Rome Wasn't Visited in a Day - Rome, Italy
Rome, Italy
Sorry, That was the best title I could come up with. I refused to make any puns using 'when in Rome' or 'Roman Holiday.'
Rome was in fact visited by me in four days! I'm going to shout out again to my awesome study abroad program, because it was SO well organized and I felt like I saw everything. And in Italy, a country not necessarily renowned for its organization, that is truly a feat.
Everybody met at the train station at 7:40 in the morning, and we got ona train at eight. It was one of those super-fast ones that go like 300 km/h at top speed, so we got there in just an hour and a half! We checked in at our hotel and then scurried on over to the Capitoline Hill, where were set to meet a tour guide. The Capitoline Hill used to be the site of all the important government buildings which enclosed a piazza. Now they are all museum buildings, but the hill itself does have another building next door to the piazza, which is slightly more modern (built in the 1800s) and still in use as a government building. It has been nicknamed "The Wedding Cake" because it's very Neoclassically all white and covered in columns and statues and tiers. It definitely contrasts with the rest of the city.
Anyway, we met up with our tour guide who was very cheerful and probably just under five feet tall. She started off by telling us a little bit about the piazza we were in, (the fountain has representational carvings of the Nile and the Tiber rivers!) I think my favorite thing was the statue of Marcus Aurelius. It shows him mounted on a horse and he is supposed to be giving the 'blow of mercy' or whatever it was called (basically he would go through a battlefield post-victory and his horse would be trained to give a mercy kick to the head of anyone who was left alive but suffering.) There was a tiny owl perched on the horse's head, meant to represent wisdom. It was only a replica statue (the real one was moved inside years ago, to prevent further weathering damage) but the original was gilded. Obviously lots of the gilding came off during the many many years that followed, but some of it is still clinging on. There is a saying in Rome that when no gold remains on the statue, Rome will fall. I don't know why that was so cool to me. They also say (all of this according to my tour guide, by the way) that when the Colosseum finally bites it, the entire WORLD will fall. Shivers.
THEN we started to walk around behind the piazza, and saw a super old coin mint. It was right next to the remains of an ancient temple to Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom. She was known as Minerva the Admonisher, which apparently in Latin was 'moneta.' And since the coin mint got built right next to the temple....we now have the Italian word for coin, 'moneta.'
Once we'd actually walked all the way around behind the museum building....the Roman Forum was spread out before/below us. It was incredible. The sun was shining and the white pillared ruins were gleaming...there was just so much to take in. I took about a bazillion pictures of the view because it was awesome. You could see two of the three surviving triumphal arches, and temples, and government buildings...it all was on a lower ground level than where we were standing, because that WAS the original ground level. As time progressed, people literally created a new ground level by filling in entire city sites with rubble and dirt. It's like this all over the city; parts of it are like some strange layered cake of history. People keep accidentally finding ruins everywhere. A while back, Rome was considering getting a subway system, but they started digging for it and immediately ran into some ruins. There's a reason it's nicknamed The Eternal City. It seems like it goes back forever in time, and it's probably just going to keep on going.
One of my favorite parts of the Forum was the Temple of Vestia and the House of the Vestal Virgins. Vestia, sometimes known as Hestia, was the goddess of the hearth/domesticity. In her temple, there was a fire that was never allowed to go out. This meant that there always needed to be people tending to it, and those people were the Vestal Virgins. I'd always heard the term 'vestal virgin' thrown around, but I'd never known what it meant until now. Around twenty girls were selected from families of good standing, when they were quite young. They were taken to the house/temple and trained in how to be the priestess-type person required of a Vestal. At age twenty, they were narrowed down, as there were only ever six Vestals working at a time. Those who didn't make the cut were sent back to their families, but it was a huge honor to have even been selected, so their families were usually quite proud. The six Vestals lived in a grand house next door to the temple, with its own garden. Some of the more famous or virtuous Vestals were made into statues, remains of which can be seen in the ruins of their house. As their name implies, all of the women (and also the girls who were sent back to their families, up until their return) of the temple were expected to remain virgins their entire lives. If they were found to have broken this condition, they were locked away in an underground room/cell/spacious grave-type thing until they died of thirst, starvation, or suffocation, whichever came first.
So we explored the forum, and learned enough history for me to talk your ear off for at least two more hours, and then we got a lunch break. I had some mediocre pizza (I went to a mediocre place though) and then we went to the COLOSSEUM.
