Our last stop on our Best of Italy Tour led us to the magnificent city of Rome. After fifteen days, we reached our final destination and had two days to see it all - not humanly possible but I can honestly say that we gave it a good try. We arrived in Rome at 11:00 am but we still ended up walking over 10 miles of sightseeing our first day, which wasn't even a full day. But that also included a Heart of Rome nighttime walking tour by our guide, Anna, which was truly a beautiful experience. Rome at night is the best. My favorite part of the night tour was stopping at Trevi Fountain because it was so beautiful at night. Bruce was taken aback when we rounded the corner and he saw how gigantic it was with all the people crowded around. It was like a huge outdoor party going on. The fountain is located at the junction of three streets, thus called tre vie. You don't really see the fountain at all until you are right there.
The Trevi Fountain is one of the most famous and beautiful fountains in the world. It is a representation of water in every form, dominated by the figure "Ocean" who towers in the middle. On the left of "Ocean" is the statue of "Abundance", holding a horn of plenty and to the right, is the statue of "Health". The fountain was completed in 1782.
The water of Rome was brought into the city by its great aqueducts and this fountain celebrated the terminal point of one of the largest ancient aqueducts during the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Rome took full advantage of the abundance of water brought into the city from the distant hills east of the city.
But the magic of this fountain is in the tradition of tossing a coin over your shoulder while making a wish and hoping for a return back to Rome. And we both did just that.
Next, we approached the Spanish Steps or Piazza di Spagna named for the Spanish Embassy to the Vatican which has been here for 300 years. The wide, curving staircase is one of Rome's iconic sights. There are 138 steps that lead up sharply around a central terrace.
But the magic of this fountain is in the tradition of tossing a coin over your shoulder while making a wish and hoping for a return back to Rome. And we both did just that.
Next, we approached the Spanish Steps or Piazza di Spagna named for the Spanish Embassy to the Vatican which has been here for 300 years. The wide, curving staircase is one of Rome's iconic sights. There are 138 steps that lead up sharply around a central terrace.
The design culminates at the top in an obelisk framed between two Baroque church towers.
The Spanish Steps has been a hangout of many famous European Romantics throughout history and now locals come here to do the same, including us...We loved the Spanish Steps and enjoyed a chance to pretend we were also Romantics pondering the meaning of life (or more like, resting our poor tired feet).
We had started our Heart of Rome nighttime tour at Piazza Navona, an oblong square with the Four Rivers Fountain in the center by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, his most famous fountain.
There were four burly river gods here (representing the four continents that were known in 1650), the Nile, the Danube, Uruguay's Rio de la Plata and the Ganges in Asia.
Piazza Navona is known as Rome's most interesting night scene because of all the street music, artists, and outdoor cafes. We ate dinner around the corner from here and enjoyed all of the above.
and, of course, our usual...spaghetti and meatballs. It's really hard to NOT eat spaghetti when in Italy, what can I say (especially when a guy is singing and playing his violin).
Our first day in Rome actually began after lunch when we met a local guide to take us through ancient Rome. We started at the Colosseum that is 2,000 years old.
Only a third of the original Colosseum remains because of earthquakes destroying some of it, but most was carted off as pre-cut stones for other buildings during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
In the day, the Colosseum was made of marble and built when the Roman Empire was at its peak in 80 A.D. It represented Rome at its grandest. (The Roman Empire lasted 1,000 years from 500 B.C. to 500 A.D.) When killing became a spectator sport, the Romans wanted to share the fun with as many people as possible, so they stuck two semicircular theaters together to create a freestanding amphitheater. Towering 150 high, it could accommodate 50,000 spectators.
The Romans were great engineers and the building was more functional than beautiful. When you look down into the arena, you're seeing underground passages beneath the playing surface where the animals and prisoner were held.
The arena was originally covered with a wooden floor, then sprinkled with sand. A bit of reconstructed floor has been built to give us an accurate sense of the original area level.
The Colosseum was used for gladiator fights, men against men, men against beasts, and beasts against beasts. The gladiator fights were the main attraction. Our guide kept mentioning the movie, Gladiators, which is pretty accurate rendition of the Colosseum. From the Colosseum, you had a good view of the Arch of Constantine.
This arch is the symbol of Roman Empire accepting Christianity. When Emperor Constantine defeated his rival Maxentius in 312 A.D., Christianity became legal in Roman. From the Colosseum, we strolled through the Roman Forum, ancient Rome's birthplace and civic center.
One of the most decorated archs in the Forum was the The Arch of Septimius Severus with impressive sculptures depicting the many military campaigns of the time erected in 203 B.C.
