Rome's just unveiling all kinds of incredible ancient sites. Case in point: the House of Livia — a gloriously-frescoed, 2,000-year-old structure thought to belong to Emperor Augustus' wife. After being closed to the public for years, then open on Saturday mornings only last fall, it's reopened this month.
But go quickly. Because, so far, it's only open this month.
Why is it worth visiting? Well, two reasons. First, if you're wandering around the ruins of the Palatine and curious how any of these ancient houses actually would have been decorated, here's your chance. The House of Livia still boasts (fragments of) mosaic floors and beautiful frescoes — not quite as pristine as those in the House of Augustus, but almost. (Below, the well-preserved frescoes of the garlands that symbolized Octavian Augustus' victory — you can see them on his Ara Pacis, too).
Secondly, the house is thought to belong to Livia. Augustus' wife. The woman that Octavian fell in love with so immediately he divorced his wife the day she was birthing his child in order to marry Livia. Who he remained married to for 51 years, even though she never bore him a child, and even though she was the daughter of a man who had been killed in battle fighting against her now-husband. Who was, herself, the mother of the second emperor Tiberius, the grandmother of Claudius, and the great-grandmother of Caligula.
And who was so powerful, the Senate tried to bestow her with the title of Mater Patriae ("Mother of the Fatherland") — and, supposedly, such a powerful meddler that her son Tiberius retired himself to Capri just to avoid her. In short? She was a bad-ass.
How could you not want to see where she lived, loved, and plotted… or the decorations that she chose? (Note: The tour guide said the frescoes were chosen by Augustus. Why this has been assumed, I'm not exactly sure. I doubt a woman who was powerful enough to make the emperor retire would have let somebody else pick out her home's decor.)
So, go. And go now — before the House of Livia shuts once more, to open who-knows-when.
As per the Pierreci site, the House of Livia is open only for tours that run, in English, at 9:30am and every hour thereafter until 3:30pm. That said, I was there yesterday and the house was very clearly simply open, with people wandering in and out, at 3:15. The tour guide did come in at 3:30 and gave a 15-minute tour, but it didn't seem to be necessary to view the house's offerings. The price of entrance is included in your 12 euro forum/Colosseum/Palatine ticket.
Update, June 2011: Here's updated info on the Colosseum underground, including how it will be open through July and what tour options you have for seeing the underground.
The woman at Pierreci said that they aren't accepting reservations for today or tomorrow, so if you're looking to check the newly-restored areas — closed again since Nov. 30 — out over the weekend, go directly there.
But from Monday, you can make reservations for the tour that takes you into the hypogeum — the underground, "backstage" area where gladiators and animals would have waited for their turns to fight — and up to the third level, as well as onto the arena.
As in the fall, you can't see these areas without a guided tour. Unlike in the fall, Pierreci says that when you book, you also have to pay by credit card in advance. Pierreci told me that the cost is €9 for the guided tour, plus the €12 entrance ticket, and they said there is no reservation fee.
English tours are offered daily at 9:40am, 12:20pm, 1pm, 3pm, and 4:20pm. To book, call +39 0639967700. (They should speak English).
As anyone who's been to Italy knows, things are always changing here — or one department might say one thing, but another might say something else. So if anyone has a different experience with this, please let us know in the comments.
I’ve done a lot of cool things in Rome — but visiting the Columbarium of Pomponio Hylas is one of the coolest.
And it’s one of Rome’s best-kept secrets.
First off, let’s debunk the idea that Christians were the only ones who got neat underground burial chambers in Rome. In fact, the practice of interring the dead below ground went back to the pagan Romans. One popular way to do this was with a columbarium — an underground chamber built and decorated to hold the urns of Romans’ ashes, either for one family or many. (Later, around the time of Trajan in the 2nd century, pagans would stop incinerating their dead and start burying whole bodies in catacombs. The Christians took up the same idea and, along with continuing to bury their dead side-by-side with pagans in mixed catacombs, also started building catacombs just for Christians).
Needless to say, every once in a while, a new columbarium is discovered below Rome’s ground level. This one was found in 1831. And it dates way back — back earlier than the Christian catacombs — to between 14 and 54 A.D. The incredible thing? Many of the frescoes and decorations still look fresh. And lots of the burial urns are still there.
The columbarium likely was founded by Pomponio Hylas for his family in the 1st century B.C. How do we know? The extraordinary mosaic that faces you as you descend down the stairs into the space.
The chamber itself is small. But it’s filled with beautifully-detailed, and preserved, frescoes and decorations, from mythological scenes to delicate, winding vines.
