Unforgettable Rome
Trip Start
Sep 16, 2009
1
23
39
Trip End
Nov 01, 2009
Rome, Lazio, Italy
Friday, October 2, 2009
Friday 2nd October
Unforgettable Rome
Rome is the city that Ann and I have dreamed of visiting for many years. Ann has had the dream since she was a girl, and so to have the dream fulfilled is something unforgettable. We had two tours with an expert tour guide Yvonne, an archaeologist from Rome.
Morning Tour – Vatican City
Our first stop was none other that the place that Ann especially wanted to visit, which was Vatican City
Tapestry Vatican Museums
. It is the smallest country in the world, but yet apparently the most visited. It is also very small in land mass, but as the centre of the Roman Catholic Church, its influence extends over nearly one billion people.Vatican Museums
We first visited the Vatican museums and we were among the first tour groups to go through for the day. The museum was extended in 2000 for the millennial year celebration of Christ's birth, and the renovations included a large spiral ramp leading to the entrance to the museums. We had fun by challenging the group to run up the spiral ramp while they took the escalator. I am glad to say that Jon, Mich and Dad beat the tour group, while Ann beat most of the tour group! Grandma took the escalator.
We saw a number of interesting sculptures while waiting in a courtyard to enter the first of the museums. One was of a pinecone from 1 AD or 2 AD, that was a symbol of fertility and was first made as a Roman fountain. In the courtyard, we also learned about the story and significance of the Sistine Chapel. The chapel is used as the place where the cardinals choose the next Pope. It was named after Pope Sixtus IV.
Michelangelo was commissioned to paint the roof of the Sistine Chapel when he was 34 years old and he took 4 years to complete the initial 9 tableux depicting creation and other important events. He completed the last judgement painting on the altar wall when he was 60 years old. The rest of the chapel including the walls and triangles around the ceiling were painted by artists including Boticelli
Millenium Door
. We learned that a Japanese TV channel (NHK?) had paid the $20M to restore the chapel, and drew proceeds from the sale of a particular book of photographs of the Chapel and other parts of Vatican City. This was one of the reasons why we could not take photographs of the Chapel. I bought the book.As we walked through various parts of the museums, I was surprised to see some art from Ancient Egypt and Greece, even including two marble sculptures of Diana the fertility goddess and Diana as the goddess of the hunt. Worship of Diana was notorious in the New Testament. It seemed to me as though the presence of the artwork indicated the idea that the church acknowledged and saw itself as the fulfilment of many earlier traditions and religious practices. My interpretation could, however, be incorrect.
I was awestruck by the tapestries depicting various events in Christ’s life. The tapestries were housed in a darkened room and one of them gave the impression that Christ’s eyes were following you as you walked past. Another interesting room was a room of ancient maps.
Sistine Chapel
It would be hard not to have a 'religious moment’ on such a tour of so many churches and holy sites, and mine was in the Sistine Chapel. The Chapel is slightly darkened and people are required to be quiet. They are reminded by the guards occasionally clapping their hands saying "Silencio, silence!" Silence is preferable but impossible in a Chapel filled with tourists.
Pinecone Sculpture
I was awestruck by the altar fresco of the last judgement. It was a good reminder of what we will face in the time of the last things. Michelle and I whispered to each other interpreting most of the wall frescos by Boticelli. One series focussed on event in the life of Moses. I was glad that I could recognise most of the depictions, and could explain them to Michelle.
The Chapel is really an amazing place, and I would say that it was the highlight of the tour for me so far. I guess that one could simply appreciate it was a work of art, but the religious aspect gives it far more meaning to Christian believers.
Basilica of St. Peters
This is the biggest church building in the world, although it was hard to recognise this when wandering through the massive building. There seemed to be so many apses and chapels, so that it seemed to a big room with many parts rather than one big congregational area. I was amazed at the many ‘paintings’ that were actually mosaics! You could not recognise this unless you looked very carefully at the pictures. The Pieta was also magnificent, and one lady in the tour group remembered when the statue was displayed in New York, and it was damaged by a crazy man with a hammer
Ceiling
.St. Peter’s square was also surprising, with a very symmetrical placement of the columns so that if you stood at one of two points in the square, you could see through the double colonnade, but if you moved you could not. The Egyptian needle at the centre of the square was sanctified by the placing a piece of the true cross on the top of the obelisk.
Roman Forum
As we drove from the Vatican city after shopping and taking a tour group picture, we could see the Colosseum and other ancient Roman ruins including the Circus Maximus. We stopped at the forum and went for a walking tour. We were able to get up close to Arch of Titus that pictorially portrays the sacking of Jerusalem and the removal of the items from the Holy of Holies. We could see the House of the Vestal Virgins, the Temple of Saturn, the Basilica of Constantine and Maxentius, the Trajan markets and the Arch of Constantine amongst other ruins. We could even see an active archaeological dig, with University students searching for ancient artefacts. Jon became the unofficial tour guide assistant as he was able to use the ‘Rome Revealed’ book that I bought him at the Vatican shop
Ceiling
. The book featured flaps of what the buildings looked like in ancient times covering photographs of what the ruins look like today. Yvonne referred to Jon as ‘the boy’ and often called on him to hold up his book to show what the ruins looked like in ancient times.The Colosseum
The Colosseum is now listed as one of the ‘mysteries of the ancient world’ and it is easy to see why this is. The huge building is remarkably well preserved, although it has suffered deliberate plundering over the years. The building is covered with holes where the bronze support structures have been removed to make cannons. The building has been used as a source of marble, so that almost all of the marble has now disappeared. The remaining ruins, however, give life to the stories of gladiators and martyrs and the ruins have been declared as a memorial to all martyrs, with a couple of crosses place on and in the Colosseum.
Afternoon Tour
We were exhausted after the morning tour and went back to our hotel for lunch and a siesta. We managed to join the afternoon tour, even though we were not originally booked for this optional excursion. We decided that we would join the tour rather than touring ourselves, as the optional tour included most of what we had planned to visit ourselves.
We started close to the Palazzo Borghese and walked past the exclusive hotels to the Spanish steps
Diana the fertility goddess
. We learned that a previous Pope marked the route between St. Peter’s Basilica and another church with a series of Egyptian obelisks. There are 13 or 14 obelisks in Rome, most of which were transported to Rome during the reign of Emperor Augustus (?)After the Spanish steps we walked past the exclusive designer shops on the way to the Italian house of parliament. We eventually reached the Temple of Hadrian, Trajan Column and the Pantheon. The Pantheon is a good example of a pagan temple (Roman) that was converted to use as a Christian church, a function it still has to today. It is also the burial place of Raphael and a couple of Italian kings (during the brief period when Italy had kings.
We ended up in the artist’s square dominated by the four continents fountain and a church. There we left the rest of the tour group and went to dine in a roadside restaurant next to the Italian Senate building. After our pasta and pizza dinner, we enjoyed a stroll through the vibrant evening atmosphere to the Trevi Fountain. The atmosphere was vibrant due to the street performers including mime artists, musicians and live ‘statues’. The pedestrian streets are filled with cafés and restaurants.
At the Trevi fountain we threw three coins over our shoulder to wish that we would return to Rome. The fountain is very beautiful and was a hub-bub of activity. We walked back to the Pantheon to catch a taxi, and finally found a five-passenger taxi a little way down the road. We returned to our hotel after a wild ride through the streets of Rome. We soon crashed after a long and eventful day.