Okay, yes. The Colosseum is literally the most cliche tourist site in probably the entire world, maybe tied with the Eiffel Tower. But while I can't tell you anything about the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum lives up to the hype. It's INCREDIBLE and so much bigger than it looks in pictures. Our excellent tour guide was there again, and she really just seemed to know everything about it. She showed us the entrances (there were many of them, allotted to different cross sections of the seating.) According to her, it was meant to seat about 50,000 people, but on some days would get up to even 70,000. The entire structure was designed with its exits so cleverly that it could be evacuated in 15 minutes at full capacity, in case there was an earthquake or an attack or something.
The seats closest to the actual arena, lower down, were reserved for the most important people. So, the farther up you were sitting, the less important you were. But the seats were literally reserved for you if you were a politician or incredibly rich person or something; the important seats had names carved into them. The stage wasn't just a flat stage, but actually had a whole maze of tunnels and rooms under it were animals and prisoners and such were stored and transported. There were also trapdoors to bring things up from under the floor, and cages all around the edge that could be opened at a moment's notice to let something fearsome out. And to top it all off, sometimes they would flood the arena and have naval battles. Just think about that for a second. After a while they stopped doing that though, because though there was a drain in the middle to let the water out, the sand would take forever to dry out in the sun. Fun fact: the word 'arena' comes from the Colosseum; the arena was filled with sand and the Latin word for sand was 'arena.' (I'm convinced that every single word in the English language has a Latin basis in ancient Rome.) ALSO the word 'fornicate' comes from the Colisseum. As our guide pointed out, wherever there were large gatherings of people, there were bound to be bars and brothels. There were obviously a ton of them around the Colosseum, and the structure is basically entirely composed of connecting arches. The Latin word for 'arch' is 'fornice'.....
The actual structure made even me feel small. It was originally built in three layers, and that full cross section can be seen outside on one edge of the building where it still remains intact. It's amazing that its lasted as long as it has, but it's a fabulous feat of engineering and construction. It was built so well and so ingeniously that scientists have declared it one of the most earth-quake proof buildings ever. Which makes sense, seeing as it must have survived at least a few during its long life. The mortar that holds the bricks together is made out volcanic ash, and absorbs shock or something. Also it's incredibly long-lasting. The stage crumbled away a long time ago, exposing the passages underneath it, but they've rebuilt one end of it so you can see what it might have looked like. But also they used to hold concerts there.
The famous gladiators who fought there were called gladiators because they were given a short sword, called a gladius. Oh, and that famous scene in The Gladiator, the one where the emperor decides to let Maximus live by giving a thumbs-up? That's not how it worked. The people came to see blood. It's what they wanted. The thumb system is actually the reverse. The emperor would give a thumbs-up when the gladiator was put to death. A thumbs-down meant they could live, and everyone would actually have booed, and not cheered like they did in the movie. A lot of the gladiators were just criminals, but a lot of them were Christians who had been caught practicing their religion.
After the Colosseum, I went on a walking tour with Professoressa Jodie, and we saw the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva (literally Saint Mary over Minerva.) It was built on top of what had been a temple to the goddess Minerva. And then we saw the Pantheon! What even is my life. It's in fabulous shape--another high-quality Roman building. They really didn't do anything halfway. The occulus in the ceiling has a window in it now, but the ceiling looks the same. The building probably would have been torn down hundreds of years ago, except it was turned into a church and then allowed to stand. So the inside is decorated with sculptures and tombs and paintings. The floor has marble panels in patterns, and the diameter of the cylindrical base is the same as the height of the building in the center, and also the same as the diameter of the dome on top, were it allowed to continue down into a sphere.
Next on the list was gelato, courtesy of the program. They really do spoil us. On the way home we went through the Piazza Navona, which was all lit up because it was dark outside. Especially beautiful were the two fountains. Rome is famous for its fountains. We were on our own for dinner, and then we hung out a little in our hotel rooms before collapsing, exhausted into our beds from all the walking we did. And that was just Thursday.
Friday was all about the Vatican. We left at eight thirty and walked over, and crossed the Tiber on the Ponte San Angelo (The Bridge of Holy Angels.) We went first into St. Peter's basilica. The courtyard type thing is designed to feel like the arms of the church opening up to welcome everyone in, with the "arms" here being the columns. We had to wait in line and go through a security scanner like we were going into an airport. Marit and I had made a plan to take as many Vatican pun pictures as we could, and started on that. We entered into the porch (for lack of a better/more accurate name) of St. Peter's, and were given special radio receivers by the church, since apparently we weren't allowed to use our own.
