Domus Romane

This morning we toured the underground ruins of a Roman Villa which had been destroyed by an earthquake around the year 500 AD and then had laid buried under a renaissance palazzo until it was recently excavated and then opened for tours only last year.  The audio and visual effects were stunning. For example when we looked at the baths and the indoor swimming pool the light effects gave the impression that we were seeing the shimmering surface of the water.  Also the sound and simulated rain falling in the courtyard were eerily realistic.  Visual images of the rooms of the villa as they originally were, were briefly projected on the walls of the renaissance cellar that had been built on top of the ruins.  Also the missing parts of mosaic flooring were also projected to show what the original entire pavement would have looked like. It would seem that the last supper was being eaten by the occupants when the villa came down on them. Their meal included fish and pork.  At the end of tour we passed thorough a Mussolini era air raid bunker which had an exit adjacent to Trajan's column.

Following the villa tour we headed off to the Pantheon to meet Cristiana and discovered that the meeting was not scheduled for 11:30 as I had thought but was in fact to be at 3:30 as Lynne had tried to tell me.  After spending some time in a very crowded Pantheon we set out to find the Enoteca Corsi one of the best places we have ever eaten and also one of the most reasonable. At the end of our meal we were offered a complimentary Limoncello with the bottle pluncked right down on the table.  We then spent the time until our meeting first looking for spectacle frames for Lynne and then in a book store with wifi.  We had coffee with Cristiana in a cafe on the piazza Minerva across from the Pantheon.  Our meeting was a short one as something had come up involving her daughter.