Rome – made in Italy

The Roman architecture: the arch

It's incredible to think that this imposing building took less than ten years to build. How did they do it? The Romans were really good at an architectural technique that they knew well: the arch.
An arch allows you to distribute the weight of heavy constructions effectively, in a perfect manner. The Romans used arches as the main element of their architecture, think of Roman aqueducts, for example. The Coliseum can be viewed as though it were a series of aqueducts built one on top of the other.

The Roman gladiators and the Colosseum

On entering, we see the arena straight ahead of us. The stage for shows, whose floor was once made from a mixture of bricks and wood, has now disappeared altogether. In its place you can see the cellars which housed equipment used to prepare and carry out the games. The two underground floors housed the lifts and hoists with their counter weights, of which we can still see the rails today; they were the special effects of the time, used to hoist up animals and gladiators who burst into the arena through trapdoors, suddenly appearing in a burst of white dust giving the audience great surprise effects. A complex system of hinges and lifts also allowed them to hoist up set-designed backdrops, used for the hunt events.
The shows taking place in the Coliseum were both symbolic and concrete and created a link between citizens and their leader through common participation at important public events with the not unimportant function of giving the people some fun to distract them from political problems.
So, what happened inside the Coliseum? Check it out…

The Arch of Constantine

This Triumphal Arch was dedicated in AD 315 to celebrate Constantine's victory three years before over his co-emperor, Maxentius.
Constantine claimed he owed his victory to a vision of Christ, but there is nothing Christian about the arch - in fact, most of the medallions, reliefs and statues were scavenged from earlier monuments. There are statues of Dacian prisoners taken from Trajan's Forum and reliefs of Marcus Aurelius, including one where he distributes bread to the poor.
Inside the arch are reliefs of Trajan's victory over the Dacians. These were probably by the artist who worked on Trajan's column.

See more pictures of Rome:

Please click on the virtual map or Rome:

Rome - The City of Universities

Rome is a nation-wide center for higher education. Its first university, La Sapienza (founded in 1303), is the largest in Europe and the second largest in the world, with more than 150,000 students attending. Two new public universities were founded: Tor Vergata in 1982, and Roma Tre in 1992, although the latter has now become larger than the former. Rome also contains a large number of pontifical universities and institutes, including the Pontifical Gregorian University (The oldest Jesuit university in the world, founded in 1551), the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), and many other private institutions like the Swiss School of Management.

Tourist Season

Rome attracts seven to then Million tourists every year. The main tourist season starts at Easter and runs until October; peak periods are in spring and autumn, when the tour buses pour in and tourists are herded around like cattle. Numerous outdoor festivals and concerts and the fact that Romans desert the city for the beaches and mountains, which means very light traffic and a less-crowded city centre, makes summer almost worth the heat. If you do visit in summer, try to hit the sights early, take a long lunch and a nap, and then head out again around 18:00 to take advantage of the cooler evening. Be aware some restaurants and shops close for the month of August. Winters are usually mild with few tourists and some fun events around Christmas time.

The Weather

Rome's mild climate makes it visitable year-round; however, spring and autumn are without doubt the best times to visit, with generally sunny skies and mild temperatures (although late autumn, November, can be rainy). July and August are unpleasantly hot (many Romans desert the city in August so many businesses close at this time); from December to February there is briskly cold weather, although it's rarely grey and gloomy.

Temperature (average ° C)