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Will and Olivia at the Colosseum in Rome.

Detail of the carved floor of the Duomo cathedral and museum in Siena, in north Tuscany. The floor is covered by magnificent carvings done over a period of several hundred years by many artists. It is only uncovered part of the year, fortunately for us while we were there.

A portly gentleman admires a row of extremely slender mannequins at the Valentino exhibit at Augustus' crypt.

Two elderly women scrutinize a display of Valentino fashion at the building that also, oddly, houses the crypt of Augustus Caesar.

What else need be said?

St. Peter's Square very effectively stamps the majesty and grandeur of the Roman Catholic Church upon your consciousness even if, like Imagethief, you are non-observant Jew. Arranged in the square are tens of thousands of empty chairs awaiting the masses that attend appearances by the Pope.

The Pantheon may be a marvel of Imperial engineering and a sacred Catholic church today (see the dome photograph for more), but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy a little kitsch with it, such as having your photo taken with a pair of mock Roman soldiers. In  fact, dressing up in costume and busking seems to be rather a Roman specialty. We ...

Built by Augustus' general Marcus Agrippa (who's name is incribed on the front) and rebuilt by Hadrian about a century later, it's a Catholic church today. It is immense and gives you a real appreciation of Roman Imperial engineering. The unsupported dome is 43 meters high. That hole in middle is six meters wide. It was cast in poured concrete ...

There are a few times in my life where the first site of something has made me nearly dizzy with a sense of accumulated history. I got that feeling the first time I saw Mao's portrait over the Forbidden City, the first time I saw the Great Wall and, just for variety, the first time I saw the Mississippi River. I certainly got it when I walked up ...

The Colosseum, just a shade under 2,000 years old, is one of those places where you really feel the weight of human history. It also gives you a real appreciation of the ingenuety of Rome's engineers. It once seated nearly 70,000 people, had assigned seating and to this day remains every bit as comfortable and modern as Candlestick Park (now ...