There were four burly river gods here (representing the four continents that were known in 1650), the Nile, the Danube, Uruguay's Rio de la Plata and the Ganges in Asia.
Piazza Navona is known as Rome's most interesting night scene because of all the street music, artists, and outdoor cafes. We ate dinner around the corner from here and enjoyed all of the above.
We enjoyed some local beer
and an antipasto of delicious bruschetta
For lunch we had pizza...we knew our time in Italy was now coming to an end soon so we just kept wanting more and more of the Four Food Groups.
Our first day in Rome actually began after lunch when we met a local guide to take us through ancient Rome. We started at the Colosseum that is 2,000 years old.
Only a third of the original Colosseum remains because of earthquakes destroying some of it, but most was carted off as pre-cut stones for other buildings during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
The Romans were great engineers and the building was more functional than beautiful. When you look down into the arena, you're seeing underground passages beneath the playing surface where the animals and prisoner were held.
The arena was originally covered with a wooden floor, then sprinkled with sand. A bit of reconstructed floor has been built to give us an accurate sense of the original area level.
The Colosseum was used for gladiator fights, men against men, men against beasts, and beasts against beasts. The gladiator fights were the main attraction. Our guide kept mentioning the movie, Gladiators, which is pretty accurate rendition of the Colosseum. From the Colosseum, you had a good view of the Arch of Constantine.
This arch is the symbol of Roman Empire accepting Christianity. When Emperor Constantine defeated his rival Maxentius in 312 A.D., Christianity became legal in Roman. From the Colosseum, we strolled through the Roman Forum, ancient Rome's birthplace and civic center.
One of the most decorated archs in the Forum was the The Arch of Septimius Severus with impressive sculptures depicting the many military campaigns of the time erected in 203 B.C.
On a hill above the Forum lies the Piazza del Compidoglio that was once the religious and political center of ancient Rome, now home to the city's government.
In the 1530's, the pope called on Michelangelo to re-establish this square as a grand center. Michelangelo placed the ancient equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius as its focal point. (The original statue is now in an adjacent museum.)
Michelangelo had ambitious plans for this square which also included the creation of this elegant, grandiose, slow rising staircase.
We continued our tour with our guide and on our way to the Pantheon we passed the store where priests and nuns shop called Barbiconi.
Apparently, it has been here for two centuries serving the attire of all of the most holiness. Would you have thought there was such a store? Well, yes. We are in Rome, after all...
And, once again, as in Assisi, we were intrigued with all the holiness walking around
After the fall of Rome, the Pantheon became a Christian church, therefore it wasn't destroyed during the Dark Ages.
The Pantheon is probably the most influential building in art history because of its dome. It was the model for the Florence cathedral dome, which launched the Renaissance, and for Michelangelo's dome of St. Peter's, which capped it all off. Even the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, was inspired by this dome.
The mathematical perfection of this dome is a testament to Roman engineering. The dome is as high as it is wide, getting lighter and thinner as it reaches the top. It is made of concrete, a Roman invention. At the top, the oculus, or eye-in-the-sky, was the building's only light source.
The mathematical perfection of this dome is a testament to Roman engineering. The dome is as high as it is wide, getting lighter and thinner as it reaches the top. It is made of concrete, a Roman invention. At the top, the oculus, or eye-in-the-sky, was the building's only light source.
The inside of the Pantheon had decorative statues and the tombs of famous people including the tomb of the great Italian Renaissance artist, Raphael.
We passed the Pantheon again during our nighttime tour and it looked just as magnificent at night.
Another great example of Roman architect was in the Piazza di Pietra at the Temple of Hadrian built in 144 A.D., dedicated to the emperor responsible for building the Pantheon. He was considered one of Rome's five good Emperors. (another one was Marcus Aurelius)
There were two floors with twenty rooms in all. Some of the more famous pieces we saw were Bernini's Apollo and Daphne. Apollo is chasing Daphne after getting hit by Cupid's arrow. Just as he's about to catch her, she calls to her father to save her and magically transforms into a tree, with leaves sprouting out of her fingertips, her skin turns into bark, and toes become roots.
Another sculpture by Bernini is The Rape of Proserpina. Proserpina is seized and taken to the underworld by the god, Pluto. Bernini was known for capturing the tension of his stories in a very dramatic way at the exact moment they occur.
The sculpture Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius depicts the hero, Aeneas, carrying his father, the elderly Anchises, and his son, Ascanius, from Troy after it has been attacked by the Greek army. In his hand, Anchises carries a vessel with his ancestors' ashes, on the top of which are two tiny statues of Roman gods.
