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(Image Source: Internet)
The disaster of a queue at San Pietro is not on the menu for today.
Back to the Metro, we ride to the center of the city.
Swarms of visitors flock around the most famous sight in Rome:
When opened in 80 AD, the festivities lasted for 100 days
The end of the sun scorched plain is in sight at the base of Capitoline Hill,
once the political center of the city, and home to the Arch of Septimius Severus.
Three columns at the Temple of Castor
and the ruins of the Imperial Palace on Palatine Hill.
Seen from all over Rome, we finally approach the Altare della Patria,
built in honor of Victor Emmanuel, the first king of unified Italy.
Completed in 1935, the structure also frames the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
A giant among Italian military police vehicles…
Walking further on, a grassy park opens in front of us
that was once the infamous racing track, The Circus Maximus.
(Reconstruction Image Source: Internet)
Yet another casualty of the heat…!
An interesting end to a long hot day: The Pyramid of Cestius.
The last remaining of as many as four pyramids in the city,
it was erected in 330 days around 18 BC.
Sun getting low, after a grocery store stop for another evening self-catered dinner,
we catch a free train ride back to the hotel
and some rest before our last day in Rome and traveling on to Athens.
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