Rome visit phase 2

Saturday, February 4

Rest day. Today was a low key day. Rachel rested her sore ankle, did her laundry, wrote in her journal, watched Italian tv, and did organizational stuff. I strolled part of the city, visited a few antique shops, found the baths of Trajan and Titus, did some grocery shopping, and kicked back a little.

Rome is a cool place but crowded and a busy metropolis. There are a lot of working folks just doing business, lots of tourists visiting this amazing city, and lots of street vendors & vipers trying to make sure tourists leave their money here. The worst sight I've seen so far is a street vendor "helping" a tourist find the right bill in his amply stocked wallet for the trinket he was buying. Nice day overall and helped prep for the cool stuff we're doing tomorrow.

Sunday, February 5

Today we visited the Domus Aurea, the huge and opulent palatial complex built by Emperor Nero after the great fire of Rome he's rumored to have started. The fire is thought to have been his way of clearing space for his palace project. His palace, the Domus Aurea, was built in the area stretching from the palatine hill and past the area now occupied by the Colosseum to the esquiline hill beyond.

The colosseum now occupies what was a huge lake built by Nero with an adjacent colossal statue of himself in gilt bronze. The part of the palace we toured is an underground maze of huge rooms richly decorated, opening to a superb view of Nero's city. The rooms were filled with dirt and debris by Trajan in part to erase the memory of Nero, an emperor damned for his behavior.

Trajan removed the marbles, statuary, and other opulent features of Nero's palace, filled in the rooms & galleries, and built a huge bath complex on top of them for the people of Rome. Vespasian and Titus had already built the colosseum on the space previously occupied by Nero's lake.

The name Colosseum is thought to be derived from Nero's colossal statue, converted by Vespasian to a statue of Sol, the sun God. The statue remained standing until at least 354 when it was last mentioned.

The Domus Aurea remained buried until relatively recently but parts are now open for tours. Many rooms and galleries remain full of earth and debris. The palace was built in only 3 years, so many rooms were painted with mythological scenes which still remain. Some rooms still have their mosaic floors and excavations are ongoing. The mechanism for Nero's rotating dining room has also been found.

One of the coolest things on the tour was a virtual reality tour of Nero's Domus Aurea, recreating its beauty when it was at its best. It's all dark and underground now but was open on one side with sunlight making it truly his Golden House.

During the Renaissance, many artists entered the upper parts of the rooms to view the paintings on the ceilings, including Raphael and Michelangelo. Many rooms have holes in the ceilings as evidence of their entry. Overall this is one of the most amazing things things we've seen in Rome.

After the tour we strolled the park above the palace that contain the ruins of Trajan's baths. We've seen bath complexes all over Rome, a great reminder of the quality of life experienced by many Romans, the incredible water resources they used to build an empire, and the publics works projects undertaken by many emperors for the citizens of Rome.

We ate dinner at a little pizza place in the street, one of the thousands of little places in Rome with tables along the sidewalks, with large canopies, and gas heaters to help with the chill from Rome's evenings in the winter. Every day so far has been in the 50s with nites in the 40s. Not bad for January and February, don't you think?

Monday, February 6

Today we toured St. Paul outside the walls, a huge Basilica and the location of St. Paul's burial. Constantine built the first church on the site but the current Basilica was built in the mid 1800s after a fire started by a workman melting lead destroyed a more ancient structure.

The Basilica is immense and is one of the four largest in Rome. St. Paul's sarcophagus is visible below the altar and a site of pilgrimage. The chains used to bind him are displayed above his sarcophagus. Only his body is buried here. His head is buried at St. John Lateran. The location of his execution is about two miles from his burial site.

The portraits of all of the popes line the upper walls of the Basilica, with spaces for only five more portraits. It's said that the end times will arrive when no spaces for papal portraits remain.

Security is tight for entry to the Basilica as it is all over Rome. Military guards are posted at many locations, who carry machine guns and generally stand by armored vehicles. Heavily armed military are at all metro stations, some in pairs and some with groups of at least 4. The military guards are in addition to Rome city police and Carabinieri, a state police of sorts. Police of all kinds are very visible, with cars and flashing blue lights patrolling the streets constantly. We thought at first the blue lights indicated a problem, but seems to just be their way of maintaining a high visibility.

After our visit to the Basilica, we took a bus to St. Peter's square just to sightsee, then another bus and a subway to get home. Cool day...

Tuesday, February 7

Today we took another rest day. I strolled the streets of Rome, stumbling on more random ruins, the corner of four fountains, and just touring random city streets observing normal life in Rome. Rachel rested her ankle, another load of her laundry, and catching up on her journal. I finished my day shopping for a few more groceries and researching transportation for our next objects of attention. There is a complex network of public transportation here and all seem very busy, at least at times. There are hundreds of bus routes, subways, streetcars on rails, regional buses, regional trains, and national rail lines. The USA could take some lessons from Italy in the development of public transportation.

