Throughout my many years of traveling the world in search of exotic travel getaways, I never dreamed of coming across such a marvelous destination as the Eternal City, Rome. After hours and hours of traveling the countryside on a chariot, I finally reach my long awaited destination. There are so many architectural masterpieces, and so little time to experience them all, that I decide to explore one of the most famous, the Roman Forum. Among its many different forums, which serve homage to several emperors, one of the most intriguing is Trajan's Forum. I feel tired and overwhelmed from the long journey across the Italian peninsula, but the excitement of experiencing the majestic Trajan's Forum gives me enough motivation to explore the area. .
Included within the premises of the Forum, one of the most compelling architectural elements is Trajan's Column. As I stand at the base of the column, admiring its great.
beauty and significance, a friendly passerby stops next to me and asks me if I need any help. I ask him if he could help me translate what the symbols on the column mean, and he explains that the symbols are a depiction of Emperor Trajan's military feats against the Dacians, ranging from 101 to 106 AD, listed in chronological order: the departure of the legions, the crossing .
of the river, the construction of the .
walls, the various battles fought, the.
cities conquered and the exodus of the.
vanquished peoples. He also tells me .
that Trajan's column stood almost 40 .
meters in the air, marking the height .
of the non-existent portion of the .
Quirinal hill; then he provides me with.
a brief overview of the history of Rome.
After a few minutes of talking and .
getting to know each other, Alessandro offers to give me a .
guided tour of the area. .
As we continue our journey we bump into one of Alessandro's friend, Marcus, who owns a fruit and vegetable shop. After formally being introduced, I find out that Marcus' uncle is a friend of Apollodorus, an outstanding architect-town planner and engineer of Greek-Syrian origin, who introduced the taste for Greek sculpture amongst the Romans.
VOCABULARY Archaeology: the scientific study of ancient people and cultures principally revealed through excavation. Cromlech: a circle of megaliths. Henge: a Neolithic monument, characterized by a circular ground plan. Used for rituals and marking astronomical events. Megalith: a stone of great size used in the construction of a prehistoric structure. ...
