Our Return to Rome

As we were planning our sprint to the finish, we wrote down all the places we wanted to go, and then fit those locations into the various weekends, using the combination that gave us the lowest overall cost of airfare. After all was said and done, we had one open weekend that we planned to use for recuperation. Of course that didn't last long. I decided that it would be fun to surprise Jenna with a trip on that weekend, however since we needed to leave on a Friday, I gave her plenty of notice for work, which was a bad decision, as she hates surprises. I told her about a month in advance about a mystery trip, but I only made it about 3 weeks before caving in and telling her that I had scheduled a trip to Rome.

You may remember that last May we took a 9 day tour through Italy, spending just under 48 hours in Rome. This was not nearly enough time, especially considering that its my favorite city. So, I thought it would be good to take a full 3-day weekend to devote to Rome - some of the things we'd seen already as well as a few things we'd missed the first time around.

Friday, March 26th

We got into town fairly late in the morning, and by the time we'd dropped our bags at the hotel and gotten on our way, it was about lunch time. After the most disappointing meal of all our travels (pizza that was bad even by American standards), we walked down to the ancient part of the city to tour the Coliseum and Roman Forum. We really just wanted to go back to the Forum, but the ticket you get grants access to the Coliseum as well, so we figured we might as well not waste it, so we took another opportunity to see the ancient world's greatest arena.

One of the funniest things we saw were the guys dressed up as roman soldiers. These guys would approach you asking for a picture, and after you took 3-4 with them, they try to sucker you out of a lot of money. Rick's book says that they have been known to try and coerce up to 100 euro out of unknowing tourists. We did our best to stay away from them all together, but we did see one try to get 30 euro for 3 pictures.

Afterward we took Rick's tour through the Forum, which was really great. We had done this the last time, but at some point along the tour we got lost, and I guess we never really got back on track. Of course we never would have known the difference if we hadn't come back this time, but it was funny to be reading the same tour from a year before but seeing totally different things. Needless to say, it was much better when we were actually looking at the stuff we were supposed to be seeing.

Also cool was that this time we bought a book called "Rome Past and Present" which was basically a picture book with plastic overlays to show what the area looked like in the past. So there was a photo of an area as it looks today (which you could see in front of you) and then you flipped the plastic page over top of it which added to the existing rubble to create what the buildings would have looked like 2,000 years ago. So it was cool to sit and look at the thing now, and also have a picture of what it looked like at the height of the Roman Empire.

We spent Friday evening at the Borghese Gallery, one of Rome's best art museums (outside of the Vatican) and one that we missed on our first trip. In the 17th century, a wealthy cardinal built a villa just outside the city to show off his art collections and entertain guests. His home is now not only a work of art in itself, but also contains some very nice pieces. The place is full of paintings and sculptures, but unfortunately no pictures were allowed, and I have to just say you need to see it for yourself. We were really impressed by the sculptures by Gian Bernini, which I've pulled a few pictures of from the web. The last one is a picture we actually snuck of the ceiling of the main entrance hall.

After leaving the museum, we headed off for dinner near the Piazza Navona, where we encountered the exact reason why Europeans hate Americans. The restaurant was fairly small but apparently popular, as it was completely full with a bit of a wait, so we stood outside for a while near the tables they had on the street. Taking up one of these tables were a group of 3 American college students, one guy and two girls. We waited for over an hour (taking a break in the middle for a pre-dinner gelato), and within that time these kids didn't eat a thing, but instead nursed a bottle or two of wine while they loudly voiced their various opinions on the world. So, we and about 10 Italians got to stand around waiting for a table listening to the most stereotypical naive blond talk about how she was definitely moving to Europe when she got pregnant so her child could be born in Europe and have dual citizenship (something unique to the US).

Aside from that frustrating experience, the dinner was great and we had a nice stroll back to the hotel, which happened to be next door to the Coliseum and allowed for a photo op. One thing we noticed (both on this walk back and on the trip in general) was the vast number of Smart cars. We never saw more than 2 together (so below is the best picture we got), but there were literally hundreds. We counted 18 parked along a 2 block stretch at one point!!

Saturday, March 27th

Saturday was our day of new experiences as none of the sites we saw (until after dinner) were repeats of our first trip. We started at the St Peter's in Chains church. This church was built to house, as you might expect, the chains that held Peter when he was in prison. There are actually 2 sets of chains, one from when he was imprisoned in Jerusalem (the ones the angel loosed to break him out), and the other from when he and Paul were in prison together in Rome. We don't necessarily believe in these kind of relics, so we pretty much blew that off in favor of the real draw of this church - Michelangelo's statue Moses.

This was built as one of 48 statues planned to adorn the tomb of Pope Julius II, who hired Michelangelo when he was still very young. He got started on the tomb, but the Pope put the project off to instead have him paint the Sistine Chapel. The tomb was meant to be the crowning achievement of Michelangelo's career, and he worked on it off and on for 30 years until the Pope died and funding was cut off, leaving the project incomplete. A few statues from the tomb are in museums around the world, but this church has the closest thing to the original vision, though its still nothing even close. The tomb was meant to be 3 levels high, each getting progressively smaller, and Moses was to be on the top level (here he's about 13 ft tall), and the tomb was to be three dimensional. Too bad it was never completed, as I'm sure it would have been spectacular.