There are still a lot of cars on the road but most are sub-sub compact cars that can navigate the narrow city streets. There are as many scooters as cars with parking practices very entertaining. Most of the time the cars park parallel to the street, but sometimes park perpendicular to the curb if the spot between cars is too small. The sub-sub compacts are about as long as they are wide so don't stick out much when parked that way. Cars park so close to each other it's hard to imagine they can get out of a spot.

Pedestrians have the right of way in crosswalks, unless there are traffic lights, so it's common to walk out into busy traffic and expect the speeding cars to stop. Rachel lets me stop traffic before she ventures out. I think that means I'm more expendable then she is, but perhaps she wants to be able to call for help should I get hit. Rome's drivers are reckless but I've seen only two accidents so far and neither involved a pedestrian. Car horns here are used as frequently as their brakes.

Wednesday, February 8

Today we toured the Etruscan national museum at the Villa Giulia. We took our first streetcar today. It was very crowded but very cool as well. It was our best option to get to the Etruscan national museum and stopped right in front.

The museum was incredible, with thousands of pieces of pottery found in tombs, fine goldwork, metal artifacts, sarcophagi, epigraphs, funerary items, and other remnants of the Etruscan civilization. We're going to visit a major necropolis where many of the museum pieces were found in a couple of days so it's a good preparation for that trip.

Much of the Etruscan pottery came from Greece so carry scenes of Greek mythology. They are generally red and black and are incredible works of art. There is so much of it in the museum that it gets to be overload. The pieces are all shapes and sizes with many common scenes from Greek mythology. They left an impressive legacy that became part of the development of Rome.

We took maybe 1000 pictures here and enjoyed our time with Etruscan relics immensely. Their alphabet and language were fascinating and different than anything we've encountered. Their origin has many theories but were culturally advanced in the millennium before the founding of Rome. Certainly there is a lot of their influence in the development of Rome and its empire. Their descendants have to be all around us. We'll see more of them when we head north. We're going to visit Perugia, montepulciano, viterbo, Tuscania, and other places in Tuscany along the way so hope to gain some additional insight into this superb early culture.

We ran to catch the streetcar, rode it a while, then switched to the subway to get home. Long but great day...

Thursday, February 9

Today was a rest and planning day. We bought train tickets for our future travels in Italy and made reservations for Greek ferry trips we'd already purchased via a eurail greek ferry pass. Our time in Rome is passing quickly.

Friday, February 10

Today was an amazing day away from Rome. We made a trip to Certeveria, about 20 miles north. It was a center of the Etruscan civilization and features perhaps their most impressive necropolis, a city of the dead. Rachel had studied Certeveria at William & Mary, including Banditaccia, an incredible complex of tombs carved in stone.

We started the day early, leaving at 6:00 AM, taking a train and two buses, and arriving at the Banditaccia necropolis at 9:00 AM. It was tricky getting there as the bus stops we needed weren't marked or near the train station. After finding someone that understood my version of Italian, he pointed us to the right stop for the bus to Certeveria where we eventually found the small Etruscan museum and bus stop for the Banditaccia necropolis.

For the rest of the day we toured the necropolis, including the tombs cleaned and lit for tourists and the ones dark and littered with debris. It was very cool to explore them with Rachel who kind of knew her way around before we arrived. We climbed up walls into some tombs and down ramps into others but it was a cool adventure and we were free to explore. The tombs were cut into the tufa volcanic rock found here and all around Rome, which the Romans used as the building blocks for their structures. It's not real pretty but was easy to work yet seemingly durable. The Romans would build with it and face it with the marble we see in the colosseum and other structures.

The Etruscans carved it into tombs that ended up looking like a city of round grass covered buildings. Inside the tombs they made them look like the interior of their homes while alive, with roof beams cut into the ceilings, pillars, paint, and beds carved into the stone. Beds for females had headboards and all had small carved pillows. Some tombs were huge with many beds and rooms, with places for the amazing grave goods found when the tombs were excavated. We had seen the magnificent items found in the tombs at the Etruscan museum in Rome.

It was truly amazing to explore the necropolis that dates to the 9th century BC though it was used into the 1st century BC. Rachel has been battling a turned ankle but was bound and determined to explore this magical place and was aggressive in entering all of the tombs that we could. I was very proud of her persistence while also thinking we might become permanent residents of a couple especially tough tombs to get to.

The necropolis is also home to a cat sanctuary and the adjoining area is used as a park by many locals and their kids and dogs. We were whipped at the end of the day and glad to see the bus we hoped would take us back to the train. The bus took us to a different train station but we were back in Rome an hour after dark where pizza and gelato capped off an incredible day of adventure and exploration of a people that lived and died millennia before we were honored to visit.

