After a short but surprising trip to Pompei, it was off to Rome, where we would be spending the better part of 5 days. Since we went to Mount Vesuvius during the day, we didn't arrive in Rome until later in the evening on the first planned day. We arrived at our hotel (Hotel Abruzzi) which is directly across from the Pantheon in the ancient part of Rome. The hotel was small, but the location was incredible. It was situated in one of the busier squares (piazzas) in that section of town, and it was always buzzing…Sometimes until 1AM which was fine, except for the fact that we kept our window open and could hear the noise when we went to bed. The first night was uneventful. We decided to walk around and get acquainted with the part of Rome we were staying in. We took a nice stroll to Trevi Fountain which was really neat to see at night. After that, we walked past the Parliament building where we watched some guy yell at politicians as they left the building and then we headed back to the hotel. Not much to report for day 1.
Day 2 on the other hand was long and there was a LOT of walking involved. Rome is much larger than the last few cities we've been to and it was evident once we set off for our first place to visit (The National Museum) that it was going to be a long day. The museum was nice, but nothing too memorable aside from lots of old sculptures and busts of famous dead Romans. From the Museum, we strolled across the street to the Baths of the Diocletian, as well as the church that is built where the baths used to stand (Church of Santa Maria deli Angeli). The baths were created by one of the Emperors to provide a common gathering place for everyone in Rome to socialize. Back in the day, thousands of Romans would get naked, soak in a hot bath, then slowly move through other baths as the water progressively got colder. Along the way, there were gyms where one could get out of the baths (still naked though), and work out before continuing the process. The most interesting part of the baths, was the church that is now built on part of the structure. More interestingly, the Church was being set up for a funeral of two Italian soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan. While we were touring the church, the military was meticulously setting up rows of chairs and making sure every detail was perfect. News crews were gathering outside in preparation of the event, and the whole time we had no idea what was going on. It was only until we saw the news the next day that we realized what all the fuss was about. After the church and baths, we proceeded to the Spanish Steps, where we did what every tourist does at the steps…We looked at them, wondered what the big deal was, and then took the obligatory pictures there. Check that off the list. After a quick lunch, we headed over to what was maybe my (Brian's) favorite part of the whole Rome trip…The Capuccin Crypts. This church was a monastery for the Capuccin monks back in the day, and now it is a crypt that is decorated with the bones of over 4,000 of those monks. And when we say decorated, we mean DECORATED. Skulls, femurs, ribs, vertebrae, whole skeletons, etc were ornately arranged in 5 separate displays. Everywhere you looked, there were dead monk bones. Very cool! No pictures were allowed but here's one we found on the Internet to give you an idea.
We got back to our hotel just before a massive thunderstorm rolled in. We decided to eat at a nearby local place that turned out to be very good (Armando al Pantheon) and call it a night.
Day 3 involved just as much, if not more walking than the previous. We began by visiting the second most important church in Catholicism…San Giovanni in Laterno. At first we walked up to what we thought was the entrance and I have to admit, I was a little let down. I took pictures but the whole time doubted that we were at the right place based on the descriptions I read in Rick Steves' book. We walked into the church and still, things weren't matching up. After realizing we were in the back of the church and took the Nun's entrance in, we walked out front and saw the Church in all its glory. San Giovanni is known really for two things:
1) It is the home church for the Cardinal of Rome, namely the Pope. Inside is a chair that every Pope must sit in before they are officially considered the Pope. We saw it, it was cool to think about the fact that every Pope has sat in it, but in all honesty, they could make it a bit more extravagant.
2) On the top of the altar in the middle of the church is a cage. Inside the cage are two statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. In the statues are supposed to be pieces of their heads (again the relic thing). Recently, it is said that the Vatican took a sample of the head fragments and compared them to the DNA of Saint Peter's bones from the Vatican, and supposedly they didn't match. But, it was still cool to think that it could be true :)
Also, San Giovanni is known for one more thing. The Holy Steps. After leaving the Church, we walked across the street and took pictures of what we thought were the Holy Steps. It seemed weird that there was absolutely no one else taking pictures of these steps. The Holy Steps are supposed to be the steps taken from Pontious Pilot's palace which were the same steps that Jesus walked up before he was condemned to death and down with the crown of thorns after. The steps were brought to Rome around 300 AD and placed in the building across the street from San Giovanni. Daily, hundreds of people can be seen climbing the steps on their knees (which is the only way allowed to climb them) and praying on each step. You can see our confusion now since we saw no one and the steps were outside. After some debate, we decided to walk around the corner and low and behold, there they were. Very neat to see. Also, the steps were encased in a type of wood and in the wood, there are little see-through glass circles which you can see blood stains, supposedly from Jesus himself. Again…Don't know if it's true but cool to think about it.
