Baths of Caracalla

Today, we visited the bath complex of Caracalla situated to the east of the Colosseum. These were the largest Roman baths in antiquity. Even today, the ruins take up so much space that it is used to perform musical performances. In its heyday, the baths would have been lined with massive and impressive marble statues, which I had previously seen in the Archaeological Museum of Naples. Afterwards, I headed to the EUR district of Rome, which is in the south, to check out the Museum of Roman Civilization. The EUR is the business district of Rome, filled with many modern buildings made out of glass and so on. There's also a building which is a square reproduction of the Colosseum. This area was started by Mussolini in the 1920s to show off to Europe how powerful and modern Italy was becoming again. If Hitler and Mussolini had not been defeated, the majority of European cities probably would have fell under this symmetrical type of architecture. Anyway, the Museum of Roman Civilization was probably my favorite museum in Rome. It doesn't contain any original artifacts, but there are casts of the most popular and telling pieces of Roman art, which are scattered throughout Britain, France, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy and other countries. Its intent is to show a complete picture of Roman civilization through a series of rooms showing Rome's evolution through art. Also, there are many models of reconstructions of temples, arches, buildings, etc. At the end of the museum was a room that had casts of all the reliefs on Trajan's column, which was absolutely amazing to see, and a massive entire room scale model of how Rome would have appeared during the reign of Constantine. Finally, I visited the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, which houses the Bernini statue of Theresa in Ecstasy. Then, I had my last lecture that evening. It's hard to believe I'll be leaving Rome in two days!