Day 1 of Rome, continued

Happy Halloween!

After our walk to check out our meeting place for our evening tour, we headed back to our hotel, Hotel Smeraldo. We had a small wait until our room was ready. We took a short nap and then headed out for dinner and our evening tour. There's a nice restaurant around the corner from the hotel.
The food was good, the service was great and the atmosphere was fun. The streets are all cobblestone and very narrow. Cars, bikes, motorcycles, and pedestrians all sharing a tiny space. After dinner, we walked back to the Castel Sant' Angelo to meet up with our tour guide for Ghosts and Crimes, a Rome Night Walk. Our guide, Allie (from Maine), started our tour with some history of the castle. It originally was a mauseleum for Roman Emperor Hadrian (around the late 139 CE) later turned into a Castel with a history of also being a prison. The prisoners died a gruesome death, and their bodies were thrown into the Tiber River, which runs along side of the castel. Legend holds that the Archangel Michael appeared atop of the Mauseleum, sheathing his sword as a sign of the end of a plague in 590, which killed thousands of people. Our tour continued through parts of the historic Rome area, including the Church of Death (the bridge overlooking the church was designed/built by Michelangelo ) and the residence of a serial killer (a woman) who poisoned over 600 men. The priests from the Church of Death were called the Brotherhood of Death. They got their names because Pope Julius commanded that they take care of the dead. The gold colored cobblestones commemorate the Jewish people for fighting the resistance of Mussolini and Hitler. Believe it or not, it was a fun tour - one perfect for Halloween! Our evening ended with a stop at a Gelato shop. Yum!Läs mer