A pilgrim in Peru: Part Five, going to Racchi, Tipon, Pikillacta, and off the tourist trail

by Don George on

After croissants and café con leche in the elegant restaurant of Inkaterrra La Casona, looking onto the hotel-home’s green and graceful interior courtyard, I met Manuel in the sitting room. He had been infectiously smiling and enthusiastic every day, but today there was a special gleam in his eye. “Hola, Don! Que tal? Today we have a very wonderful journey planned: We are moving even further into the past, into the pre-Inca world. You will see places not many tourists see.”

We drove east from Cusco toward Lake Titicaca, and for me, this already induced the frisson of exploring virgin territory. Even though the road was a well-paved thoroughfare that clearly carried thousands of travelers, most tourists confine their Sacred Valley explorations to the region between Pisac and Ollantaytambo. Driving toward Lake Titicaca, we were moving beyond Pisac and away from the tourist trail.

Our destination was Racchi, about 70 miles southeast of Cusco. John drove us through more spectacular scenery: the blue-gray Vilcanota River ribboning through yellow-green grasslands patchworked with deep green crops, all framed by snowcapped mountains; mud-brick, terra cotta-roofed houses dotted the landscape and little boys in woven caps shooshed bushel-burdened donkeys along the side of the road.
Racchi itself was a revelation. This expansive 20-acre site includes the remains of agricultural terraces, storehouses, walls, baths, a jailhouse, a lake, and the impressive centerpiece, the Temple of Wiracocha, the Inca’s great creator-god. The temple is represented by nine towering rectangular columns, each more than 20 feet high and four feet wide. Built of polished stone on the bottom and mud brick atop the stone, the columns have a distinct earthen color and a shape unlike any other Inca monuments. These attributes imbued the place with a feeling of singular age and significance, and as I walked around the stark ruins, I felt immersed in their desolation and purity, as if I were stepping further and further into the ancient heart of Peru.



That feeling continued at the two other ruins we visited that day. Tipon was a vast grass-and-water complex of broad green terraces and burbling canals and aqueducts. Like Moray, Manuel said, this site – irrigated by water brought from a distant spring by an ingenious network of canals — had been used as an experimental laboratory for the cultivation of different crops. It may also have been, Manuel added, a place to worship the water gods. Wiracocha, water gods. I was beginning to get a sense that the Incas had been surrounded by sanctity – in the fields they worked, the water they drank, the sun that warmed them, the mountains they moved through.

We wandered alone through the terraced past and I had the impression that I was walking over a time-bridge, to a place rocky and green and smelling of fresh mountain water. Then a family appeared in rough woven clothes; they were calling and laughing to each other, the children hopping merrily on the ancient walls. A mirage?

Manuel whistled and said in a gentle voice that they should respect the walls and not play on them. The patriarch, splendid in a gray and green poncho, nodded gravely and they moved on.

Our journey climaxed at Pikillacta, a site built by the Wari empire, an advanced civilization that had been the dominant power in the central and northern highlands of Peru from about 500 to 1000 AD. Along with the contemporaneous and equally powerful Tiwanaku tribe, Manuel said, the Wari laid the cultural foundations for the Inca empire.

These ruins were the rawest yet and very much a work in progress. “Maybe only 5 percent of this site has been cleared and cleaned,” Manuel said; “there is still so much to discover. But this is good,” he continued, nodding at a distant knot of workers with a small smile. “I have been coming here for 16 years and this is the first time I’ve seen government workers here. More archaeologists are becoming interested not just in the Incas but in other cultures that lived here too. And more foreign universities and countries are helping with the excavations; this is what we need, and this will lead to our own government getting involved as well.”

Evidence of the excavations was everywhere. Near the entrance to the site a sign read, “Zona de Trabajo. Prohibido el Ingreso.” We could see workers with towels covering their heads and necks digging on a distant hill, and nearer, modern archaeological tools scattered in the shade of a wall, wood scaffolding bordering a paved pathway, and wooden props that had been set to keep a long, intricately pieced rock wall upright.

