A Guided Tour of The Roman Forum and the Colosseum | Live Lovely Travel

We woke up early for this guided tour of the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. Although you can make plans to see it on your own (and usually I would rather skip a tour to explore solo), seeing the Roman Forum truly is the best with a guide to learn the history of which ruins you are looking at. There really is so much to see. We showed up early and were nervous when we did not see our tour guide or group anywhere. Finally, when we were just beginning to lose hope, we saw our tour guide waving the flag with his company’s logo. Geared up with our headsets (very touristy, but also very useful to hear our guide as we explore), our camera, and a bottle of water, we made it into the Forum. Another bonus of going with a tour group is that you get to skip the lines. 

We chose the earlier tour of the day for two reasons; first we knew that it would be less crowded earlier in the morning, and second, a morning tour was so much cooler than an afternoon tour on a hot July day. If you book a tour, bring along a reusable water bottle. There are fountains with fresh water all over the city including in the Forum. It is amazing that some of the marble floors still exist today. Even more incredible to me was how similar the building materials are to what we use today from the marble flooring, tiles, and red bricks. Much of our modern buildings use these same materials, all these centuries later. Our guide poured some water on the marble so we could better see the color of the worn stones. We learned so much about the inside of the Colosseum, including the fact that scavengers dug holes in to pull out metal. After the Colosseum fell out of use, squatters posted beams in the walls to divide the corridors into apartments for living in. Today these buildings are ancient and protected sights, but long ago they were seen as old and decrepit buildings after they were abandoned. More ancient bricks not so different than those we use today:Again, reality looked a lot like this picture below. The Colosseum is busy, even in the morning. There was once a wooden stage that covered these corridors. After leaving the Colosseum we had a snack break and made our way to our next tour at the Vatican.