Saturday, June 28, 2008

• Europe part 9 - Rome & Vatican City

  (Warning: This is gonna be long!)
  
  From Cinque Terre we took a train along the coast then over to Rome.  Fortunately, this train ride was much less eventful than our first and we arrived into Rome mid-afternoon on June 3rd.  Still following our lesson learned, we first dropped off our bags at our B&B before heading into the city for dinner and a nighttime walk.  We found several potential restaurants near the Piazza Navona, so after perusing their menus and assessing their crowds, we finally settled on one where I ordered the gnocchi with pesto, combining two of my favorite Italian foods.  Over dinner, Blake and I also practiced our Vinny Vedecci impersonations, the character Bill Hader plays on SNL.
  
  

  
  

  
  After dinner we walked through the Piazza Navona, admiring the scaffolding and construction largely hiding Bernini's masterpiece Four Rivers Fountain.  Thank you for that Rome.  Leaving the Piazza, we found the Pantheon - Rome's best-preserved building from antiquity.  Originally a temple to all gods, it eventually became a Christian church and so was spared by the barbarians who later sacked Rome.  Its also represents several, almost unimaginable, feats of engineering.  The columns on its portico are 40 foot long, six foot in diameter, single-pieces of granite hauled intact from Egypt to Rome.  The dome is 142' high and wide.  If it was a complete sphere it would sit inside the square building perfectly like a ball in a box.  The dome is six feet thick at the base, tapering towards a circular hole in the top.  Not bad for a building built without electricity or power tools in 120 AD!  Even Michelangelo and other Renaissance masters came here to study the dome's architecture before constructing their own masterpieces, such as St. Peter's Basilica.
  
  Leaving the Pantheon, we walked through the Piazza Colonna and on to Trevi Fountain, still powered by ancient Roman aqueducts.  Hundreds of Romans and tourists were lounging in the square surrounding the fountain, enjoying the cooler nighttime air and sounds of rushing water.  After a few pictures and some people watching, it was down the Via Propaganda (what a name) to the Spanish Steps.  Our next adventure was trying to figure out how to get home.  We only knew one bus route that ran back to our B&B and had no clue where the nearest stop was, nor if it was still running so late (it wasn't!).   But after some charades and broken English with several policemen, we eventually found our way back to Termini Station (the city's main train & bus station).  There we accosted, I mean approached, a friendly Italian teenager who spoke excellent English and enlightened us on which of the seventy buses to take home.  Just another small adventure in traveling!
  
  The next day we immediately hopped a bus across town to the Vatican.  It was a Wednesday and the pope was performing his weekly address to the faithful in St. Peter's Square, so we headed around back to the Vatican Museum hoping there wouldn't be any crowds.  Amazingly enough, we were right and were able to walk straight in!  The Vatican Museum is an astounding, overwhelming collection of art.  There are statues, paintings, sculptures, reliefs, artifacts, and relics from all over the world.  There are masterpieces by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio, Bellini, and hundreds more.  It is exhausting and impossible to truly enjoy, as after awhile everything blurs together and the five hundredth statue looks a lot like the four hundred ninety-ninth.  But we did our best, snapping a hundred pics along the way, eventually working our way to the Raphael Rooms.
  
  The Raphael Rooms are adorned on every surface but the floor with amazing frescoes.  Frescoes are not really paintings, rather they are constructed by mixing paint with wet plaster and quickly applying it before it dries.  After a small section dries another is applied and the process repeated over and over until the entire wall is covered.  Can you imagine how tedious it must have been to create people, armies, and animals complete with details like clothing and hair from tiny splotches of colored plaster?  It is amazing to me the detail Raphael and his students created basically using colored spackle!  After the Raphael Rooms, it was on to the pièce de résistance, the Sistine Chapel.  Unfortunately, this is the one place in the Vatican Museum you cannot take pictures due to some goofy deal with the company that restored it several years ago.  So we did our best to burn it into our memories before taking the shortcut to St. Peter's Basilica.
  
  Wow.  I know they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but even pictures cannot communicate how enormous and impressive St. Peter's is.  The place is HUGE.  St. Peter's covers six acres and can accommodate 95,000 standing worshipers.  Looking straight up from the main altar, it's 450 feet to the top of tallest dome in the world.  Over the main altar is Bernini's bronze canopy which itself is seven stories tall!  Encircling the church, high above at the base of the ceiling and dome, is a golden band inscribed in Latin with every quote from Jesus to Peter in the Bible.  The letters, that look tiny from below, are actually seven feet high!  The statues of baby-like cherubim are larger than most men.  Are you getting the idea yet?  It is giganto-enormo-huge-tastically monstrous.  And to top it off, it's filled floor to ceiling with unparalleled works of art.  Those Catholics know how to impress a guy!
  