Saturday, February 11

Today we returned to the baths of Diocletian and Rome's best museum of epigraphy. However, along the way we visited a row of street shops selling used books. It's along the Piazza della Repubblica just outside Termini Station. It's a cool bunch of shops selling ancient books, dime novels, DVD's, etc. Found a few prizes there: a book of Hebrew epigraphs at Pompeii and two Greek classics in Greek from the same older edition and heavily footnoted. The shops seem to be largely visited by Italians as only a couple of shopkeepers understood English. It was nice to practice shopping in Italian.

Then we toured the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, a huge church built in a large structure once part of the Baths of Diocletian. Though much religious symbolism was added by Da Vinci and others, it retains the structure of the hot water pool of the baths it once was, and reflects the glory that the Baths of Diocletian brought to the citizens of Rome. The immensity of the baths is stunning. The Basilica also houses a meridian on the floor added in 1704 with a small oculus high on the wall. At noon every day, the sun shines through the hole onto a different spot along the meridian, indicating the precise day of the season. I'm glad that we were able to tour a part of the baths that is relatively intact as well as strolling the ruins of the other 85% of the immense complex built by an emperor for the enjoyment of Rome's citizens. Many thanks to Diocletian and the many thousands who labored to leave it as a memoir of a glorious era.

Rachel spent the rest of the day petting the museum's cat and wandering the epigraphs. I strolled the ruins of the baths spread over many city blocks, happened upon the museum's warehouse where thousands of items that lack display space are stored, and wandered into a domed building with an octagonal oculus that was also part of the baths. It was used as a planetarium until fairly recently and currently features an exhibit on the exploration of Mars...by National Geographic. It's a very cool building with statuary that once graced the baths.

No matter where you go in Rome you can encounter the ancient past melded with modern times. We dined in a small restaurant built in another remaining structure from the baths and headed back to Termini Station for the short ride back to the apartment. No gelato today, but tomorrow we get blessed by the pope!

Sunday, February 12

Today we visited St. Peter's square and saw the pope. It was a wonderful event. On most Sundays at noon, the pope speaks from a window of the Apostolic Palace that overlooks St. Peter's square and delivers the Angelus prayer and blesses the crowd assembled to see him. He delivers the prayer in Latin but here is part of the text in English:

"The Angel of the LORD declared unto Mary, And she conceived of the Holy Spirit. Hail Mary, full of grace; the LORD is with thee: blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the Fruit of thy womb, Jesus.* Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death."

The crowd was large and come from all over the world. Many groups come with their national or city flags and banners. The pope addresses many groups individually. Security is tight and we passed through two different security checkpoints, one with a wand to check for metal and a bag check, and the other with a bag xray and a walkthrough metal detector. People arrive hours ahead of time to get a good spot. The subway we too was very crowded and we arrived about 11:30. It was very cool to see the pope. Pope Francis seems very down to earth and has opted for living in a two room suite in a Vatican apartment over the traditional dwelling of the popes in the Apostolic Palace, a place of more than a dozen rooms and servants. He sometimes cooks for himself and dines communally with other residents. It was nice to see him in person.

After the address by the pope, we lingered in the square and listened to a group that had come from Ancona, a city on the Adriatic toward Venice. They came with a banner and packing guitars in backpack cases. They sang and danced as a group in a circle. I wish I knew what they were singing. It was a beautiful folk song and they all knew the words to 20 verses. Their group had perhaps 50 people of many ages. Very cool.

Another group delivered a series of chants to Francis during his appearance that clearly he liked. I saw Cuban flags in another group, Filipino flags, Brazilian flags, and others I couldn't identify. Very cool.

We eventually moved on to the Castel St. Angelo. It is a castle like structure along the Tiber river near the Vatican. It was built as emperor Hadrian's mausoleum. Not much remains of that era, but the parts that do remain are very cool. A long ramp that leads from the entrance to the top is impressive and still has remnants of the mosaic floor. 

The castle was later used by the popes as a residence and many rooms are richly decorated from the middle ages. The castle was a location central to Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons" novel and subsequent movie. The castle also features a passage to the Vatican, but runs along the top of a high castellated wall rather than underground as portrayed in the movie. 

The castle was crowded and less impressive as a museum than it was as an edifice. We had a nice panini sandwich at the top along the walls with a great view of the city before heading back home. We tried to take the number 40 bus back but three buses in a row had all passengers exit, including us. I still don't understand why. We eventually made our way back to the subway and headed home. 

It was a great day highlighted by our visit with Pope Francis. Cool guy. We've been here almost three weeks and have seen many historic wonders. Another week and we head north! What a grand adventure...