In one hut-like chamber we could clearly see the remains of an elegant rock floor and ragged swatches of white plaster on what had once been a gypsum-covered adobe wall. Suddenly I felt a sliver of what Hiram Bingham must have felt when he stumbled on Machu Picchu, and I could begin to understand what drives explorers and archaeologists to hack and stumble through swamp and jungle, to sift and sluice under a relentless sun – this sense of connection with a distant culture. I had no idea what feet had slipped across that white rock floor, what hands had brushed that age-worn wall, what joys and tears, despairs and dreams had taken seed and blossomed here. But still I felt a mortal, human, bond – that rock and clay called to me, pulled at something deep within. Part of me wanted to stay and sit under that thatch; part of me sits there still.

But life must be lived in the present, and we moved from the 7th century ruins to a 21st century home-cum-restaurant specializing in cuy, or guinea pig. This local delicacy was baked in a backyard oven to a crisp and served with its little paws splayed, its snout snouting and sharp teeth gritting, accompanied by noodles, potatoes, and beer. Lots of beer. The World Cup semifinals were being played, with Uruguay upholding the honor of South America, and the restaurant owner genially agreed to accommodate his guests by hauling his prized set out of his living room and laboriously connecting it to an Incan trail-like network of wires and cables, so that we could enact another semi-religious rite while eating our cuy: watching futbol on a grainy TV.


After our guinea pig gourmandizing, we set off toward Cusco and my final afternoon in the Sacred Valley. On the way we passed a roadside roof tile-making facility we’d seen earlier in the day, and Manuel said something quickly to John, who smiled and made a swift U-turn. Suddenly we were veering off the paved road onto a dusty driveway. We bumped and bounced past a mud-brick home and a wary grandmother perched on a porch and rolled to a stop at the edge of the tile-maker’s lot.

Typical of the hospitality we had received throughout the trip, rather than being alarmed or perturbed by the site of a gringo and his guide striding across his work site, the tile-maker welcomed us with a broad smile. When Manuel explained that I had been admiring the roof tiles throughout the Sacred Valley and wanted to understand firsthand how they were made, he beckoned me over to his workplace. There, surrounded by a growing gaggle of kids, he proceeded to demonstrate how he mixed, dried, wet and then fashioned the mud that became the terra cotta tiles, and how he smoothed them into just the right shape, making sure there were no bubbles that could crack later, and then carefully placed the semi-rounded tile in the sun to dry. Soon he was draping an apron over my neck and inviting me to plunge my hands into the muddy mound; with his help and the giggling encouragements of the kids, I shaped and smoothed a tile, gingerly separated it from the mold and placed it in the line of tiles that would eventually end up crowning some happy family’s home.


There were more treasures and grace notes to come. The next morning’s itinerary called for “free time in Cusco” before my mid-day departure for Lima, but Manuel rearranged his schedule and conscripted his benevolent, beaming father, who had recently retired from a career as a tour driver, to take us on an impromptu excursion to some of the city’s grand cathedrals and museums, the astonishing stones of the temple-fortress of Saqsaywaman just outside the city, and a heartening wildlife sanctuary called the Santuario Animal de Ccochahuasi, whose passionate founder proudly showed us a magnificent condor that was being nursed back to health there.

But when I recall this pilgrimage, Manuel — himself one of the principal treasures of the trip — guides me back to that afternoon among the ruins and the roof tiles, when I felt a first sliver of the explorer’s heart-quickening connection, that shiver of spanning time in the touch of cool white stone and the brush of gypsum line, and when a family of roof tile-makers opened their heart and art to me for a timeless half hour of their lives.

On that afternoon, this pilgrim found his way. Roof tiles are made from clay and in many ancient cultures it is said that men are made from clay too. I believe this is so, for I know I left a piece of me in the Sacred Valley of Peru.

