After almost a week in Rome, we still had one sight left: the Vatican. Is it in Rome? Well, kinda. Technically, it’s not, but it’s more or less embedded in the city.

Vatican City is the smallest country in the world. It’s 100 acres, 1/8 the size of Central Park. There’s some gardens, but much of the country is covered by museums and St Peter’s Cathedral, the largest church building in the world.

We’d gotten some advice from fellow tourists on our Tuscan wine tour, and purchased a tour of the Vatican necropolis: this allowed us to skip the long entry line that snakes outside the Vatican walls. The whole Vatican neighborhood is fascinating – more diverse groups of people than just about any site, and lots of nuns and priests. It felt different from the rest of Rome.

Our tour was pretty bad. Certainly the worst tour we took in Italy. Our guide was an elderly German lady, with a lamentable sense of humor (the only smile or laugh we got out of her was when she saw a seagull sitting on the head of a statue in the Vatican gardens, which she considered hilarious). I was pretty disappointed in this, as I’d heard good things about the tour and the necropolis in particular.

The necropolis was pretty cool, but I think we had a different perspective on it after our tour in Ostia Antica the day before. There are several necropolises in the Vatican, representing Roman Empire-era burials. The necropolis we saw was discovered when the Vatican tried to increase the depth of its parking garages. It functions as a sort of combination museum/excavation, with archaeologists actively digging out the graves and memorials. Visitors walk on airy corridors suspended above skeletons and mausoleums. There was some sense of “been there,” because we’d seen something similar outside of Ostia. But on the other hand, it was a chance to see a much better-preserved site, one with everything pretty much intact. Most interesting was that the necropolis was in several haphazard layers crisscrossing like an MC Escher painting: a mudslide would cover one layer and people would build a new layer above the previous one.

After the (frankly exhausting) tour, we took a break and went to a Vatican cafeteria. Imagine my shock at discovering that they served beer right in the cafeteria. Time to get hammered in Vatican City!

Next stop were the museums. There’s an awful lot of these in the Vatican, and we decided to rush through them. We’d been viewing museums for two weeks, after all. And there was a lot to see.

Of the sculptures and paintings, I was most excited to see the Laocoon Group. I’d somehow imagined that this sculpture was enormous (I’d pictured it set atop the temple of Berlin’s Pergamonmusem. But the sculpture is roughly life-sized: tiny compared to my expectations.

Of course, the highlight of the museum section is the Sistine Chapel. It’s woven into the museums: you go down some stairs and then WHAM, Sistine Chapel. The most peculiar part of the Chapel is that there’s no photos allowed. Which sounds nice, but security guards are constantly running around yelling at people not to take pictures, which is almost more disruptive than if they took pictures to begin with. The walls of the room are ringed with benches, and we were lucky enough to grab a seat while we listened to a Rick Steves audioguide.

It’s damn exhausting looking at the ceiling for 20 or 30 minutes and a literal pain in the neck. Michelangelo was supposed to have painted the whole thing standing on scaffolding – not laying down. But then, he was a weird guy: he never showered or bathed, and wore his boots to bed, never taking them off, until they fell apart. And he was a real dick.

Anyway, the Sistine Chapel is great, and it’s both different from and similar to how you might imagine it, and well worth a stop if you just happen to find yourself in the Vatican…

Our final tourist sight for the day was St Peter’s Basilica. This is the largest church building in the world. Entry is free, but the line is huge. Luckily, the weather was stunning, and there’s a big courtyard in front used for Papal addresses with lots to see (a photo of this is at the top of the post).

I can say that St Peter’s was undoubtedly the most awe-inspiring building I’ve ever been in. Like the Mines of Moria, or any of those fantasy paintings with people inside unbelievably large structures. It was so large that clever Renaissance steps were taken to combat perspective and make it feel smaller than it actually is. For instance, sculptures are made larger the higher they are, to make them appear closer. The first few European cathedrals I visited felt large… but this was just on a different scale. I couldn’t get used to it.

And to top it all off, Michelangelo’s Pietà is inside. It’s really as beautiful in person as you’d expect. It brought me back to my 7th grade world culture class. The backdrop behind the sculpture was exactly the same, like a school textbook left over from the 1970s.

Leaving the Vatican, we returned to our home base of Trastevere. We’d had some of the best food of our trip here, and why not have something we knew we liked on our last night in Rome?

First stop was the pizza place we’d been to on our first night. We made an RSVP, grabbed a beer around the corner, and returned to sit at a table outside the restaurant. A little chilly, but the food was good (potato pesto pizza, and a 5 cheese pizza). For dessert, we split a Nutella calzone.

Then, around the corner to Baylon Cafe, the place where the bartender invented drinks for us (or, at least, tested drinks on us). It wasn’t quite up to the previous experience, but these still the best drinks I’d had. I’d have to say my favorite was an apricot drink with cashews on the rim. Thus fortified, we returned to our apartment to prepare for our last day in Rome, and our return to Milan.

