The first event of Day 6 was a visit to Hadrian's Pantheon, an absolutely stunning piece of ancient architecture. It is in the great condition it is in as a result of it becoming a Catholic Church and hence, escaping the destruction that many other buildings faced. It is quite ironic to think this considering it was the religious centre for Rome, celebrating paganism. Despite the political and religious changes that the Pantheon went through, the architecture of it is absolutely astounding- the columns are massive and made of stone that would have had to be imported from Egypt. The most amazing part is that unlike many other ancient pillars, these are not made up of segments, but instead are monoliths! The roof inside is also amazing, it is so big that you can fit the roof into the room again underneath it like a sphere, but the design of the room is so that you can see the entire room with your peripheral vision, making it seem less dwarfing than the domes at St Peter's. In its new form as a Church, the Pantheon houses the bodies of many Italian kings and queens and a very famous name of art- Raphael!!! It is amazing that his sarcophagus is on display still! I have attached a couple of photos of the pantheon and Raphael's grave.
After our pantheon adventures, we walked through the Jewish Ghetto to the Theatre of Marcellus. The theatre is noted as the architectural inspiration for the Colosseum, which I'm sure you will see from the photo attached. After we looked at the theatre in awe for a while we were free to roam Rome until our dinner at BSR. The highlight of that afternoon was our visit to Burger King and my friend Korina getting stuck in the toilet, the locals must have thought we were crazy, we were freaking out that she couldn't get out of her cubicle!!
Day 7 was our trip to Naples and our new accommodation in the little town of Erculano. The 3 hour bus trip was much appreciated after a very busy week of walking everywhere!! (My feet are still aching from that first week of walking!!) Naples is definitely a huge change from Rome, it's much dirtier and has a confusing layout of streets, not to mention fewer ancient monuments in the town itself!! We arrived at our beautiful hotel (Villa Signorini) in Ercolano, unpacked and then we were off to the train station for a trip into Naples for the afternoon! We wandered around for a while, which annoyed all of us immensely as it was 3pm and we still hadn't had lunch! One of our lecturers, Luca (a great lover of Naples) found us a very good pizzeria. We're pretty sure it's run by a mob, but the food was amazing and so cheap! A magharita pizza was the whole of 4€!!
After investigating a few churches around the city we headed back to the hotel where we were greeted by our hosts from the Herculaneum Conservation Project/Centre. We had a prep talk about the upcoming days which looked absolutely fantastic and exciting! After a large meal we were off to bed to prepare for a jam packed few days!!
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