Farewell to Rome

Rome was the end of our trip. It's a place we know well so it's not so much a tourist haunt for us and anyway, it's a city that has a life other than tourism. None-the-less, we are nothing if not dumbstruck by the ancient world and later history that pervades this city. People live with it, largely ignore it, express pride for it. Tourists just gawk. Despite the years I spent there, there's always something new, and it's surprisingly renowned. This time we did an outing to Villa Adriana (Hadrian's villa) with cousins, stopping at the "Cimitero acattolico" on the way, sited with Rome's own pyramid, Piramide di Caius Cestius, and a museum visit to the Basilica di San Clemente, a church with three levels of foundations that record use of the site since ancient times, perhaps the Great Fire of 64CE, perhaps the mint of Rome, definitely a mithraem and housing and decorations through classical and Byzantine to baroque styles. All distributed over about 20 vertical metres displaying the rise and rise of physical Rome. Some pics, although none of St Clemente which doesn't allow photography.