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Day 4: March 27, 2017
Rome is Peter and Peter is Rome! We started our morning with a guided tour of the Vatican Museum, walking through galleries of resplendent wealth and masterpieces collected by the Romans throughout their longevity as the greatest Empire of all time. Then came St Peter's Cathedral full of the extraordinary art of Renaissance masters including Michaelangelo's "Pieta", the moving life size sculpture of Mary cradling the body of her son Jesus. Lunch and free time followed before we headed to the Colosseum, the emblem of Rome, where enemies and criminals of the empire were slaughtered by gladiators or half starved wild animals that had been brought to Rome from all corners of her vast empire... After we said goodbye to our local guide we boarded our coach and drove beyond the ancient walls of Rome to San Sebastián catacombs where the early Christians were buried on consecrated ground in miles and miles of subterranean tunnels. It's a fascinating insight in to the history of Rome, from the pagan to the early Christian and then to the conversion of the empire to the Christian faith in the third century AD. We returned to the centre and on our way to dinner stopped at the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. After dinner we visited the Trevi Fountain and then returned to our coach, parked close to the Spanish Steps. It was a very long day but we saw a huge amount.