There is a standing joke at home that major sites of interest only receive an update requiring a coving of scaffolding when we are to holiday there. So it was today at the Trevi Fountain and it was a considerable undertaking there too. It almost looked like a rebuild.
Of course the thing about the Trevi is that you are supposed to toss a coin over your shoulder into the waters and it will ensure that you return again. There wasn’t any water and no way to toss a coin so I guess that we won’t be coming back this way again.
Fortunately we had been pre-warned that the fountain was scaffolded, although not to what extent, and the Colloseum too, although that turned out to be a partial covering. Also as we had been to both these before it wasn’t too much of a problem.
Instead we concentrated on the Forum and Palentine Hill, a large area that we hadn’t visited on either of our last visits and somewhere that I was keen to go to having read Robert Harris’ book about the great Roman orator Cicero. Harris paints such a vivid picture of the Forum that you get a picture in your mind of how it was. Of course not everything is beautifully preserved as it appears in my head! I guess that a couple of centuries ago many it’d the buildings would have been marble lined and looked fantastic rather than the plain red brick that remains.
Perhaps as it was two thousand years ago it was bustling with people. I would love to have a time machine and go back when the forum was teeming with toga clad Romans. Actually I would love to do it in the Tardis but that’s another story!