I've been tall for long enough that I've been pleasantly surprised to have several experiences on this trip that have made me feel small, either from landscape or architecture, and this was one of those times. The church is HUGE INSIDE. The ceilings are at a ridiculous height, and the main aisle is incredibly wide. The decoration never stops. Opulent doesn't even begin to cover it. The tabernacle in the middle of the transept is gigantic. It was probably designed to make the visitor feel small in the presence of God/overwhelmed by His splendor and I will just say that I felt short and speechless.
The famous Pietá by Michelangelo is there, covered now by glass. (They apparently have to cover up all the really famous artworks now, after people with strange fetishes in the 70s started going around trying to damage them. One guy with a hammer went up and smashed one of the toes of Michelangelo's David once. No joke. So now there's a glass wall around the base of that too. The guy was institutionalized for a while, and once he was released he immediately went and slashed a painting.) You have to walk through the church along a specific pathway marked out by velvet ropes that keep you from going into the middle sections of the church. There was so much to take in.
After we exited, we all had to wait around for a while because the lines for the bathrooms were so long. We took some goofy photos, and then took a trip in two groups into the Necropolis under the church. Yes, Necropolis means city of death. It was in fact an ancient place of burial for the Romans, where they would put their family members among offerings and in rooms covered in paintings and mosaics. It was found by accident, like a lot of Rome, when they were digging in the foundations of the church. The basilica actually has three layers. One is the church itself, one is the layer immediately underneath it (where the tombs of a lot of recent popes are) and the one under that was the necropolis. The church had been looking to expand the second layer, and started digging. Lo and behold, they accidentally found a tomb. Then excavation started. Fun fact: they have found the bones that are believed to have belonged to St. Peter. That was a weirdly worded sentence.
They wanted to do some weird bone testing and some dirt testing, something to do with the dirt in the bones and the dirt surrounding the bones, but because there's enough plausibility and likelihood that the bones might actually belong to the Father of the Catholic Church, the first Pope, the modern-day Church has refused to allow any kind of testing, because even though they would only need to scrape the bones a tiny bit to get samples, it would technically be removing a tiny piece. I got to see part of the bones in a tiny hole in one of the tombs!
We had a lunch break, and went to this place Gina had actually gone to years ago when she came to Rome with her family. The lady who runs it was crazy and kept yelling at us the three options she had made for the day, and kept expecting us to make up our minds really fast. We were really flustered and ordered the tortellini, which came to our table all in one family-sized dish which we then divided among our plates. The whole experience was great.
After lunch, we went into the Vatican Museum, where they have a huge collection of art, assembled over the years by various popes. There were masterpieces everywhere, and even some Egyptian relics. I took a practice shot with my camera inside my open bag with the lens facing up, because they don't let you take pictures inside the Sistine Chapel. I did get to photograph Le Stanze Delle Segnatura, so that was awesome. And then the Sistine Chapel happened.
There is SO much on that ceiling. And underneath it, on the walls, where scenes from the lives of Moses and Jesus run around the room. You can see the evolution in Michelangelo's depiction of the figures from one side of the room to the other (the smaller figures weren't having quite the impact he wanted from all the way down on the floor, so he started making all the figures larger. My neck started hurting from constantly looking upwards. The walls down to the floor merit attention too though: they're covered in highly realistic depictions of draped curtains with metallic patterns on them. But back to the ceiling: in some places, the recent restoration left a few squares or rectangles untouched, to show the difference between the restored and unrestored places. The difference is literally like night and day; the non-touched-up areas look dark, like you're looking at them in less light. The sheer amount of painted surface is massive. The one thing I will say is that Michelangelo didn't quite know how to show female proportions--they all looked like really buff men with boobs. That detail notwithstanding, it's clear to see why these frescoes get so much attention.
By the time we left the Vatican museum, it was dark outside. St. Peter's gets lit up at night, as does the bridge. One thing I really loved learning while in the Vatican is that the Pope's title of 'Pontifex Maximus' means "the one who builds the most bridges," because they were supposed to be the bridge between God/the Church and the people, and because they also built a lot of bridges. I don't know why I thought that sounded so cool. Maybe because I'm too much of a geek for the Avatar series. We walked home, accompanied informally for part of the way by a pack of guys whistling different songs in a charming manner, all under umbrellas. We followed the same routine of dinner, talking, and bed.