There’s nothing quite as extraordinary as standing in the small chamber designed, so intimately, by a family for its dead, seeing the frescoes that they hired artists to paint, viewing the inscriptions with their individual names — and the urns that once contained their ashes. If it weren’t so beautiful, it would give you the shivers.
And you’d never guess any of this from the outside.
To book, you’re supposed to have a group of at least 10 people. Book by calling 060608. It costs €3 per person. Just promise one thing: If you go, you will not touch the frescoes, or anything else in there. That’s what destroys the artwork.
The columbarium is located in the Parco degli Scipioni, nearest to Via Latina 10. For a map, click here.
Want to find out about Rome’s other hidden gems? Check out The Revealed Rome Handbook: Tips and Tricks for Exploring the Eternal City, available for purchase on Amazon, below, or through my site here!
In the days of the Roman empire, you never would have been able to enter the House of the Vestal Virgins — unless you were one of the six chosen women, that is, or the Pontifex Maximus, Rome's religious leader who oversaw the cult.
Now? You can stroll right in.
After a long restoration, the House of the Vestal Virgins is open for visitors. No special status needed. (It's in the forum, so the normal forum/Colosseum/Palatine ticket gets you in).
It's a neat opportunity to access one of ancient Rome's most historic, and much-mythologized, cults. The Vestal Virgins likely dated all the way back to the Etruscans in the 8th century B.C.; they hung on right up until Theodosius, who had abolished pagan cults in 391, forcibly shut down their temple three years later.
But they weren't just any pagan cult. They were one of ancient Rome's most important… and elite. A Vestal was picked between the ages of 6 and 10 — largely for her beauty — and committed to 30 years of service: ten years learning the rituals, ten actively serving, and ten tutoring the new priestesses. Throughout that time, she had two big responsibilities. She had to tend Rome's sacred fire. And she had to guard her virginity. If either was extinguished, it was thought, Rome would fall. (In return for this sacrifice, a Vestal was one of the most powerful women in Rome, allowed to own her own property, make her own will, and intercede on any prisoner's behalf).
That's why the punishment, if they did screw up (…or screw around), was so severe. "Vestals who are guilty of lesser misdemeanors are scourged with rods," wrote Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the first century B.C. "But those who have suffered defilement by unchastity are delivered up to the most shameful and miserable death."
The method? Being buried alive. Eek.
(It's worth noting, though, that this terrible punishment only happened 18 times throughout the Vestals' 900-year tenure — and almost always in times of great political upheaval, making blaming-the-Vestals probably a last-ditch effort to restore normalcy in a time of crisis).
Now, though, you don't have to take a 30-year vow of virginity in order to visit the House of the Vestals. Just stroll right in. The version you see today (above) dates back to the 2nd-century. (The fire that wracked Nero's Rome also destroyed the earlier house in 64 A.D.!)
As with the rest of the forum, of course, you have to use your imagination to picture what this house would once have looked like. Historians say it was up to 4 stories tall, its rooms were spacious, its decorations opulent. Evocatively, though, some of the original statues of vestals still remain, lining the courtyard.
There's not quite enough here to make a trip to the forum just for this. But if you're in there anyway, or haven't paid a visit to Rome's forum in a while, then don't miss it.
Yes, there might be sexism in Italy — even up to the highest levels of government. Yes, it might be so bad that primetime news shows routinely show half-naked women, that the country lags behind in every statistic from the gender gap in wages to the number of female politicians, and that a million women protested in a nationwide demonstration last month.
But at least this Tuesday, March 8, women get a break: For Festa della Donna, the traditional Italian holiday for women, all nationally-run monuments and museums will be free for females only. In Rome, that includes sites like the Colosseum and Palazzo Massimo.
While we all continue to wait to see if the Colosseum's underground will reopen, here's another one of Rome's best-kept secrets: the subterranean mithraeum of Circus Maximus.
Hidden below ground next to the famous racetrack, the ancient mithraeum remained a secret for centuries. (It may have even been a secret when worshippers were gathering there in the 2nd or 3rd century!) In fact, it wasn't until 1931 that the five-room building was discovered… 45 feet below ground. Today, the mithraeum lies beneath the Foundation of Rome's Teatro dell'Opera.
Let me put it this way: Rome has a lot of hidden gems. But few things are more surprising than descending down a stairwell in a nondescript building… only to find such well-preserved ancient chambers!
Thanks to different clues left within the rooms — including, most excitingly, a fantastic frieze showing Mithras slaying a bull (the original was removed for preservation; the copy is shown below) — archaeologists concluded that the chamber was nothing other than a 2nd-century center of worship for followers of the cult of Mithras. But that doesn't, actually, tell us as much as you might expect. Because of all the pagan cults of ancient Rome, the Mithraic sect might have been the most mysterious.
