Rome, Italy

Rome was the start of my European travel from which I left off from Abu Dhabi. Rome is a place which I have always wanted to visit, so are the rest of the beautiful Italian cities, however, when you think Rome, you think of the Colosseum, the Vatican City, Fontana Di Trevi which has made it so well known around the world.

The Colosseum is like nothing I have ever seen before, I’ve seen many big giant monuments before in my life, but nothing is as historic and unique as the Colosseum. To learn and picturing what this place was like during its day is even more powerful and makes it somewhat special. Imagine the sheer number of crowd (more than 50,000 can fit in this stadium, a lot of people even by today’s standard) shouting and cheering on the gladiator’s contest.

The holy place of Vatican City, so tightly controlled, this little state territory ruled by the Pope. It’s a bit like a tiny independent country within Rome city itself. It has a small population of just less than 1000 people however it is packed day in day out due to the high number of visiting tourists from around the world. One thing that stood out are the Swiss Guards in the traditional uniform, to me, they look like the ‘Jokers’ in poker cards. 

I didn’t get to see the Pope, however, I did get to see all the well known church of Saint Peter, the Sistin Chapel, and also the Pope’s museum showing off his wealthy collections. The place left me with mixed feeling personally which is interesting. Growing up and going to Catholic church as a young kid, I heard so much about the Vatican city, and how holy and sacred this place is, and this is where every one in church wants to go and visit. But after visiting the place for the day, it left me a feeling that the ‘holy’ and ‘sacred’ part play just a small part of this city, the political and wealth influence plays a much bigger role in this place. Anyway, maybe this is how it always has been and this whole Vatican city perception has been portrayed differently across the world.

Rome owes much of its history in art and design to Michaelangelo. You can see his work all around Rome and in Vatican City, he is considered as the greatest artist of all time. His was a paint artist, a sculpture artist, an architect, an engineer and also in poetry. I love seeing his work appearing all over the city, and to know that work like this will be near impossible to be reproduced in today’s world due to the current economic climate, is quire sad. I do applaud Rome in doing a good job in protecting each and every one of them as much as possible so the rest of the future world will still be able to enjoy it.

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