What are you, a geologist?

I cannot overstate how much we enjoyed the Roman Forum. We enjoyed the ruins, we enjoyed the crowds, we enjoyed being there together, we enjoyed sharing what we knew and didn't know. It was nice outside, everyone seemed to be in a good mood, you generally felt safe. And the photographic opportunities were tremendous. I took well over 100 photos in the Forum itself, out of 247 I took that day in Rome.

You start at the Arch of Constantine, right next to the Forum.



From there, you go to the Arch of Titus. The Arch of Titus, of course, is something of a difficult thing for we Jews, as it celebrates Titus's destruction of the Second Temple and the beginnings of the great Diaspora of Judaism. Jews are forbidden to walk under the Arch of Titus.

Of course, nowadays, so is everyone else.



We were glad to see Titus's backside.



I'm not even sure that's a joke.

The Forum is something of a mishmash, something of a mess, and a bit like the place where all old marble goes to die. This gives it a friendly feeling that no place else I've ever experienced of this antiquity and this former use has. This was where Rome WAS, the very Rome that overcame Carthage, conquered Greece and Egypt and ruled from Britannia to the borders of Persia. Yet, it's somewhere you can wander at your leisure, without having to pay admission, or read or listen to canned material. There are a few signs, but nothing compared to what you're seeing on the ground.




And everything seems to be cobbled together like no one really minds if three or four eras, kinds of stone or uses are piled on top of one another.



Of course, if you want, you can take a tour. We loved this tour guide. I took this picture while Marjorie was shooting them from the other side.


And then we were staring at this column, and Marjorie was talking about it to me, and this woman standing nearby says, in an east coast American accent, "That's Carrerra marble." And we turn to the woman and we both say, "Yes, it is." And she looks at us funny and says, "What are you, a geologist?"


And Marjorie of course says, "yes."

The woman looked a bit nonplussed. She turned out to be a gypsy guide, i.e. one who tries to get customers inside the Forum, which is illegal. But she knew she wasn't getting customers from us.

The funny thing is, Marjorie knew it was marble as a geologist. She knew it was Carrerra marble from reading about the building of the Forum.

Among our favorite things in the Forum were the Curia.


The Severus Septimus Arch (which made me laugh; Severus Septimus was the unlikely name of the short-lived husband of one of the Forsyte sisters).


This tiny, incredibly-preserved detail.


And this thing, that made the Triple Arch on Herod's Temple look like practice.

We wandered into parts of the Forum area no one else was going into, and up a ramp where there was a gate. The gate was locked. You know Marjorie, she doesn't like to go where we're not allowed. But there was a woman there who asked, in English, "Do you want to leave?" And she let us out. The Forum closes at sunset, but you can't enter an hour before sunset. So she was guarding the gate to allow people to leave but not to enter.