Rome - December 28, 2011 - View from Vittorio Emanuele

View from the top of the Vittorio Emanuele II
Monument, Palazzo Venizia is on the right

Reached teh summit of the monument and wow!

The view is fantastic! The Palazzo Venizia is right there in front of the monument. The balcony of this palace is where Mussolini addressed the people of Italy during his mad and terrible cannibalistic feast for power. Because he was, well mad and apparently a terrible lover.

You get a full view of Rome and on a clear day in December you can see a very long way indeed.

Rome from the top of the Vittorio Emanuele II monument (St. Peters is in the background on the right)

Rome - December 28, 2011 - Vittorio Emanuelle II Monument

Vittorio Emanuelle II

Vittorio Emanuele II- Big. What can I say? It’s big. My Mother (and many Americans of her generation who had visited Rome referred to it as the Wedding cake). Yes, big…and white…very…very white. Completed in 1922 it drips with ornament, winged victories, personifications of glory, fame and other such trophies of the typical megalomaniac. The entire thing just screams “eat me! I’m sugary and delicious!”

Close up it just overwhelms to the point where one just feels numb. This was the first time I have ever been inside and gone all the way up to the top.

Inside the Vittorio Emanuele Monument

Rome - December 28, 2011 - Column of Trajan

Column of Trajan: Built in 113 CE as part of Trajan’s imperial forum it once stood in a rather small piazza behind his basilica and wedged in-between two libraries. These were at least two stories tall so you could actually see the column from several levels, unlike today. It is quite striking in the modern era, even  as it rises out of a haze of exhaust fumes in the center of a busy motorway.

Once it was topped with a statue of Trajan and there was (or rather still is ) a legend that the column base or top contained an urn with Trajan's ashes, Wikipedia said that the senate voted for such a burial, not sure about their sources though.

The column now has a big ol' honkin' statue of St. Peter at the summit, placed there by Pope Sixtus the V, though I am sure he did not do it himself.

Right next to this is Trajan's Market. A multi story brick building, probably once faced with stone, that served as an indoor market. One of the first shopping malls if you will. Each floor had different vendors, oils, textiles, terracotta and made goods etc.

Trajan's Market