Rome is my favorite city in the world. Rome should be everybody’s favorite city. Oscar Wilde once said of London, “If you are tired of London, you are tired of life.” But he should have said it about Rome. The Italians are wonderful people (when they’re not trying to pick your pocket or steal your handbag) and Rome is one of the liveliest cities in the world

The Coliseum is right in the city proper, a short walk from anything else you might like to see. It’s stunning, not just because of it’s age, but because it’s so big. I just can’t imagine how the ancient Romans managed to build something this size, BY HAND. Incredible. In it’s heyday, the Coliseum was completely covered in marble, but in later times, the marble was slowly stripped off and used in other, newer buildings. It must have been amazing to see at it’s peak, although I would probably have been there to be fed to the Lions, so maybe not. My wife tells me I have a very Roman nose though, so maybe I would have been overseeing the feeding?

There are guided tours around the structure, or you can rent a little recording device, or both. It’s certainly worth taking the tour because our guide provided a wealth of information we would have otherwise missed. During the high season there is usually a wait for the tours, but the best thing to do is line up and pay for a tour as soon as you get there and then walk around the building on your own until it is time for the tour.

Ignore the con men and ticket touts hanging around outside the coliseum, they will just gouge you or persuade you to pay them to take a picture of you with a “genuine” Roman centurion.

The building is lit up at night and is worth the trip back to see, if you visited during the day. For me, just looking at the remains and imagining what it must have been like when it was used on a day to day basis is overwhelming. The sheer amount of work that went into building it is staggering and I just couldn’t see us being able to do anything like it nowadays. Although, as the saying goes, “You can achieve anything with an endless supply of free labour.”

Some interesting travel and international property sites I like, some of which I write myself:
http://www.ihaozhai.cn/ http://internationalpropertyinvestment.com/ http://hubpages.com/profile/Mark+Knowles http://blog.luxuryproperty.com/