While looking at this sculpture from the back, you can clearly see the age difference of the three figures by their skin folds and muscles of their backs.
And another David by Bernini, shows a more expressible David right before he slays the giant, Goliath. This sculpture broke new ground in its implied movement and its psychological intensity.
Bernini also did two portraits of Cardinal Borghese in his robes and biretta. The movement and liveliness are the busts’ most pertinent features. The cardinal looks to this right and opens his lips as if to begin speaking, rather than a static figure. The sense of movement is also emphasized by the creases and fold lines of his robe, suggesting the movement of his body, and, in the second version, one of the buttons is about to come undone.
One of Bernini's earliest pieces was also displayed called The Goat Amalthea with the Infant Jupiter and a Faun. Bernini was seventeen years old when he sculptured this somewhere around 1609-1615.
The Borghese Gallery also had a collection of Caravaggio's paintings who was known as a genius for color and "realism", founder of the Baroque period emphasizing deep shadow contrasting blinding light. One of his most popular paintings is St. Jerome Writing. St. Jerome deep in study is one of the painter's best examples of his use of deep, rich colors and his attention to detail. St. Jerome was commissioned by Pope Damasus the 1st to revise the Latin text of the Bible so he was often depicted writing in his study.
A self portrait of Caravaggio is painted in his piece called Young Sick Bacchus in 1593-1594. Historians believe that Caravaggio was extremely ill during this time and spent six months in the hospital with some type of ailment involving his liver because of the jaundiced appearance of his skin and eyes.
Another painting called Boy with a Basket of Fruit.
The most famous painting by the Renaissance painter, Raphael, at the Borghese Gallery is The Deposition or The Entombment (1507). It is considered a narrative painting, as it tells the story of the final days of Jesus.
By the time we finished with this tour, we were art-history-overloaded, as you can imagine. We decided to walked back to our hotel and got lost a couple of times, but the change of scenery was still nice. This evening was our last group dinner of the trip at a lovely, quaint restaurant called Cuoco & Camicia.
Anna had little surprises for us
that were notes thanking us for being such great members of her tour and copies of two group photos taken in Siena and Altrarocca (already included in this post because they were taken with our camera...Bruce and I were always ready with our camera on this tour).
This group dinner at Cuoco & Camicia was, again, one of the best meals we had. We started with roasted octopus that, believe me, tasted a lot better than it looked. I've only had octopus fried before but it tastes a lot better roasted. Everyone loved it.
And dessert was a nice, light yogurt dolci that, even thought we were so full from the pasta, we could still manage to eat all of it.
We still had one more day in Rome before we left for home so we had planned to devote our last day to the Vatican City.
We took a cab from our hotel to meet with a tour guide who took us through the Vatican Museum, St. Peter's Basillica, and the Sistine Chapel. Vatican City is actually a tiny, independent country of about 100 acres, contained entirely within Rome. It has it's own postal system, train station, radio station, etc. The Vatican is the religious capital of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics with the pope being the leader of Vatican City.
We visited the Vatican on a Friday and the pope had just left for the country of Georgia in Eastern Europe. Otherwise, visitors can see the pope on Sundays when he comes out of his apartment and gives a blessing or on Wednesdays. They give out free tickets for the Wednesday general audience for when the pope appears at 10:30 a.m. (and there are even chairs to sit down).
St. Peter's Square is huge but it is still too small for the crowds who come to see Pope Francis because of his popularity. We had heard how big the crowds get here and we were prepared. I would not recommend going to the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel if you have claustrophobia because the mass of people was unbelievable. It was basically wall-to-wall people moving in one big flow.
We started in the museum with some of the best Greek and Roman statues that are in captivity.
including the Apollo Belvedere that is a Roman copy (2nd century A.D.) of the original. The anatomy is perfect, his pose is natural. The arrow has just left Apollo's bow and the effort impressed on his musculature still lingers.
Laocoon is another famous sculpture found in Rome in 1506 and believed to have been made in 30-40 B.C. It is now the centerpiece of the Statues Courtyard. Two great sea serpents are attacking Laocoon and his two sons because they were warning the Trojans not to let in the Trojan horse but to instead flee Troy. Athena and Poseidon, who were favoring the Greeks, sent the serpents to have him killed. Between the two statues, you can see that Apollo is serene, graceful and god-like, while Laocoon is powerful, emotional and gritty.
The centerpiece of the next hall is the Belvedere Torso. It is a 2,000-year-old marble torso that had a big impact on Michelangelo. Legend has it that Pope Julius II requested that Michelangelo complete the statue fragment with arms, legs and a face but Michelangelo respectfully declined, stating that it was too beautiful to be altered and instead used it as the inspiration for several of the figures in the Sistine Chapel.
