Italy - Rome - Victor Emmanuel Monument

Construction started in 1861 on this massive monument to commemorate Italian unification and honor Victor Emmanuel II, Unified Italy's first king.   It is 200' tall and 500' wide.

The statues on top are massive. 

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is part of the complex.

Just to give you a sense of how large these are, check out these stat on the statue of the king on a horse.  It is 43' long.  The mustache is over 5' wide and a person could sit in one of the horse's hooves.   It is supposedly one of the largest equestrian statues in the world.

We paid to ride the elevator to the roof of the monument for 360° views of Rome.  The photos first describe the view and then there is a photo of the view.

Click on photo to see all of it.

The sun was in the wrong position to get a good photo of the statue to the west.

There were two elevators feeding people to the top and back down again so it was hard to get in place to take photos. 

This is the statue that I had a photograph of the front of earlier in this post.

Humans were the only two footed occupants of the roof but this one wasn't interested in the scenery.

That's Piazza Venezia.

The elevator walls and shaft were clear so we could see out as we rose to the top and were lowered to the ground.