So far, a good start to the day. Next stop, the church of San Clemente which might be Jill's favorite church of the trip. San Clemente is a 12th century church, built on top of a 4th century church, which was built on top of a 2nd century Pagan temple. When you walk inside, the church is very small and honestly there's not much to see at first. But, after paying 5 euro, you get to walk downstairs where the excavated church and temple are. It wasn't even known these two sites existed until the 19th century when the church was excavating for improvements. It was fascinating to think about how the landscape had changed so much in this area in order to allow all these buildings to be stacked on top of each other. Not much of the churches were described or marked, so we just kind of navigated our way through like an underground maze. It was very cool, except for being stuck behind an insanely large (given the small spaces) German speaking tour group whose guide was very slow and longwinded. We finally bypassed them only to have a woman come over the loud speaking (scaring the crap out of both of us) to tell us the site would be closing for the afternoon break. Boo.
On to the next church of the day, Santa Maria Maggiore. This church is basically number three for Roman Catholics and also houses a very interesting artifact. Supposedly, they have pieces of the manger. These were displayed in a very ornate, overly decorated, glass case with a life size sculpture of a Pope praying to them. Inside the relic, you could see pieces of wood and iron, which were supposed to be from Jesus' crib in Bethlehem. See the trend yet? It was like every church we've been to on this trip has some sort of dead person's bones, piece of history, or whatever that is their claim to fame. Jill and I couldn't even begin to think what the Vatican would have in store for us :)
After our long afternoon of touring major churches, we had one more place to visit for the day…The famous Borghese museum. Borghese was a Cardinal of sorts (a Pope's brother but not really a Cardinal) that made it his life's work to collect some of the most important pieces of Italian and Roman art ever. He kept his collection in a palace on the outskirts of the city. The palace is surrounded by an enormous park, which sort of reminded us of Central Park. People on bicycles built for two, picnics, dogs, ice cream, etc. everywhere you looked. It was a really nice part of our trip and almost like a refuge away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Rome. After trying to tackle many of the important museums on our trip by ourselves, Jill and I both agreed that we would each rent an audio guide to go along with this museum since you're only allowed a maximum of two hours. These turned out to be the best money spent to date on our trip. Every room you walked into, you simply found the important pieces of art and entered the number on their card into the audio guide. A nice British lady would come on and explain the history of the piece and how you were supposed to look at it…Really nice for a couple of art nobodies like ourselves. The only downfall to these things was that if I entered the room before Jill, I would have already listened to some of the tour and began explaining things to her before she could hear it for herself. I had no idea this was annoying her till finally she "Shushed me" and pointed to her audio guide :) Lots of good sculptures and paintings and well worth the time to see.
Day 4 (quattro in Italian) consisted of all the sites we went to Rome to visit in the first place. We started with the Colosseum. There's not much to say except for, Wow! To think that Gladiators fought and died right there while thousands of people watched was crazy. The place is in OK shape, apart from the section that was pillaged for the stone and marble. The good thing was that we had bought passes that allowed us to skip the enormous line and go right in. Well worth the money. Other than viewing the building inside and thinking about what actually happened there thousands of years ago, there's not much else to do. We did get our picture taken with an older guy dressed as a Roman soldier.
After the Colosseum, we walked across the street to Palatine Hill. This was the site of the Emperor's palace and the Circus Maximus. Circus Maximus was the chariot racing arena where people like Ben Hur raced and died. Other than a bunch of rubble and piles of stones, there wasn't much left of Palatine Hill. Again…you sit back, read the history of the place, and just take in the fact that some really old and important Romans used to live there.
Next was the Forum. Much cooler than Palatine. Even though they are ruins, many parts of the temples are still standing. The Forums were essentially the city center of ancient Rome. Roman Generals would march their armies through the Forum after returning from conquering some far off land. They would parade through crowds of cheering people, show the "booty" they stole, as well as parade the foreign prisoners they captured. Also in the Forum is Caesar's burial site, where his body was burned. The grave is still there and it is always decorated with roses, postcards, and hand written notes. Very cool to see the burial site of the famous Juilus Caesar.
After lunch we decided to go on top of the Victor Emmanuel monument to get a nice sky view of downtown Rome. The pictures were awesome and you could see all the way past the Vatican. Supposedly the views on top of this monument are better than on top of Saint Peter's. Victor Emmanuel was one of two people responsible for the unification of Italy and to celebrate his contribution, the government built this enormous monument right in downtown ancient Rome. The problem is, it's massive, made from the whitest marble they could find, and the locals absolutely hate it. But, us tourists love the fact that it's the tallest building in Rome and it provides some really good shots.