  After straining our necks and boggling like a couple of hillbillies in the city for the first time, the grand finale of St. Peter's was Michelangelo's Pietà.  Protectively placed behind bulletproof glass after some wacko started beating on it with a hammer a few years ago (since restored), it is ... I cannot think of the words to describe it.  Just  looking at the pictures of it awes me and even makes me a bit emotional.  Carved when Michelangelo was only 24, the pietà depicts Mary cradling the dead body of her son, Jesus.  The folds of Mary's garments, especially the cowl encircling her face, make it hard to believe this is actually marble and not cloth.  (Click this link to more fully appreciate it.)
  
  We definitely spent more time in Vatican City than we initially anticipated, and I don't regret it one bit, but we did have to hustle from there to try and make up for lost time.  We hoofed it across St. Peter's Square, past Castel Sant'Angelo, through the Piazza Navona, and back to the Pantheon for a daytime look and peek inside.  Then it was on to the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II and Trajan's Column, heading towards the Colosseum.  By the time we got to Trajan's Column, however, we realized the Colosseum and Forum would both be closing soon so decided to save them for the next day.  We found a bus to shuttle us back to the vicinity of our B&B then scouted out a restaurant where I had some amazing pasta with mushrooms for dinner.  (Have I mentioned how great the food was in Italy?)
  
  The next day our time was limited, as our flight for Scotland left that afternoon, so we made tracks for the Colosseum and Roman Forum.  You only think the sights you've seen in Europe are old until you get here.  In America, we're amazed by buildings that have survived since the Civil War.  In Venice or Prague, we "ooh" and "aah" over cathedrals built in the 1400's.  Then you get to the Colosseum that was completed in the year 80.  Eight-zero.  2,000 years ago.  Folks that knew Jesus were still walking around.  The mind boggles.
  
  We bought our combo ticket for the Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, and Colosseum, and began our tour of ancient Rome. First stop, the Arch of Constantine, in between the Colosseum and Forum.  The Arch of Constantine was dedicated in 315 to commemorate Emperor Constantine's 312 AD victory over his rival Maxentius.  This military coup was a monumental turning point in history as it led to Christianity becoming the state religion of the entire Western world.  A few years before this battle you could be killed for being a Christian; years later you could be killed for not being one.
  
  Next, we worked our way through the Forum - the center of ancient Rome and home to ruined temples, basilicas, statues, arches, and more.  We saw the remnants of the Temples of Saturn, Vesta, Antoninus & Faustina, Castor & Pollux, Venus & Roma, and Caesar.  We walked inside the Curia Julia, one-time home to the Imperial Senate.  We stood on the spot where Julius Caesar's body was burned after his betrayal and assassination in 44 AD.  We passed beneath the Arch of Septimius Severus and around the Arch of Titus, the latter inscribed with reliefs portraying the sacking of Jerusalem and Herod's temple in 70 AD.  We walked along the travertine paving stones that Caesars, Emperors, senators, and even apostles once walked.  Amazing.
  
  Finally, we visited the Colosseum.  Aptly named, it's another astoundingly colossal structure, especially when you consider when it was built and the technology available.  50,000 screaming fans could watch the brutal spectacles inside, while staying dry beneath the huge retractable canvas awning, making it the first covered stadium!  The wooden floor has long since rotted away, revealing the network of passages beneath that once housed gladiators, prisoners, exotic animals, and workers who labored furiously to put on elaborate shows.  Dozens of elevators were used to stealthily raise roaring lions or warriors into the midst of the fray, keeping the combatants on their toes.  But after 500 years of continuous use, the last games were held in the Colosseum during the sixth century and it fell into disuse and disrepair over the ensuing centuries.
  
  We could have spent another week in Rome, and still not seen it all, but our time was up and the Highlands of Scotland were calling.  Arrivederci Roma!
  
  
  Rome pics http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2244722&l=f6179&id=7012064
  
  More Rome pics http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2244760&l=c9c31&id=7012064
  
  Vatican Museum pics http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2244774&l=cc4e2&id=7012064
  
  Vatican pics http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2244813&l=65796&id=7012064
  
  

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