When in Rome do as the Romans do

Origin of this phrase . . .

First attested in medieval Latin si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more; si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi ("if you were in Rome, live in the Roman way; if you are elsewhere, live as they do there"); which is attributed to St. Ambrose.

St. Ambrose is . . .

Aurelius Ambrosius, better known in English as Saint Ambrose (c. between 337 and 340 - 4 Apr 397), was a bishop of Milan who became on of the most influential ecclesiastical figures of the 4th century.

As much as we wanted to do as the Romans do and as much as I love pizza and am pretty fond of spaghetti, after several days in Italy, we were ready for something different. We googled every ethnicity we could think of and found that of the 17,000 restaurants in Rome, about 16,500 are Italian. Really.

So we found a little grocery store near our hotel.

There was still plenty of Italian food - every imaginable kind of prosciutto . . .

and cheese.

Good thing we don't know if we like truffles.

We finally broke down and went here. And it was delizioso. Spaghetti and pizza weren't even on the menu, but there was a special Italian sandwich so we all tried it.

This particular McDonald's was the first in Italy. Opened in 1985 (45 years after the first one in the U.S.) and of all places, the Piazza di Spagna - a couple of blocks from our hotel.

Our next stop was this famous landmark in the Piazza della Rotonda - The Pantheon. This Roman temple was completed in 126 AD by Emperor Hadrian and certainly one of the most preserved of all Roman buildings.

This is the front and as usual, there's no way to capture the scale of this thing. These columns are 40 feet tall weighing 60 tons each. They actually came from Egypt where they were dragged to the river, floated by barge down the Nile River, transferred to vessels to cross the Mediterranean Sea to the Roman port of Ostia, then transferred again onto barges to go down the Tiber River in Rome, then dragged to this site.

This is the entryway. The doors are open in this photo, but I read they are not original to the building and were once plated in gold. They have been there since the 15th century so still ancient.

The rotunda forms a honeycomb structure and the Pantheon still holds the record for the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome.

The Pantheon was and still is used as a church.

The marble floor is really beautiful and full of geometric patters of colored marble.

This hole in the dome would allow rain water to enter the building, but . . .

the floor is designed to remove it.

This is the rear side of the Pantheon.

Another fine example of Roman architecture that has stood the test of time.

On our walk back to the hotel from the Pantheon, we happened upon this designer shop - Barbiconi - since the 1800's, so we did a little shopping :)

Within one block of the Pantheon are 6 churches. Within two blocks of the Pantheon are 13 churches.

We decided to step inside this one as it was on our path. It is Sant'Ignazio Church.

We didn't have time to visit the other 12 within this two block radius nor many of the more than 900 churches in Rome. This particular church wasn't in our "Rome Guidebook" nor hardly even marked on the map. It gives you some idea of how many unbelievable places there are to see in this city.

The Pantheon. 126 AD.