Reading about ancient civilizations leaves you with a lot of questions, but perhaps the biggest is: what was life in these civilizations like? Was it comparable to modern life? What was it like to live in the average Roman city? What did 90% of the citizens of the empire see on a daily basis? What was it like to walk from your insulae, or apartment block, to the local theatre? You can see Rome itself, or any of the many colonies, but they’ve been inhabited for two thousand years, or longer (Rome itself has been inhabited for more than 2700 years). During that time, the city transmutes: the old city is slowly wiped away and a new one takes its place. It’s difficult to get a feel for what the city felt like before everything changed.

I really wanted to see a city that hadn’t changed so much over time – one where you could walk the original streets and see everyday buildings. There’s many cities like this: Pompei’i comes to mind, and was the city we’d most considered before arriving in Italy. But it’s a very long trip from Rome – a very full day trip. And, it’s reputed to be incredibly crowded. Searching for alternatives, I read about Ostia Antica, which is a half hour train ride away in a suburb of Rome near the Mediterranean coast. I’m so glad I stumbled on that recommendation, because it was the highlight of the trip for me, and a really magical experience.

Ostia was the port of Rome for much of the city’s imperial history. Eventually it fell into disuse as the harbor silted up, and was finally abandoned and covered with successive layers of debris until the original city was completely hidden. It was re-discovered and used for marble during the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and there were extensive excavations under Mussolini. Since the 60s, there have been modern, scientific excavations that are still ongoing.

I’ve seen a fair number of “lost cities,” but mostly in the American southwest: pueblos, kivas, and so on. All these sites take about 10 minutes to circumnavigate. They’re fascinating for what they are, but amount to a tiny village supporting 300-500 people, with 30-40 buildings. Thus, I was totally unprepared for the extent of the ruined city. At its height, Ostia had 100,000 inhabitants. It was the port that connected Rome to the outside world. These aren’t some limited ruins. There’s miles of them.

We arrived in Ostia in the late morning on Thanksgiving day. The site is a 5-minute walk from the local train station, down a quiet street. The place was deserted: pay the sleepy guard an entry fee and you’re inside and on your own. We started slow: I wanted to savor the experience of seeing an authentic Roman town. Inside the gates, the first thing you see is the necropolis.

Roman cities didn’t have integrated cemetaries, or even cemetaries that functioned as parks: rather, bodies were buried outside of city limits, usually in mausoleums, which grew understandably crowded until they almost became cities themselves. These necropolises were the first thing to greet ancient travelers, and I guess they still are.

Past this, there were the ruins of the old gates and a small square. Not knowing the scope of the site, I figured this was basically everything. Maybe a theatre a little bit down the original Roman road. How wrong I was.

One of the highlights of Ostia was seeing the baths: a part of every Roman city, there were multiple baths spread among the ruins, each covered with wonderful mosaics. It was remarkable seeing the artwork up close and in situ. Up one staircase, with a good view, we could look down at archaeologists preserving the largest extant mosaic in the city. It was madness to imagine Romans walking across the very floor of the room two thousand years ago.

There was also a huge theater: a few small pieces of fresco and plaster still hung inside one of the entries. The theater opened up on a huge temple square, also covered with diverse mosaics and grottoes around the edges that were used by merchants.

For the entire time we were visiting the city, I think we saw 15-20 groups of people. I attribute this to it being November, the site not being very well known (at least, compared to everything else in or near Rome), and the mixed weather: although the day started beautiful, it grew more cloudy until rain started in mid-afternoon. We stopped at midday to eat lunch at the mediocre Ostia cafe (some lasagna, chili potato chips, and espresso). Near the cafe, they had partially cut stones: columns that were still emerging from the marble blocks they were transported to Ostia inside. This method of transport was common, because it prevented the marble from breaking or shattering in transit.

The cafe was near the river and, like in other ports, there were also huge warehouses. Here, though, they were full of enormous amphorae, the large jugs used to store oil and other supplies.

About two thirds of the through the site, after walking for maybe a mile through the ruins, the road forked into a huge Y. Here it really emptied out: we didn’t see anyone. Further out, the ruins were even more cool than in the main part of town: there were several buildings that still had frescoes inside, with the original paint intact. The Roman aesthetic on these frescoes was totally different from any sort of modern artwork. Sparse, with gaudy colors, and frankly ugly from the modern perspective. I think this was to compensate for the lack of adequate interior lighting.

We wandered around for quite a while, checking out all these buildings, before the weather turned.

After the rain grew more severe and began to pour, it even hailed for a little while. We took shelter under some of the ruins (you can walk inside) and waited out the weather, which passed after just half an hour. Stepping out, we saw a full-on double rainbow. It was almost a triple rainbow!

After the magic of seeing a double rainbow, the sky began to clear, and the setting sun made the remaining clouds glow. We found a great overlook to see some amazing views.

There was little wildlife around, but one cool local resident was a pheasant, which we chased around the ruins for a little while before it took flight.

I’d have loved to stay longer, but unfortunately it was getting dark, and the rangers started herding us out of Ostia. In all I think we spent about 6 hours there, but I’d have been happy spending twice as long. I think we honestly only saw half of what the ancient city had to offer.

Walking back to the train station, sky deepening to indigo, we passed a dirt field with kids playing soccer. What could be more Italian than soccer next to an ancient Roman city?

Returning to Rome itself, we still had to celebrate Thanksgiving day, and decided to celebrate in proper Pilgrim fashion by eating Indian food.