Previously:
A pilgrim in Peru: Part One, Arriving in Peru
A pilgrim in Peru: Part Two, visiting Moray, Pisaq and Ollantaytambo
A pilgrim in Peru: Part Three, arriving in Machu Picchu
A pilgrim in Peru: Part Four, visiting Machu Picchu at sunrise
Related: How to hike the Inca Trail

This trip was hosted by both LAN and Geographic Expeditions, but the opinions, joy, and amazement concerning the people and sunrise in Peru are purely my own. LAN Airlines recently celebrated the inauguration of its four-days-a-week nonstop service between San Francisco and Lima. LAN’s non-stop service to Lima with next morning connection to Cusco can help maximize your time in the Sacred Valley. Geographic Expeditions, a San Francisco-based adventure travel company offers overland tours, treks, walks, and expeditionary voyages around the world. GeoEx’s web site provides a wealth of information on its varied Peru tours.

Where I stayed:
In Urubamba: Sol & Luna
In Aguas Calientes: Inkaterra Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel
In Cusco: Inkaterra La Casona

The catacombs of Rome

by Sean McLachlan on


“There were 500,000 people buried here,” my guide whispers.

She leads me down a dimly lit, narrow passage that seems to go on forever. To either side the rough walls are lined with small niches.

“These are where the bodies were kept. There are twenty kilometers of tunnels, and while most of the tombs are now empty, some are still unopened.”

We are in the Catacombs of Domitilla, one of the largest of a half dozen underground burial places dug out by Christians during the second and third centuries AD, when most of the Roman Empire was still pagan. My guide, a knowledgeable young Polish woman, is leading me through a warren of passageways, rooms, even subterranean churches. Incredible facts drop from her mouth every minute.

“This is the oldest of the catacombs with some of the earliest Christian paintings anywhere. There’s even a painting of the Last Supper that’s 1,800 years old.”

The frescoes are tucked away in little vaults built by wealthy families, or on the domes of small mausoleums. They show simple Christian scenes–the Good Shepard, baptism, the saints, painted in a capable but not overly talented hand.

“Since most people were pagan, the early Christians had trouble getting good artists. You can see it with the inscriptions too. They’re not done in orderly lines and clear letters like you see on monuments above ground.”

Somehow that makes me like them more, that these paintings were done by common people, not famous artists. The ones showing prayer are the most evocative because they seem to portray real individuals as they looked in life. They all take the same pose–with arms flexed outwards, palms up.

“This is how everyone prayed back then, both pagans and Christians,” my guide explains.

“Shi’ite Muslims still start their prayers in that pose,” I say.

She gives me a narrow look before leading me down another hallway. We pass a vertical shaft where we can still see small footholds cut into the side for the original builders to climb to the levels above and below us. The walls and ceiling of the tunnels are rough, with traces of the last cuts of the pick clearly visible. The stone is volcanic tufa, a rock so soft that it can be scraped with a fingernail, yet compact enough that it can support an immense amount of weight.

My guide stops in the middle of the hall and points to the wall.

“Look, this one is still buried here.”

One of the niches is sealed up with a rectangular slab. I know I’m not supposed to touch but I do anyway, pressing my hand against the cool, damp stone. Inches beyond my warm flesh lie the cold bones of one of the earliest followers of the world’s biggest religion. What I’d give to talk to him or her for just five minutes. My guide notices what I’m doing and smiles.

“Most of the bones were removed in the Middle Ages to protect them from relic hunters, but a few hundred tombs still remain unopened,” she explains.

%Gallery-102540%Sadly this slab is blank. Some have the person’s name carved on them. In some sections of the tunnel fragments of these tomb facings have been plastered onto the wall by later hands. The earliest inscriptions are in Greek, the language of the New Testament. Later ones, dating to the fourth century when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, are in Latin.

