saint angelo

Putting these two together because I went through both fairly quickly (and consecutively) and did not take many pictures.
The forum was apparently the commercial and social center of Ancient Rome, so it felt very cool to be walking around, and while there are some columns of old temples still standing I didn’t feel like there was a ton to look at. It’s wild to think those are the same avenues where ancient Roman’s spent their time. The place is very surreal and it is hard to believe how old the structures are.
The Jewish ghetto was very interesting and I went into the museum there as well to learn about the history. Jews became confined to the ghetto in the 1500s as part of the counter-reformation and were confined there for hundreds of years. Interestingly, during the era of Napoleonic wars, the French liberated the Jews (they were big on freedom, at least on paper, at the time as this was right after their revolution), but once the Romans got the city back they sent the Jews back to the ghetto. Jews finally got freedom in the late 1800s and did very well for a time - despite being a small population they were leaders of the Italian wars of independence (Risorgimento) and there was even a Jewish mayor of Rome. Of course that went downhill during the fascist era.
It was interesting to see the area was very touristic and modern, there were lots of restaurants with names like Kosher, ebraico, gerusalemme, etc. but looking at their menus most served non kosher food and even foods like sushi and poke that are completely unrelated. Apparently a legit traditional Jewish food here is fried artichoke, coincidentally some Dutch guys I met told me that is a traditional Dutch food as well. Doesn’t sound very good to me!Read more