No first-hand accounts or scriptures of the cult have survived. What we do know is that Mithraism seems to have come into existence, at least in its Roman form, in the first century. It became very popular — particularly among Roman soldiers, who probably picked some form of it up from the Persians and Greeks — and then, by the fourth and fifth centuries, faded out altogether. That might be because it was just too similar to another religion on the rise: Christianity. (For one thing, Mithras was seen as a kind of sun god who saved his people by shedding "eternal blood").
We can't be exactly sure what Mithraic followers did in sanctuaries like the one beneath Circus Maximus. But it's thought that one part of their ceremony was the sacrifice of a bull (called tauroctony), which is repeated again and again in Mithraic imagery — including in the frieze found here.
But let's be honest. Even if these underground chambers didn't make up a mithraeum, they'd still be pretty incredible. They're so well-preserved you can still walk beneath the same brick arches and tread on the same floor, with its inlaid marble pattern, as the ancient worshipers. Unlike so many other ancient ruins, you can get a real feel for what the building would have felt like.
And, unlike most ruins you find below ground in Rome today — which originally would have been at ground level — the mithraeum always would have been subterranean. That means you can experience the space almost as ancient worshipers would, perhaps sneaking in here as crowds cheered at the Circus Maximus next door.
Pretty cool.
The mithraeum at Circus Maximus is open by appointment only, and you have to be with a tour — you can't just wander in on your own. (Given how precious it is, that probably makes sense!) Through May 14, Roma Segreta, the association for those who like these kinds of hidden gems, is running tours of the mithraeum. They're about an hour and cost €6. Here's the schedule of Roma Segreta mithraeum tours. Unfortunately, they're only in Italian — but even if you can't understand a word, it might just be worth it for a peek! The coop Il Sogno also offers tours of the mithraeum, and you can pick the time — they start at €80 for 1 to 4 adults.
Want to find out about Rome's other hidden gems? Check out The Revealed Rome Handbook: Tips and Tricks for Exploring the Eternal City, available for purchase on Amazon, below, or through my site here!
Lots of people are still asking (and Googling) about the underground level of the Colosseum, which I blogged about when it first opened back in October (including this Q&A on how to book, and this story on what it's really like).
Here's the bad news: As they said when they first opened the hypogeum, third level, and Porta Libitina, the tours ended on Nov. 30.
Here's the good news: I'm still fairly certain that there's no way they could have undertaken a €1 million restoration to those areas without planning on opening them ever again.
So if you're planning a spring or summer 2011 trip to Rome, hang tight. As anyone who's been to Italy once knows, that a reopening date hasn't been announced yet has absolutely no bearing on whether it will happen. And my guess is that, once the tourist season kicks back up, it will.
Want more tips for the very best of what to do and see in Rome? Check out The Revealed Rome Handbook: Tips and Tricks for Exploring the Eternal City, available for purchase on Amazon, below, or through my site here!
If you’ve booked your trip to Rome over Christmas, a couple of things normally happen. First, there’s elation. And then there’s an, “Oh no. What’s open on Christmas in Rome? Is anything open on Christmas in Rome?”
There’s reason to wonder. Many Romans do leave the city for their family homes over the holidays. Even so, there are still plenty of people left in this city of 3 million. Here’s what is open on Christmas in Rome… and what won’t be. (New Year’s, too). (For more tips and tricks, don’t miss my ultimate guide to Christmas in Rome!).
Will sites and museums be open during Christmas in Rome?
While some museums and sites will remain open even on Christmas Day and New Year’s, most of the biggies will be shut. The forum, Colosseum and Palatine will be closed Dec. 25 and Jan. 1, for example, but open every other day as usual, including Dec. 24.
The Vatican’s a tougher one: The Vatican museums and Sistine Chapel are closed on Dec. 8, Dec. 25, Dec. 26, and Jan. 1. They’re also closed every Sunday in December and January, as usual, except for the last Sunday of each month, when they are open and free.
Will the bus and metro be running over Christmas in Rome?
Yes. Often, the city even has an expanded service on Christmas Eve until the early afternoon. Service tends to end at about 9pm that night, though, and cabs are in very short supply, so if you need to be somewhere, give yourself lots of time to get there. On Christmas Eve, walking will probably be your best bet, so dress warmly!
Will restaurants be open on Christmas and New Year’s?
Most restaurants will be open every day except for Dec. 24, Dec. 25, and Jan. 1. Some others might close on Dec. 8, Dec. 31 and Jan. 6.