At the end of the hall is the Sistine Chapel, famous for Michelangelo's paintings of the story of Creation on the ceiling. He was 33 years old when he painted it (1508-1512) and it took him four years. (No photos were allowed) Many art scholars say that the Sistine ceiling is the single greatest work of art by any one human being. Later, a much older Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the Last Judgement (behind the alter) which he completed in 1541 and it caused another sensation. When it was unveiled, it is said that the pope dropped to his knees from being so overwhelmed. The Sistine Chapel is also the pope's personal chapel and also the place where, upon death of the ruling pope, a new pope is elected. From the Sistine Chapel we went into St. Peter's Basilica, the largest church in the world.
Construction began in 1506 and it was completed in 1626 with Michelangelo being one of the principal designers. The location of the basillica is directly above the spot where St. Peter was buried, marked by Bernini's baldacchino, a pavilion-like structure 98 feet tall, the largest piece of bronze in the world
which stands beneath the dome and above the alter.
The Tomb of Pope Alexander VII was Bernini's last major sculptural commission finished in 1678 before he died in 1680. It has six significant figures in the monument; Alexander kneeling in prayer and below him are four female statues representing virtues - Charity, with a child in her arms, Truth, Prudence, and Justice. These statues were carved in white marble. The figure of Death is represented in bronze, shrouded in a billowing drapery of Sicilian red jasper.
The most famous statue in St. Peter's is the Pieta (Italian for "pity") by Michelangelo which shows Mary holding the body of her son, Jesus, after his death. Of all the great paintings and sculptures on the Pieta, this one by Michelangelo stands out from all the rest. He was 24 years old (1498) when he was commissioned to do it and took two years. When it was unveiled for the St. Peter's Basilica for the Jubilee of 1500, it was one of the most magnificent sculptures ever created. Michelangelo decided to create a youthful, serene and celestial Virgin Mary instead of a broken hearted and somewhat older woman. It is probably the world's most famous sculpture of a religious subject.
Leaving St. Peter's Basilica we passed the famous Swiss guards that have served at foreign European courts since the late 15th century. The Papal Swiss Guards official dress uniform is blue, red, orange and yellow with a distinctly Renaissance appearance.
Walking out of the Vatican City was a beautiful view of St. Peter's Basilica.
Next to the Vatican City is Castel Sant 'Angelo that was built as a tomb for the emperor. During the Middle Ages, it was used as a castle, then a prison, and place of last refuge for popes under attack, and today, it is a museum.
This was built by Emperor Hadrian just outside the city walls across from the Tiber River in 139 A.D. The bridge that leads to Castel Sant 'Angelo is called Ponte Sant 'Angelo and was also built by Hadrian.
The three middle arches are actually Roman originals and a perfect example of the empire's engineering expertise.
This was built by Emperor Hadrian just outside the city walls across from the Tiber River in 139 A.D. The bridge that leads to Castel Sant 'Angelo is called Ponte Sant 'Angelo and was also built by Hadrian.
The three middle arches are actually Roman originals and a perfect example of the empire's engineering expertise.
The statues of angels along the bridge were designed by Bernini. In the Middle Ages, this was the only bridge in the area that connected St. Peter's and the Vatican with downtown Rome. Nearly all the pilgrims passed over this bridge to and from the church.
We started our walk back to the hotel one last time (via the subway this time) and walked along the Tiber River for awhile trying to imagine all the history that has occurred here. You can sense how old everything is but it's still hard to imagine things dating back thousands of years, as it had been explained to us so many times over the past seventeen days of this Italian journey.
At our group dinner the night before, our guide, Anna, asked everyone to go around and tell the group what was their "Wow" moment of our trip. I mentioned in my Venice post that riding the gondola our first evening was my "Wow" moment but there really were so many during the course of this trip. Someday, I would like to go back to some of these places and slow down a bit and try to absorb it all a little more. It helps to do this blog so I can go back and review everything that we actually saw and understand the history behind it all but at the time, I will admit that it was sort of a whirlwind or as I mentioned before, a mental overload, of sorts. It's all just so overwhelming when you keep hearing dates like B.C. and 1st-century A.D. That is so old. It makes me realize I am only a little speck in the whole big world and hardly even a dent over the course of history. At this moment, time is standing still for me to live my life of today but soon today will be tomorrow and then it will become history, too. I was so excited to come home after this trip and get back to my real life. A life where I can live my own history - now.
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