Finally, we wrapped up the day with a visit to the Pantheon (literally 50 feet from our hotel room). Not much to say about the Pantheon except that it was a masonry wonder. It was originally built as a temple to all of the Pagan Gods. When it was first constructed, they did not have the technology to build the dome on top, so they left an enormous hole in place of it, knowing that eventually they would figure it out. The main room is actually an EXACT sphere. It's as wide as it is tall, to the centimeter! After Christianity became the official religion, the Pantheon was converted to a pseudo church that houses three tombs of importance…Victor Emmanuel, his son Umberto, and Raphael, the famous renaissance artist and sculptor. Other than that, not much else to see inside. It's just amazing that the building is so well preserved for being as old as it is.
Day 5 = Vatican. Hmm…Where to start :) We'd read that the lines for the Vatican can be extremely long. Fortunately we found a way to avoid it. Earlier in the trip, we met an American woman (on one of our many train rides), who'd already visited the Vatican and had taken one of the English speaking guided tours. She informed us that while you are in line (which can sometimes get up to a 3 hour wait) people will come around and try to convince you to pay them to go on a guided tour in which they will fill you in on all the important parts of the Vatican and you get to skip the line. As soon as we got out of the cab we were approached by a woman about a tour and we jumped on it. We had to wait for a bit while they accumulated some more group members but better to wait for 30 minutes than 3 hours! Soon we were suited up with our headphones (so you can hear the guide when you are fighting through massive crowds and other guided tour groups) and on our way to the Vatican. The guide gave us a lot of history about Italy and the Vatican before we entered, which was very insightful. He definitely knew his stuff! He also informed us that the Vatican has so many artifacts and "gifts" from all around that world, and if you tried to look at each one for just 30 seconds each, you'd be there for like 7 years straight. That's a lot of stuff!!!
After entering the Vatican Museum, our guide immediately took us to a courtyard and stopped in front of two large boards depicting the two main attractions in the museum…Michelangelo's ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and his Last Judgement. The reason he stopped us here instead of in the Chapel was so that he could explain all of the intricate details of each painting before actually seeing them. This was all fine and dandy, until about half an hour into it, Jill and I both realized it was about 100 degrees and there was no shade in sight. We survived the long description of each painting and then began our tour through the museum. We stopped at various locations along the way for our guide to point out some of the more important pieces. The highlight of the museum was obviously the Sistine Chapel which is where we ended our guided tour. It was much smaller than what we both expected but impressive none the less. My favorite painting in there was not actually the ceiling, but rather the large wall fresco done by Michelangelo entitled "The Last Judgement". While it depicts dead people rising from their graves, ascending into Heaven, being judged by Jesus, and then either remaining in Heaven or being cast into Hades, there are many hidden things in this painting, including a self portrait of Michelangelo as Saint Bartholomew's skin, and a Pope in hell with donkey ears painted on him which was a major insult for the time. Also of interest was the massive, muscular women depicted in his paintings. Michelangelo, while probably the best at depicting nude men, was the worst at painting women, mainly because he was not interested in them (it's rumored he was gay). Let's just say the women in his painting reminded me of Laser from American Gladiators :)
After the Sistine Chapel, we decided to go through and do a more detailed visit of the museum, to include the Egyptian section which contained mummies and really cool statues. After getting our fill of the museum, we headed over to Saint Peter's Basilica. This is the church of churches for all Catholics. The Pope addresses crowds in the square from a balcony at this church, and most important, Saint Peter himself is buried here, along with countless other Popes throughout history. We began by going underneath the Basilica and visiting Pope John Paul II's grave. That was very neat to think one of the most revered Popes of our time was buried right there in front of us. After that, we proceeded upstairs and into the main entry of the Basilica. It's huge! While set up like many of the other churches we've visited on our trip, it's just 10 times bigger than all of them. All along the walls were chapels dedicated to certain people and tombs of more Popes. One in particular, you could see his boney hand protruding and it still had his Papal ring on it! In the center of the Basilica is the tomb of Saint Peter himself (Jill is still skeptical on this one). Aside from the sheer size and presence of the church, we both agreed at the end of the trip that it definitely puts certain things into perspective for us (we'll leave it at that). One interesting thing we saw before we left was a teenage girl throwing up right in the middle of Saint Peter's :)
That pretty much sums up our trip to Rome. There is so much stuff that we saw and did, and even more that we missed, that we can't possibly write about it all. But, aside from the things mentioned above, we did many nighttime walks through various piazzas, Jill got her palm read by some weird Russian lady, we watched various street performers, participated in one of their acts, and generally enjoyed the food and wine at night. We also watched a movie being filmed where we ate dinner the last night, as well as saw Miss Rome 2010 take place live in one of the piazzas. Needless to say, we had a long and exhausting trip to Rome. Bring on the relaxation!
