Classics trip to Rome and the Bay of Naples Easter 2011
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It was the last day of the Spring term and five teachers and thirty-six pupils were gathering at the school gates rather bleary eyed and chilly. It was after all half-past four in the morning as we boarded the bus for Glasgow to wing our way to sunny Italy. Two plane rides later we were touching down in Rome. And then out into the Roman rush hour, hooting horns and mad motorbikes, heading our way into the city centre to reach our hotel. Hotel reached, rooms found and a walk to dinner through the busy streets and we had arrived.
The next morning we walked through the city to the Colosseum, which suddenly appeared over a grassy hill that had once been the gardens of the Emperor Nero’s Golden Palace. The Stadium of Death didn’t fail to impress as we wandered the massive corridors and galleries and looked down into the arena and below to the cells and cages that had held the wild beasts and gladiators who would entertain the crowds with their fights and their demise.
Next the Roman forum, the commercial heart of ancient Rome, with its triumphal arches, and columns of ancient temples and the gardens of the house of the Vestal Virgins, the order of women who had kept the sacred flame of Rome burning in ancient times. Some of us climbed the Palatine Hill where the palaces of the emperors had once stood, where now were beautiful gardens with orange trees in fruit and wisterias and camellias in flower and shady avenues to shelter from the heat of the sun.
Having lunched on fresh-baked pizza straight from a wood fired oven we walked back through Rome visiting the markets of Trajan (an ancient Wellgate Centre of a sort) and the Victor Emmanuel monument, an extravagance of sculpture and white marble, which celebrates the unification of Italy one hundred and fifty years ago this year.
Day three saw us crossing Rome on the Metro to the Vatican and visiting the Vatican museums to see the fabulous collections of ancient art as well as the extraordinary ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. We walked back through Medieval narrow streets, surprising ourselves as we turned corners to find the Pantheon, the complete and fabulous domed temple to the Roman Gods, now a Christian Church, and the Trevi fountain which fills a whole piazza with cool pools of blue water and cascades of sculpture. We tossed our pennies in the fountain to ensure our return and headed back via other great sights to our hotel for our evening meal.
Day four and we were in a bus heading south on the motorway to the Bay of Naples, past the monastery of Monte Cassino, which guards the road, a site of fierce battles in WWII. At lunch time we reached a small hill overlooking the sea at the north end of the Bay of Naples, called Cumae, once a Greek city and by reputation the home of the Sibyl, a prophetess who predicted the future. We crept down the gloomy caves and passage way that the Romans believed was her home, but she was not there, so we climbed up the hill, in a cooling breeze, enjoying the views and the wooded walk.
Our hotel in Sorrento was magnificent, with large comfortable rooms and balconies and a view of the sea. The town, a delightful resort set on cliffs above the sea, with nice shops and even better gelaterie. Italian ice cream needs to be tasted to be believed!
Day five and in the morning we went to Herculaneum, buried by mud in Vesuvius’ eruption and fabulously preserved, with its streets and houses with painted walls and items of furniture. And in the afternoon, another highlight of the trip, the ascent of Mount Vesuvius. The bus took us much of the way but the last thousand feet up the cinder cone we walked, climbing higher and higher above the bay below, which almost disappeared into the heat haze. And at the top you could look back down one thousand feet into the sheer walled crater of the volcano, which still had a few sulphurous fumaroles steaming away near the rim.
Day six and an early start to Pompeii for a full day visit of the amazing remains of this Roman city. Amphitheatre, houses, shops, gardens, vineyards, bakers and butchers, theatres, bath-houses, temples, even a brothel, we visited them all, gaining a real sense of ancient Roman life, fossilised in time. We saw as well the extraordinary plaster casts of the bodies of Pompeiians frozen in the moment of death with their last expressions caught on their faces.
Too soon the adventure is over and we are summoned back to return to British airports and the school gates, this time at one in the morning. We’re all tired but with so many memories and experiences of a beautiful country.