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Florence
We only had a long weekend to do the city and so your tour really helped us get our bearings. There's just so much to see there! I know we only scraped the surface but it worked really well for us.
Tanya Ellison - (27/08/06)

Venice
This was a great tour that took you everywhere you needed to go. Particularly liked the walk through of the mosaic frescoes on the front of the Basilica. We had a great time in Venice, made all the more special by this evocative guide. Like the speaker's voice too - one of the best I've listened to.
Andrea How - (19/02/06)

ROME - Sponsorship needed for ancient sites

Officials in Rome are seeking corporate sponsorship for some of the city’s greatest sites.  They want companies to pay towards the upkeep of the Coliseum and other ancient monuments in return for having their logo on tickets to the site.

  As our mp3 guide Rome explains, in many European cities you’ll find yourself wondering past buildings and monuments that might be hundreds of years old but anyone on a Rome city break can visit a site that is thousands of years old.

  Take the Pantheon, for instance, which is on our Rome audio tour.  The Pantheon was originally built in the first century AD by the great general Agrippa in honour of the victory by his father in law, Augustus, against Anthony and Cleopatra.  Just above the columns are the remains of the Latin words meaning "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, third time consul, had this built".  But Augustus was too modest a man to accept such a gesture and so, instead, the building became a monument to 'all the gods' - hence the name 'Pan theon' .  In fact what we see today was built by Hadrian shortly afterwards.

  What really ensured the Pantheon's continuing existence over the centuries, though, was that during the seventh century it became a Christian church, St Mary of the Martyrs, named after the bones of a martyr that were found near by.

  It has eight giant granite columns with white marble bases and capitals at the top of them.  But what is really so striking about this building is the vast dome.  Even today this is the largest masonry dome in the world, bigger by one metre than St Peters and it has no visible means of support as all the beams and structures are hidden in the walls.  The dome is exactly hemispherical and so a giant ball would fit into it and sit on the floor of the Pantheon.

  The hole in the ceiling which is nine meters wide is the only source of illumination and on a sunny day the single shaft of pouring down from it is quite stunning.  It's also rather eerie when you consider that sometimes violent and blood thirsty gods were worshipped there.

 



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