it right - The colloseum. The 80 BC Ampitheatre converted to an arena of bloodsport(608 AD) to the 2nd most voted wonder of the world( Taj Mahal being the first), it's been a helluva roller coaster ride for this 2000 year old edifice. We did take a guided tour, and thank god, we had an Italien for a guide. We come back to this later. He told us stories about Flavious(the one who built the amphitheater), Octavious Augustus(first king of Roma), Damacian( started the bloodsport), Titus (the ruthless successor) and Commodus( The very character from Gladiator). Then he spoke of how romans robbed the structure of it's metal and marble, the earth quake, the war, the kings, the slaves turned gladiators, the hatred and the love for the sport and animals. He talks as if he was there and he despised it. It brings a chill and you feel a lump in your throat when you hear how people saw others being torn by animals and cheered for it.

Before we go to the 2nd part of our guided tour to Palantine hill, we take a break and visit Arena Della Patre. Now this translates to 'The tomb of the unknown soldier'. With all the irony they ment to convey, the top floor had a huge statue of Vittorio Emanuele II, the 1st king of italy. The top floor gave a bird's eye view of Roma. We learnt that St Peter's Bassilica is supposedly the tallest monument/structure in Roma because it is forbidded to build one taller than it. Hmm.. I appreciate - Roma wouldnt have been the same, if sky scrappers had floodded the city. Then we come back to getting almost killed by boredom and exaggeration. The tour to Palantine hill. The guide was a newzealander. He would point to a stone and say, 'This place where you have your feet routed, housed a room , 50 feet high'. And when we look at the imaginery roof, we find a couldy sky about to burst out. He cracks a few onliners which makes it real difficult for us to go back into what we were visualising a few seconds ago. The history goes that Palantine hill was like our very own koramangala and every roman wanted to own a piece of it. Damacian went to the extent of demolishing all the houses on the hill to make room for his new castle. Even musollini has a standing structure on top of the hill. Well! He wasnt roman… Ahem, he was German!

The tour was like one through a fictional novel. And we move on. With a good lunch we walk towards Pantheon. Built in 27 BC, has largest Dome in Europe and 2nd largest in the world. Well! We all know which is the largest in the world right? It's amazing to see how far could architects go to do whats expected of them and the kings go to multiply their greatness. Built for pagan worship, was converted to a church when christianity became a bigger religion.

'Never be slow to board or get down a train on a roman weekday' and I just got a taste of it. I was reminded of Mumbai local trains even though I've never been on one. And couples even got to kiss in all the push and rush. A day starts with people boarding the Metro. As it proceeds you can see more head and tail lights on the road and then, there are both! Cars line every meter of any street. It's impossible to get a free parking place after 9.00 am. I feel if you would crush down all the cars in rome and melt them, you can create a ball as big as the earth's core.

Vatican was just a few miles from where we had put up. Upight north-west! We again took a guided tour and this time we were presented with an american guide. He lead us through the vatican museum. We saw statues of headless, handless men from BC(Troy) and attempts of modern Romans(Michaelangelo etc) to restore the broken parts. War dogs, egyptian purple poffrey, virgin mary, Hercules, Apollo, godesses and art. We go through few raffael rooms and enter the most talked about in sistine chapell - the one painted by MA. He was challenged to paint the roof by one of his critic, who was a fan of Raffael and he took it up to learn the art and finish doing the roof in 4 years of time only to leave the world mesmerised by his genius. The paintings depict different preachings, from moses taking his people accross the red sea to christ being born to constantine accepting christianity. But the best of all, is the judgement day, which was painted a few years later. It is said that MA had to extract a certain blue colour from the crystals and for that they had to be ground to a certain granularity. Otherwise, they would give a different colour. And also, he had to first plaster the walls, then paint on them before the plaster dried off. Judgement day shows christ calling for people to be judged after his resurrection. Then there was the basillica. It has the highest dome, only next to The Pantheon, because MA paid tribute to agrippa (Architect of Pantheon) by building the St. Peters' domw smaller than the Pantheon even though he was capable of it

.And then, we had the worst day of our trip. Visit to Pisa! We travelled 12 hours, spent 40 bucks to see the damned tilted tower which was a mistake by 2 great architects of that period(12th and 13th century). The monument has been renovated and has 147 of it original marble pillars replaced by another marble since then. I just wonder, actually how old is tower of Pisa?The city isnt all that great as such(Not upto mark to the hype). Looks very similar to our Bengalooru. But there are places which will keep the hype alive for a log long time.