ROME AND POMPEII TRIP

The trip began at a quite frankly uncivilised hour. I doubt any of us would have got up at 1.45am for much else. But despite all that, and Mrs Randall’s unfortunate incident shutting her fingers in a window up in boarding, we were off to a brisk start.

The next few hours on coaches and trains flew by, until we found ourselves early in the morning, walking through the deserted streets of Rome on our way to our first big destination – the Colosseum. The girls were genuinely impressed by the scale and grandeur of the building, and with crowds of tourists milling round it was easy to imagine ourselves back in the First Century as the trumpets sounded and the gladiatorial games began.

Once we had explored the nooks and crannies of ancient Rome’s premier sporting venue it was time to pass by the arches of Constantine and Titus and climb the Palatine Hill. Even in their current, very dilapidated, state, the remains of the Palace of Augustus and the Circus Maximus where the chariot races took place were breathtakingly impressive. To round out our first day of visits we descended into the Roman Forum, where the girls were surrounded by temples, court buildings, shops and monuments. A quick lecture on evidence for Roman dentistry later and we were back to the hotel for dinner and sleep.

On Saturday we spent our time in the Vatican Museum and St. Peter’s Basilica, marvelling at the treasures the Catholic Church has acquired over the centuries. We passed by the Tomb of Scipio Barbatus, the Laocoon statue, Nero’s Porphyry bath and hundreds more pieces in awe, before the tapestry and geographical mural galleries led us to the Sistine Chapel. Leaving before our necks were too tired from all that looking up, we checked out the inside of St. Peter’s, to the accompaniment of a sextet of nuns singing Ave Maria over the speaker system.

Stopping briefly to see the chapel to St. Therese in the Church of St. Mary of the Angels and Martyrs (or, the Baths of Diocletian as we classicists tend to know it), we all piled on to the coach once more to head for the Bay of Naples. Sunday was our day to climb up Vesuvius and take in the views, while Monday saw us visit Pompeii and Herculaneum to get as close as we could to life in a Roman town. It was very interesting, seeing how the grandiose architecture of Rome itself was recreated on a much more human scale here, and everyone had a soft spot for the House of Caecilius Iucundus, star of our much beloved Cambridge Latin Course (sadly his wife Metella was not in residence in the atrium, as the course had promised us she would be).