Pagan Romans cremated their dead, but Christians believed in resurrection and practiced burial so the body could rise up on Judgment Day. The Roman Empire was generally tolerant of other religions, incorporating new gods into the existing pantheon, but it looked upon monotheistic Christianity and Judaism with mistrust. While followers of Jupiter or Mithras or Ra acknowledged the existence of other gods, the monotheists dismissed all other gods as impostors or demons. Even worse, they refused to sacrifice to the deified emperors. Several emperors persecuted them, although the extent and violence of these persecutions have been exaggerated by early Christian chroniclers. The image of thousands of Christians being thrown to the lions is myth. People were sometimes killed, but more often their churches would be destroyed and property confiscated. The main victims were church leaders like bishops and early popes, some of whom are buried here; regular Christians were generally left alone. Many of the biggest catacombs were built right under the Appian Way, the main road leading into the city and lined with the tombs of wealthy pagans. While everyone knew where they were, most pagans were content to leave the Christians to their strange rituals as long as they kept out of sight and didn’t cause trouble.

Two other networks of catacombs along the Appian Way are popular with visitors. The Catacombs of San Callisto are as impressive as those of Domitilla and have several good frescoes. The Catacombs of San Sebastiano, under the church of the same name, are smaller and less well preserved, yet there’s an interesting room used for funeral banquets where early Christians carved their names or the names of their departed loved ones along with prayers. All three catacombs can be seen in a single day.

The catacombs stay at a constant 15°C (59°F), so it’s best to bring a long-sleeved shirt or light sweater. Photography is not allowed. I won’t ask how GerardM at Wikimedia Commons got the above image, or how the photographers who took the pictures of the frescoes in the attached gallery got theirs. I’ll assume they went through the red tape to get permission from Papal Commission of Archaeology. I’ve heard that if I do the same I can get a papal archaeologist to guide me through parts of the catacombs closed to regular visitors. My guide warns me I need a valid reason and lots of patience with bureaucracy. Perhaps next year I’ll be back.

“We’re nearing the end of the tour,” my guide says, “but I have one last thing to show you.”

We come to a large, empty tomb that has been converted into a display case for artifacts found by the archaeologists. Through the metal grille I see oil lamps the Christians used to find their way through the dark, shells that were pressed into the wall near a tomb to help identify the occupant, and bits of cheap glass jewelry.

In one corner are a collection of little ceramic animals, dolls, and rattles, simple toys put in front of the graves of children.

Don’t miss the rest of my Vacation with the Dead: Exploring Rome’s Sinister Side.

Coming up next: The Death of Paganism!

Cairo in the full heat of Ramadan

by Grant Martin on

It’s 6:14 in the evening in Cairo, and 140 Muslims are lined up banquet style on the bank of the Nile across from the Marriott Zamalek. A hotel worker scurries across the street shuttling plates of rice, chicken and gravy, placing dishes carefully in front of each anxious visitor, but nobody is eating. A palpable tension hangs at the table; some diners banter back and forth, gesturing cautiously as they avoid bumping into their full drinks and salad bowls; some stare sullenly into the distance; a few lie with their heads on the table unconscious.

Ramadan is in its last week, and the effects of fasting during the daylight hours are starting to show on the faces and in the interactions of Cairenes. Emotions run high on the streets of the city, and as the sun beats down on hungry residents it seems that the smallest infraction can set a temper off. Even those working in the full shade and air conditioning show the weight of the fasting – seem irritable, less patient. Who wouldn’t be?

As I pass by the waiting dinner party and under the 26th of July bridge I wave to the sulking parking lot attendant as he scowls at me and then dive through four lanes of traffic. Brown and gray are not just colors here, they’re the tapestry on which Cairo is painted, filthy cars kicking out smoke and blaring horns as they pass dusty, dilapidated store fronts and acid rain-etched columns. The small respite from this madness comes in Zamalek, where the tree lined streets vainly try to soak up some of the non-stop city blare and hide the permahaze that hovers hundreds of feet above the city.