Our next stop for the morning was meant to be the Mamertine Prison, which is where Peter and Paul were held for a time whilst in Rome. Interestingly, Peter converted and baptized his jailers when he was here. Unfortunately, when we showed up we found the prison doors latched, as the site was apparently closed for renovation. We went away very disappointed, but at least now we have one solid excuse to go back.

Our next stop was one of the highlights of the weekend - St Paul's Outside the Wall. This church was the largest in Christendom until St Peter's was built, and was constructed over the supposed grave of the apostle Paul. There is a small tomb that was excavated just a few years ago that has some identifying marks to say it was Paul's so that is about as close to believing in a relic that I guess we get. The place was incredible. You entered through a large courtyard that actually reminded us of those we'd seen in the mosques of Istanbul (which we loved), so that was a nice start. The huge statue of Paul in the courtyard carrying a sword was a little off-putting at first for two pacifists, but we were okay with it when we discovered that Paul was many times depicted in ancient art as carrying a sword, symbolic of the piercing truth of the Gospel. FYI, Peter is likewise many times depicted with keys, symbolic of his carrying the keys to the Kingdom.

The church itself was very impressive as well. It has an incredibly long, wide, tall nave which creates a massive amount of open space, meant to make you feel like when you were there, it was like you were already in Heaven. A ring around the inner wall depicts a painting of every Catholic Pope, starting with Peter as number one working its way around to number 265 - the somewhat creepy looking Benedict. We really enjoyed this church, partially for its lack of tourists but also for some of its great artwork and its elegant simplicity.

Our afternoon was spent on the ancient Appian Way. This long, straight road was one of many that lead into/out of Rome, but this was probably the most important and the only remaining. At one time it stretched over 400 miles to a port in the southeast, and it is probably most memorable today as the road that held the crosses of the thousands of slaves who rebelled with Spartacus and ended up being crucified.

It was nice to be outside the city to enjoy a bit of the outdoors away from all the people and cars. There were several sites, mostly ancient tombs. Ancient Rome didn't allow people to be buried within the city walls for sanitation purposes, no matter how rich or important you were, so here, just outside the wall, you'd find the monuments of the most rich and powerful ancient Romans. You also found the catacombs that were the resting place for the first Christians. The bones have all been removed (so not as eerie as the Paris catacombs), and it was interesting to tour down there. There were various chapels and what would be some of the first Christian artwork, including some of the symbolic identifiers of the early Church - a shepherd with a lamb on his shoulders (the first symbol for Christ, equivalent to the Cross of today), an anchor (a cross in disguise), and a fish (the first letters of "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior" spells "fish" in Greek, which is why you might have a Jesus Fish on your bumper today). All pictures stolen from the web, as a flash of light might ruin a cave that survived 1,700 years of erosion.

Our last stop on this very eventful day was the National Museum of Rome. This museum is mostly full of statues, and the way they are laid out tells the story of the Empire - from its rise to its fall - and although a little tame it was interesting to see not only how the nation progressed through the years, but also the progression of the art.

Our favorite part turned out to be the mosaics, which are the very small tiles put together in artistic fashion, and usually used on floors of the homes of the wealthy. We were amazed at how intricate this was, and the painstaking effort it must have taken to make these. Each individual tile was about one centimeter square!!

We capped off the day with Rick's night walk through the city. I think we detailed this walk in our last post on Rome, but I just can't get over how nice it is to meander through the streets in the cool of the evening, gelato in hand, and see all these spectacular sights (Piazza Navona, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain - notice Jenna's coin guaranteeing us a return trip, and the Spanish Steps). It is truly magical, and I would say is, all by itself, enough reason to visit Rome.

Sunday, March 28th

We started our last day by heading back to some of sights from our night walk for a little different perspective. We checked out the Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, and the Pantheon one more time - all marvelous sites.

Afterward, we grabbed a picnic lunch and headed over to the Castel Sant'Angelo to eat it. This fortress was actually the tomb of the Emperor Hadrian, and has been used since mainly as a fortress for the Pope. It is near Vatican City, and in the dark ages was connected to the Vatican by an elevated bridge. In times of siege, the Pope would escape danger via this bridge and camp out in the fortress. It is now a museum, but the long line and hefty entrance fee kept us out. We just spent our lunch hour outside and people-watched.

We spent the afternoon at St Peter's Basilica, the largest church in the world and the headquarters of Catholicism. It happened to be Palm Sunday, so the Pope had given mass to a crowd of thousands earlier in the day. We'd considered going, but with the expected size of the crowds, our inability to translate from Italian, and mainly our not being Catholic, we figured we could pass. It was interesting to see the aftermath, though.

We decided just to go see the church, as we were short on time and didn't want to pay the admission to see the Sistine Chapel again. So, we braved this line.

Jenna is standing somewhere WAY back behind the fountain.

The line moved surprisingly fast, and we were soon inside. There are a few pictures below, but words really can't describe the place. It just has to be seen.

The one note that I will make on it was the new discovery we made this time, of course thanks to Rick. A gold banner runs along the entire interior of the church, and has 7-foot tall blue letters, which are biblical quotes of every word spoken by Christ to Peter. We thought it was pretty cool.

After a while spent gazing, we left the church, waved goodbye to the Swiss Guard (the Vatican's goofily-clad "army"), and headed off for the airport.

What an amazing city. My favorite by leaps and bounds. If there is one place in the world that every person should see, it has to be Rome. The history and importance is unmatched, and I can't wait to get back there some day.