Roman Fora and Villa Borghese

Well, today was the first genuinely uncomfortably hot day we have had since I got here...or at least since Celia left! We visited the Roman Fora...the forums of Trajan (with the famous column), Augustus and Nerva, as well as the Forum Transitorium and the Altar of peace. It was quite an interesting day because only very limited sections of these sites are open to the public, but we were given a tour by the head archaeologist and so got to see more than is normally experienced. The main problem with the setup is that she spoke no English so most of the day consisted of standing in a very deep hole in the ground (no breeze) in the blazing hot sun during the hottest hours of 11.30-2.00 listening to someone speak a language none of us understand very well, then having our professor translate very briefly what she had said. It was quite uncomfortable, but still interesting.

In addition to the Roman materials they are still uncovering at this very important site, they discovered a Medieval Carolingian building on the way down, the only non-religious Carolingian building that has ever been found, and it was of course of great interest to me. We also became some of the first people to hear the newest theory on the location of the "missing" temple of Trajan, which is a hot topic in Ancient Archaeology. It has been debated for decades, and now this researcher thinks her team has the answer, and we were privy to it.

Woops, looks like the rest of the group is waiting on me to go out...we're going to have a real Italian dessert and night on the town, so I'll have to come back soon to finish this post.

Take care everyone!

Ciao,
Candace