And then, from deep in the depths of urban Cairo to the east the call to prayer rings forth. Iftar, the traditional breaking of the fast, has arrived. It’s time to eat.

Like clockwork, the rows of dinner guests dig into their food. Now in Zamalek, where I’m currently heading to the market, the shops button up and commerce slams to a halt. Pockets of shopkeepers and residents filter into the street, many seated on the sidewalk in communal circles, many in the traditional Egyptian dress. At the gas station, workers hide at a table positioned behind stacks of oil as they ravenously tear at a loaf of bread while a few unlucky staffers finish up washing the city off of a 1960’s fiat.

A foreigner among Cairenes, I navigate the suddenly crowded city streets, avoiding eye contact with diners and getting closer to the store in mind. On my way out of Cairo airport earlier in the week, I earlier exchanged pleasantries with a group of security guards breaking fast on the side of the street next to their booth. Spotting my curiosity, one held up his bag of milk for me – it’s tradition and polite to share with anyone on the street once fasting breaks.

Today, though the gesture is appreciated, I’d rather not distract anyone from their current meal. Turning off the main thoroughfare and onto a side street, I reflect that Ramadan in Cairo has definitely had an impact my my tourist’s take on the city. Many of the public works and attractions operate on abbreviated schedules so as to accommodate hours for fasting and napping. Alcohol is almost never-consumed, and even restaurants that normally serve it tend to abstain.

And then there are the people. Fasting and sleeping at strange hours brings brings out the best and worst in people. Innocuous, simple tourist questions can quickly become matters of irritation among guides, taxi drivers have little patience for English and it seems that the weight of everyone’s temper balances on the edge of a knife.

After Iftar, however, everything turns on its head. Finally with a stomach full of food the relieved Cairenes head out into the street to finish their day to day business. The city teems with life, with many shops staying open well after midnight and many of the citizens staying out later. Much further into the night, they’ll still be up having their breakfast suhoor right before preparing for another long day of fasting.

As for me, this Iftar meal isn’t necessary but it’s interesting to practice the tradition while deep in the gristle of Cairo. I pick up one Cornish hen and a stuffed pigeon for the pure sake of adventure and make my way back through the melee towards the hotel.

“Welcome back,” says the now-attentive parking attendant, in English as I pass back through the lot. I smile. In the fifteen minutes since I had been away, Cairo is now a completely different city.

A pilgrim in Peru: Part Four, visiting Machu Picchu at sunrise

by Don George on

On Day Four I awoke as the sun was just starting to tint the sky, and made my way to the Aguas Calientes bus stop. With about two dozen Peruvian guides and Western and Japanese tourists, I piled into the bus for the weaving 1500-foot ascent to a place I’d been dreaming of visiting for decades: Machu Picchu. I’d finally set foot there the day before and wandered its time-bridging grounds, but I’d felt like I was missing something, the connection wasn’t quite complete: I had to get there for the sunrise. As the bus jounced and switchbacked through the lightening dawn, this feeling weighed undeniably in my stomach and my head: a yearning, an expectation.

As the sky brightened, I worried that I was too late. But I had forgotten that Machu Picchu, despite its high altitude, is still a bowl surrounded by towering peaks. I raced up to the site and saw with relief that while the peaks to the west were tipped with bright sunlight, the ruins were still in shade. I made my way directly to the sun dial, known as Intihuatana or “hitching post of the sun,” which sits atop a pyramid-like construct of terrace and wall in the site’s northwest quadrant.

I positioned myself at the sun dial and waited, absorbing the stony stillness and the fresh scent of grass, the texture of tree. I watched the sun’s rays light the peaks behind and around me, slowly getting higher and higher, closer and closer.Minutes passed. The molecules in the air ever so slightly brightened. Then, in a suspended moment, light flared over the top of the mountain directly in front and touched the sun dial.