But many places will also be open on even those holidays themselves, including both classic Italian favorites and the kosher restaurants in the Ghetto. Just remember to book in advance.
Throughout December and January, yes. However, most shops will close early on Christmas Eve and will not be open on Christmas Day. Other days some might be closed or have shorter hours include Dec. 8, Dec. 26, and Jan. 1.
Finding this helpful? Then you’ll love The Revealed Rome Handbook: Tips and Tricks for Exploring the Eternal City,available for purchase on Amazon or through my site here and now updated for 2020!
If you want the saldi, you’ll have to wait — usually, these after-Christmas sales kick off throughout Lazio on the third Saturday of January.
And what about churches?
Ah, churches! They will, of course, be open on Christmas; many will offer mass at the same time they’d usually have their Sunday service. If you’re interested in attending mass, check with the church in advance. Otherwise, you’re fine to visit most churches as usual, being, of course, particularly respectful and refraining from taking flash photographs if a service is going on. And don’t forget to check out the church’s presepio (Nativity scene) — a particularly Italian handicraft (see below) that is only on display this time of year.
Want more great tips and tricks for Rome? Check out The Revealed Rome Handbook: Tips and Tricks for Exploring the Eternal City, available for purchase on Amazon, below, or through my site here!
Memories fade, and photographs don't always do justice to Rome's top attractions. Now, though, a spate of virtual tours allow travelers to explore some of Rome's most popular buildings and art, from the Sistine Chapel to the Capitoline Museums — all from the comfort of home.
Below, some of the best of the virtual lineup. Prepare to want to start planning your next trip to Rome!
St. Peter's Basilica. Gorgeous virtual tour by the Vatican itself. Highly professional and stunning.
The Vatican Museums, including the Pinacoteca (below), Raphael Rooms, Etruscan Museum and Egyptian Museum.
San Giovanni in Laterano, or St. John Lateran, the official ecclesiastical seat of the Bishop of Rome (i.e. the Pope) and the mother church of Catholics.
St. Paul Outside the Walls, founded in the 4th century on the burial place of St. Paul and one of Rome's four papal basilicas.
The Capitoline Museums. They're the oldest public museums in Rome and boast some of Italy's best ancient, Renaissance, and Baroque art. Now, you can visit all 45 of their rooms… digitally.
The Pantheon. Rome's single best-preserved ancient building; the tour isn't as professional as the previous virtual tours, but still pretty great.
Church of Santa Maria del Popolo, a beautiful example of the blending of the Baroque and Renaissance styles of architecture. It's famous for its Caravaggio paintings — which, bummer, you can't see in the tour — but also for its Chigi Chapel designed by Raphael, which you can.
The Ara Pacis, the altar made from 13-9 B.C. to commemorate Emperor Augustus' victories and the Pax Romana. (Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "Ara Pacis").
Circus Maximus, where ancient charioteers once raced (make this full-screen for a better image)
Largo Argentina, with the remains of four ancient Republican temples
And, yes… the Colosseum! Finally: Yes, virtual tours of what actually exists are all well and good — but virtual tours of what ancient Rome would have looked like? Maybe even better.
UCLA's Digital Roman Forum includes both modern and ancient views of the forum, including the basilicas Julia and Aemilia. Pick a time between 700 B.C. and 500 A.D., click on the map, and see what that spot looks like in 360 degrees today — and an image of what it would have looked like then rotates with you.
It's a work in progress and only shows you what the sites look like today, but this other virtual tour of the Roman forum features 360-degree views of a dozen different spots in the ancient landscape.
Now, if only you could also virtually enjoy the taste of pasta alla gricia or the feel of the warm Roman sun on your neck…
Every time you travel, you have an impact on your destination.
As much as we avid travelers like to think to the contrary, that's not always a good thing. Your waste is now your destination's waste, your carbon footprint its carbon footprint. The choices you make of what to eat and buy can commercialize the agricultural systems and undercut the artisanal production of your destination. The list of potential harms goes on — which is why "invasive tourism" is such a risk for cities and sites worldwide.
That's as true for top destinations in Italy as it is anywhere else. Just recently, the head of the Vatican Museums announced that the 20,000 or so daily visitors to the Sistine Chapel are damaging the frescoes with their dust, sweat, and carbon dioxide. Ruins are deteriorating, artisans' shops closing down, and the center is commercializing — thanks to lots of global forces, not least of all tourism.
Luckily, though, with just a little forethought, you can travel ethically. And you have the power, both with your pocketbook and the other choices you make, to preserve that art, support that culinary tradition, and help those people you like so much.
Here, just a few easy things you can do to make sure that you're helping — not harming — the places in Italy (and elsewhere!) that you love visiting.
