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A Rome shore excursion fr
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12:21am, Apr 16th 2007
Blog viewed 603 times
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Optimize your time and delight your soul visiting the two most attractive resources of Rome, leading you from an epoch to another one, many differents pieces of a great puzzle built long time ago (2800 years) and actually leaving people without words, the Trevi fountain and the Pantheon.
Few people know that tossing a coin in Trevi fountain, you have your next return to Rome guaranteed. How much money is collected every day from trevi Fountain is an answer that only a Rome limo driver can give to his customers when doing a Rome shore tour.
The fountain takes his name because it is located at the crossing of three roads (tre vie) marking the terminal point of the Aqua Virgo (Italian: Acqua Vergine), one of the ancient aqueducts that supplied water to Rome.
In 19 BC, the ancient scholars wrote that with the help of a virgin, Roman technicians located a source of pure water only 14 miles (22 km) from the city. (This scene is presented on the present fountain's travertine facade). This Aqua Virgo led the water directly into the Baths of Agrippa. It served Rome for hundred years, and you can't believe it ,but it serves Rome water supply still today.
After the visit to the Trevi fountain in the morning you can spend the afternoon day tour in Rome visiting the ancient Rome starting from the Pantheon.
The original Pantheon was a rectangular temple built by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, son-in-law of Augustus, the first Roman emperor, as part of a district renewal plan in 27-25 BC. What tourists see as they relax in front in the Piazza della Rotonda is radically different than that original temple. Hadrian rebuilt the structure in the second century AD; maker's stamps in the bricks allow us to date his restoration between 118 and 125 AD. Still, the inscription on the architrave attributes the construction to Agrippa during his third councilship.The Pantheon is a church of Rome today and contains the tombs of Rafael and of several Italian Kings who unified Italy in the nineteen century.
The Pantheon is made perfectly harmonious by the fact that the distance from the floor to the top of the dome is exactly equal to its diameter. Adytons (shrines recessed into the wall) and coffers (sunken panels) cleverly reduce the weight of the dome, as did a lightweight cement made of pumice used in the upper levels. The dome gets thinner as it approaches the oculus, the hole in the top of the dome used as a light source for the interior. The thickness of the dome at that point is only 1.2 meters.
The oculus is 7.8 meters in diameter. It rains and snow occasionally fall through it, but the floor is slanted and drains cleverly remove the water if it manages to hit the floor. In practice, rain seldom falls inside the dome.
The massive columns supporting the portico weigh 60 tons. Each was 39 feet (11.8 m) tall, five feet (1.5 m) in diameter and made from stone quarried in Egypt. The columns were transported by wooden sledges to the Nile, barged to Alexandria, and put on vessels for a trip across the Mediterranean to the port of Ostia. From there the columns came up the Tiber by barge.
After the visit to the ancient Rome your full day Rome shore excursion will end at the port of Civitavecchia or to the airports of Rome.
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