Starting Your Journey

The ticket for Palatine hill comes together with the Colosseum tickets, somehow making it sound like visiting Palatine Hill is an after thought. Entrance to Palatine hill is just across from Colosseum. They will check tickets and put bags through airport xray machines, so be prepared with tickets in hand when joining the queue.

There are 2 places that we visited in the huge compound. We had kids and elderly with us in the middle of Italian summer, so we tried to go to the key attractions.

View of the Roman Forum

From the Arch of Titus, we climbed up to the Farnese Gardens (Orti Farnesiani sul Palatino) to go straight to the viewing platform (Terrazza Belvedere del Palatino). This is the main reason people come to the Palatine hill, to see the Roman Forums. The viewing platform sits on the hill on the side f the Roman Forum. you can see from a high vantage point how the Roman Forum looks like. We heard from a tour guide that the forum was burried under a lot of rubble after the fall of rome. Also a lot of the marble statues were taken away to make cement. There was apparently a disdain for the Roman Empire after the fall, something we did not particularly learned in history.

Temple of Apollo

The next place to visit is the Temple of Apollo. You would need to walk back to the Arch of Titus and go to the Museo del Foro Romano. In the Italian summer, the museum is unbearable. There’s no air conditioning and pretty warm. We are not sure if it’s better outside in the heat but there’s occasional wind, or the shade and humidity in the museum.

The template Built by Augustus (then known as Octavian) between 36 and 28 B.C., the temple was dedicated to Apollo, a deity closely associated with Augustus’s reign.The temple symbolized the restoration of Rome’s golden age and Augustus’s devotion to religious and political duties. It was also a key element in Augustan propaganda. Although much of the temple is in ruins, you can still see parts of the podium and foundations, which give a sense of the temple’s original grandeur.

We followed a tour group and sat on the raised floor of the temple. It is an open area so there’s wind and shade. A group of museum workers came in and scream at us (lucky we were already leaving that time). Apparently it is disrespectful to sit at the front of the temple (like sitting in the front of a church).

What we liked

There’s a few water refilling spots along the way to the viewing platform. Being a hot Italian summer, this helps as we kept drinking water. The view was magnificent. We didn’t feel the walk was too much for the kids and my elderly parents since we kept to only walking to 2 places.