Surprise, the cab driver couldn’t find the motel so he ordered us out of the taxi and told us to find it ourselves.  Luckily it was just up the road.  Just down the road(20m) was the Trevi Fountain.

Today we set out on foot exploring…where is Maria and the local guides. First past the Trevi Fountain, too many tourists and onto the Pantheon. It was conceived in 31 BC and Hadrian did a reconstruction on it in106 AD and in 608 AD it was changed from a pagan temple to a Christian church.  It has the largest dome constructed by brick (43.3m in diameter) and is open at the top.  The floor is concave and there are drains in the floor to take the water away.

Raphael, the artist, was buried here in 1520.

 

We were then walking down the street and I came across this..  In Australia women have padded bras but in Roma we have padded undies. I don’t whether this is to make their butts look bigger or to protect against pinching by Italian men.

We had a great lunch which we can’t remember where it is because we would love to go back to it. Near the kitchen was a large square table that the family sat around.  I am still not sure whether it was a true family or the other type. The next picture we snapped on the way to the Jewish Ghetto.  While it was a lovely picture there is no way we were going to eat there.  For the people who didn’t have the assistance of Maria; Ghetto means foundry area and the name just stuck with the area.  One of the Popes in the 1500s issued a Papal Bull directing that there would only be one Jewish Synagogue in Rome and that all the Jewish people would be rounded up and put in the Jewish Ghetto.  I will have more on this tomorrow.

We walked over to the Islo Tiberine or Island in the Tiber.  It was a milling site however it is now houses the main hospital.  We walked along the river bank, paved with marble, and passed under a 2000 year old bridge.  At the end of the island we could see the remains of one 2000 year old bridge that they got horribly wrong.  The angle was wrong for the river and the holes too small.  The first flood destroyed the bridge and a new one had to be built.

It rained tonight so we had dinner at a restaurant near the hotel.