1. Never, ever touch the frescoes. Or paintings. Or sculptures. Or tapestries. The number-one way to harm most art is to touch it, transferring the natural oils from your skin onto its surface. That wears everything away from paint to bronze.
For proof, just check out the corners of doors, say in the Vatican's Borgia apartments, that have been frescoed; because these are easy to grab as you go down a hall, they're usually almost entirely worn away. Or check out the medieval bronze statue of St. Peter in St. Peter's Basilica. Hundreds of years of pilgrims kissing and touching its right foot have — you guessed it — worn away the right foot. So please, if you like art, stand and gaze at it. But never, ever touch it.
Be careful with that camera flash, too — it damages cloth and tapestries, as well as some painting. Always be sure it's okay before the bulb goes off.
2. Eat only foods in season. When tourists demand out-of-season products, like artichokes in November, that either forces Italy to import the food in question (that Roman artichoke isn't so Roman, and isn't so "green," if it's from France!), or screws up local agricultural rhythms and the environment as farmers try to adapt to commercial forces. Be aware: Learn what you can, and can't, expect to be in season where you're going. For a quick read-over of what is in season when you're visiting Italy and other tips on how to eat responsibly when traveling, check out Katie Parla's excellent tips for how to be a conscientious eater.
Pizza with fiori di zucca at Da Francesco, Rome? That's something you should only be eating between July and November…
3. Don't buy plastic water bottles. Yes, they're everywhere. Yes, Italians buy them, too. But the effect is terrible. In the Cinque Terre each August alone, 400,000 plastic bottles are found littering the park and its beaches. Venice, which manages 20 million visitors each year, gets trashed with 13 million plastic bottles. And even if you dispose of your plastic bottles properly, remember that that waste has to go somewhere in Italy. (If you're in Naples, of course, that garbage might just stay there).
Italy is taking steps to eradicate the problem: The Cinque Terre banned plastic bottles this past September. From now on, visitors will have the option to buy a 1 euro metal bottle and to refill it at the park's fountains. But for areas of Italy that haven't yet legislated the matter, do the same. Buy a glass or metal bottle and refill it. That's especially easy in Rome, where there are 2,500 nasoni spewing cold, fresh water around the city.
5. Walk, or use local transportation. Italy's cities are great for walking. But if you have to get somewhere faster, take the metro or bus. It's much "greener" than individual taxis — and cheaper and pretty easy to use, too.
6. Stay in agriturismi. They're super-cheap (think €30 to €50 per night), in every destination you could possibly want to visit in Italy, usually in beautiful settings, and they often include a home-cooked meal with ingredients all harvested or slaughtered right there. (Now that's hyperlocal).
Typical Tuscan agriturismo: the Agriturismo Sant'Apollinare
Sound too good to be true? It's not. There are few more-rewarding places to stay overnight than an agriturismo, or "farm stay." And far from the slightly-backwards, eating-in-the-kitchen-with-the-farmer's-family image the word sometimes conjures, nearly every agriturismo I've stayed at has been beautiful and clean, with super-friendly but not-obtrusive owners. Some even go up to the "luxury" scale, like the beautiful Fontanaro agriturismo in Umbria (pictured at top of page). It's got a pool and gorgeous villas — but makes all its own wine, honey, and olive oil, too.
6. Try to limit your air travel. Flying back and forth from Europe to the U.S. emits three to four tons of carbon. That's more emissions than 20 people living in Bangladesh will cause in a whole year. To reduce that impact, take trains, ferries or other transport whenever you can. Consider purchasing a "carbon offset" for your flight, and try to make fewer, longer trips rather than short journeys.
7. Think before you buy. Obviously, that's true with every purchase you make, whether at home or abroad. When you buy a scarf from a Rome vendor that was made in China, your coins vote for outsourcing; when you buy handmade leather gloves in Florence, you vote for local artisans.
Be aware, too, that not all local products are necessarily "ethical." I posted several weeks ago about the coral industry on the Amalfi coast. Yes, buying a coral necklace supports local jewelry-makers, but it supports the destruction of the coral reefs, too. Decide what's important to you — but try to be aware of the local issues, both cultural and environmental, first.
Secondly, the house is thought to belong to Livia. Augustus' wife. The woman that Octavian fell in love with so immediately he divorced his wife the day she was birthing his child in order to marry Livia. Who he remained married to for 51 years, even though she never bore him a child, and even though she was the daughter of a man who had been killed in battle fighting against her now-husband. Who was, herself, the mother of the second emperor Tiberius, the grandmother of Claudius, and the great-grandmother of Caligula.