On Saturday after breakfast, we went on a to go see the Villa Farnesina. It gained its name from the Farnese family, which owned it in the sixteenth century, but in the fifteenth century it was owned by Agostino Chigi. The Chigi family was kind of like Rome's counterpart to the Medici in Florence, during the Renaissance: incredibly wealthy (from banking,) powerful, and great patrons of artists. The actual palazzo Farnese was quite close to our hotel. But their villa (the difference between a villa and a palazzo is that it has gardens all around it) was across the river. So its name was the Villa Farnesina (Farnesina is the diminutive version of Farnese, so it literally means "little Farnese.") The villa is beautiful, exactly the kind of place you'd want to spend your summer months. The gardens were organized but lovely, and I was kind of in awe that they could still be so green, in the middle of November. The lime and lemon trees in their pots were still outside....
The villa was built by Agostino for his mistress. I don't remember her name but I'm sure it'd be easy to look up. She was his long term mistress, a love-of-his-life type situation. She also came from a considerably lower class than he did; if I remember correctly, he paid for her to be educated. So obviously she wasn't well accepted by society, not only because of her lowly status but also because he was married. So he decorated this house with themes of love, but more specifically love that overcame obstacles, so she could live surrounded by these stories. Isn't that beautiful? The ceiling in the loggia of the main hallway on the first floor is covered with the story of Cupid and Psyche, which was always my favorite Roman myth growing up. It's beautifully depicted by Raphael, who Chigi preferred over Michelangelo because he thought Michelangelo really overdid the muscles in the effort to show anatomic proportions, and liked Raphael's casually accurate figures (excellent taste, I must say.) There are other frescoes in all the other rooms of the house, but I liked that one best.
After our visit to the villa, some of the class went on a trip to the church of San Clemente with Professor Solberg. I'm not in her class, and I wanted to see some touristy things while I was in Rome, so after I had lunch, few other students and I went on a quest to find the Trevi Fountain.
I expected it to be touristy and crowded, and it was. But it was also very beautiful. And bigger than I thought it would be. I also wanted to climb into it and splash around, but I abstained. I did turn around and throw a coin into it though, a la Hillary Duff in the Lizzie McGuire Movie. (Unsurprisingly, there were countless references to that movie on this trip.)
From the fountain we made our way over to the Spanish Steps. There were a LOT of street vendors on it, including one particular rose seller that was extraordinarily persistent. At the top of the stairs is a Spanish-style church, and a great view. After taking it in for a while, we went to find La Boca della Veritá (The Mouth of Truth) which featured in the Roman Holiday movie. Unfortunately, that little cameo made it a huge attraction, so they moved it and put it inside the porch of a church, and there was a massive line in front of it. It was also kind of a struggle for our little group to find, so once we did we were a little disappointed, and decided not to wait for half an hour to take pictures. I did see it though, through the bars on the porch thing. The rest of the night followed the typical hang out and eat dinner schedule, except for the fact that my dinner group and I couldn't find a place that looked promising for dinner until after like forty five minutes of walking. But I think we ended up picking a winner as the waitress didn't even speak English, so we felt it was the exact opposite of the restaurants nearer to us that all catered to tourists and had pushy people stationed in front of the entrances trying to get you to come inside.
Sunday, our last day, had a morning activity that I hadn't signed up for because I very much dislike one of my professors and I knew it would be poorly organized, so I chose to sleep in slightly (judge me if you must, but I was POOPED.) I didn't sleep in the whole time though; we had some drawing homework like we do every week, but this week's assignment was to sketch anything done by the sculptor Bernini. We knew we would be seeing some Bernini sculptures in the Galleria Borghese later, but we also knew that they didn't allow ANY baggage inside, so we wouldn't be able to bring in our sketchbooks. I ended up sketching at the fountain of the four rivers in Piazza Navona. After that, those of us who were sketching hustled on over back to the Capitoline Hill, where this time we would be going into the Captoline Museum. There is an incredible collection of art in there, including ancient Roman art. It also ended up being the building that looks out over the Roman Forum, so we got some sweet views at the end, from the back porch.
There was one short walk to where our (program-chartered) bus was waiting for us, and then we had a brief ride to the Villa Borghese, on the edge of town. It was actually used as a sort of party house by the rich Borghese family, but also eventually built up a supremely impressive art collection. I saw some original Bernini statues (TRULY awe-inspiring,) the Raphael portrait 'Girl with a Unicorn,' some Carvaggios including a Madonna and Child (which I wouldn't have even known was that subject, had I not been informed,) and countless others. When I exited the museum, it was the first time that I noticed that most Italian art museums sell replicas of the recognizable jewelry pieces worn in portraits. I was so tempted to buy the beautiful fake jewel from 'Girl with a Unicorn.'
Once on the bus, we started our return journey to Florence. As a special treat, Jodie had arranged for 'Gladiator' to show on the bus movie screens. It seemed an appropriate way to end the trip.