I was looking through the lens of my camcorder when it happened, and at the moment the sun appeared, rays shot out in six searing streaks at 45-degree angles. I felt like one streak was searing through me as well. I felt transfixed, transformed. For a suspended moment I felt drawn into the sun, enwrapped by the sun, plucked into some profound energy-stream of sun worship that coursed through the ground where I stood. This flowing energy seemed to stitch through me and through the world around me – the sun dial, the rock plazas, doorways and walls, the temples and the terraces. For a moment I felt a thoughtless understanding, a pure, empty-headed universe-connection, a solar spear-tip that pierced my heart and soul.

Then it was gone. A group of gossiping students clambered over the rocks, guides replayed their learned lectures, camera-wielding couples postured and posed. But somehow, everything had been transformed.

In retrospect, all I can say is that some deep energy radiates from that place. It’s a combination of the altitude, the pristine quality of the ruins themselves, the purity of the air and the sky and the sun – and something else too, a kind of spiritual energy that courses like water-springs through the site. I had felt it on the Sacred Plaza and by the Temple of the Sun, but I felt it especially at Intihuatana at dawn: the hitching post of the sun.

At mid-morning Manuel joined me and we took a walk along the Inca Trail. Most trekkers take the trail from Ollantaytambo or from an intermediate stop called Kilometer 104 along the rail line to Aguas Calientes, but Manuel and I met at the Watchman’s Hut and walked up the trail in the opposite direction, away from the ruins and toward the Sun Gate, or Intipunku, where trekkers first see Machu Picchu. We shared the paved path with orchids and llamas and workers who were trying to repair one section of the trail that had been weakened during the rains. Looking into the jungle to the right of the trail we could see more Inca walls in the thick shade. Manuel said there were probably Inca walls scattered throughout the mountains. The dense slopes seemed alive with them, echoing with the spirit of the people who tilled, ate, and slept, planted, played and prayed here 500 years before.

We reached Intipunku and then continued along the Inca Trail away from the site. We descended into a world of luxurious blossoms and thick cloud forest shadows. I remarked to Manuel that I was amazed by how well the path was paved, and he told me that at its height, the Inca empire had been laced by a network of 19,000 miles of trails, virtually all paved. I stopped and touched my hand to the rough stone and tried to conjure the imagination and organization, technology and toil, required to complete such a feat. I tried to picture the worker who had placed the very stone on which I stood, whose fingers had touched the very pocks and ridges my fingertips traced. What did he eat? Where did he sleep? What did he dream?

We walked for a half hour to a point where we could see another ruin on a mountain slope: Winay Wayna, a cleared site most trekkers detour to explore. I thought of the deep-shaded walls we’d passed before – who knew what secret cities these vast jungle fastnesses still held?

The trails wound on and on, I realized, some into the cloud forest fastnesses, some into the secret cities of the soul. And on this lonely, well-trod mountain trail, I finally felt whole.


Manuel and I returned to Aguas Calientes, where we were treated to a specially prepared lunch in the restaurant at the Sumaq Hotel, including a presentation on the proper pisco sour preparation (I sampled a number of these in the name of research) and ceviche (ditto).

After lunch we drove to Cusco, and John and Manuel dropped me at Inkaterra La Casona, a colonial house that has been lovingly converted into a stylish and exclusive hideaway – so exclusive that there’s not even a name over the door and I had to knock to be let in. After settling into this true home away from home, I explored the city’s beguiling back-street mix of cathedrals and cobblestones, museums and galleries, boutiques and bars. Past and present intertwined in the ancient Inca capital, but with threads of the local and the global woven through, too. In this way, it seemed to me then, Cusco’s shawl was perhaps the richest of all.

Previously:
A pilgrim in Peru: Part One, Arriving in Peru
A pilgrim in Peru: Part Two, visiting Moray, Pisaq and Ollantaytambo
A pilgrim in Peru: Part Three, arriving in Machu Picchu
Tomorrow: A pilgrim in Peru: Part Five, going to Racchi, Tipon, Pikillacta, and off the tourist trail
Related: How to hike the Inca Trail

This trip was hosted by both LAN and Geographic Expeditions, but the opinions, joy, and amazement concerning the people and sunrise in Peru are purely my own.

