Roman weekend- touring when museums are free!

Coliseum

museums (including the coliseum!) are free this week 

best preserved side

shows underground area which had a systems of hoists and pulleys to get scenery, animals etc up to floor level

gladiator graffiti which was most likely carved on the steps

 Busy weekend with museums being free from april 9-17th. We took advantage and went into the coliseum.  Despite the fact we see it almost every day neither of us had been  inside in many, many years. One improvement is that they now have some well-written explanatory signs. We also toured the forum and the palatine on a beautiful sunny Roman day. Today, Sunday we took advantage and toured Trajan's market on its many levels. That was followed by three exhibitions at the Palazzo Esposizioni. One on Italian coins, from the unification of Italy through the euro, which was way too much reading and not visual enough. The second one was on 100 masterpieces from the Stadel museum in Frankfurt which included 2 Renoirs, a Van Gogh, Cezanne, 2 Klees, Courbet and many others and finally a great exhibit of the Russian Aleksandr Deineka. He is the Soviet's most famous realistic painter of the 20th century. He was also a sculptor, mosaicist, drawer, illustrator, and more. He did a lot of drawings/posters/propangada of industrial art, as well as painted a huge number of paintings of sporting events, and people engaged in sport.  He did many of the mosaics which are in the ceilings of the Moscow underground. Great exhibit, almost (but not quite) made me want to go to Moscow.