When in Rome....

I spent a few days at the end of May in Rome with the family.  We don’t usually do cities but Rome was superb!!  Over the two and a half days we were there we walked about twenty miles seeing most of the attractions.  As we had such a busy time fitting in all the amazing things to see in Rome I didn’t have much time to do any birding.  Despite this, we did see some good birds, Blue Rock Thrush, Serin, Firecrest and Sardinian Warbler in the Roman Forum, Hooded Crow, Yellow-Legged Gull, Ring-necked Parakeet and Italian Sparrow everywhere, Monk Parakeet in the Vatican Garden and Short-Toed Treecreeper in Villa Borghese.

Italian Sparrow Villa Borghese

Sardinian Warbler Roman Forum

Yellow-Legged Gull Trevi Fountain 

Hooded Crow Roman Forum

                                     Short-Toed Treecreeper Villa Borghese

Coming from a part of England with strong links to the Emperor Hadrian it was amazing to see buildings that he rebuilt in 126AD and are still standing today, like The Pantheon that originally dates back to the reign of Augustus 27BC-14AD.

The Pantheon

                                                                    Roman Forum

Unfortunately a few of the monuments had scaffolding on them including the Colosseum witch did spoil the effect a little bit, however I did manage to get photos with very little scaffolding showing. 

The Colosseum

                                                                                                           
St Peter's

Rome has to be one of the safest cities in Europe as there are police everywhere. I have never seen so many police as we saw in Rome and they are all armed.