Military museums in Rome

by Sean McLachlan on


The Italian army gets a bad rap.

Sure, it made a poor showing in World War Two, but it was Italian Communist partisans who finally bagged Mussolini. Plus the Italians fought in one of the toughest fronts of the First World War, high in the Alps against the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. They endured freezing conditions on top of glaciers for months on end. One of the favorite tactics was to cause avalanches to bury the opposing side. A few years ago the mummies of three Austro-Hungarian soldiers were found frozen in the ice, and another World War One soldier was found last month at an Italian ski resort.

The Italians are also pulling their weight in Afghanistan with 3,800 troops, and joined in the invasion of Iraq and served there for three years. Sadly they have suffered more than 50 deaths in these wars.

And then there was Operation Alba. Operation Alba? Yeah, that’s been pretty much forgotten. In 1997 the government of Albania collapsed, plunging the country into chaos and leading to fighting that killed some 2,000 people. Italy commanded an international coalition that restored order in a textbook case on how to properly run a peacekeeping operation. The rule of law was established and the troops were gone in five months. Military successes tend to be forgotten in favor of military disasters.

Rome has several military museums dedicated to its fallen heroes. Usually overlooked in favor of the giant archaeology and art museums, they offer an interesting glimpse into forgotten history and weapons you’re unlikely to see anywhere else. Take this little tank I’m standing next to, for instance. This is an L3/35 with twin machine guns (now removed). They were introduced in the 1930s and are a stage in development between the lumbering behemoths of WWI and the more practical tanks of WWII. They proved useful during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and 1936. Despite their thin armor, the Ethiopians didn’t have anything to destroy them, although some brave warriors managed to immobilize them by sticking pieces of railroad track or even sabers into their treads! The L3/35 also saw service in North Africa in WWII where they proved easy prey for the more advanced British tanks.

%Gallery-102423%Here are some of the military museums in Rome:

Ufficio Storico Stato Maggiore Esercito: The Italian army archives has an interesting collection of tanks and weapons, mostly from the two World Wars. Several display cases show artifacts dug up from the Alpine front of World War One. It’s in a military building, so bring some ID and expect to have your bag searched. Via Etruria 33.

Museo Storico della Fanteria: The Infantry Museum houses the best and largest military collection in the city with artifacts dating from Roman times up to the present day. The garden is decorated with tanks and cannon set beneath an ancient Roman arch, and the three floors inside are filled with racks of guns, full uniforms, paintings, and dioramas. Piazza San Croce in Gerusalemme 9.

Museo Storico dei Granatieri di Sardegna: Two doors down from the Infantry Museum is one dedicated to the grenadiers of Sardinia. It traces their history from 1659 when they were armed with primitive grenades to their present-day duties as part of the Mechanized Infantry. Piazza San Croce in Gerusalemme 7.

Museo Storico dei Bersaglieri: The Bersaglieri are an elite force in the Italian army famous for running everywhere, even when they’re in their barracks. This makes them very fit and they’re considered some of the toughest troops in the army. Founded even before the unification of Italy, they’ve fought with distinction in all its wars. Porta Pia i Via XX Settembre.

Museo Storico della Motorizzazione Militare: This museum dedicated to military vehicles displays more than 300 tanks, trucks, helicopters, mobile rocket launchers, motorcycles, and more. It’s located in a large military base. Bring ID and expect to be searched. Viale dell’Esercito 170. If you like tanks, you might want to check out our list of other great tank museums.

There are several more military museums worth seeing, so check out the list the Italian army has here. It’s in Italian, but the basic information is easy enough to puzzle out.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of my Vacation with the Dead: Exploring Rome’s Sinister Side.

Coming up Next: The Catacombs of Rome!