Tag: Italy

Here we are … our last day in Rome … and we are off to Vatican City … specifically the Vatican Museums and we have pre-booked for 10.30 enabling us to jump the huge queue outside and go straight in and get our tickets – for which we only paid an extra €4ea online so well worth it.

First up, the Pinoteca, billed as possibly Rome’s best picture gallery, arranged chronologically, so beginning with some lovely early altarpieces and a couple of fab frescoed angels.

Moving on, there were the Raphael tapestries that hang in the Sistine Chapel during conclave, and I particularly liked the feet under the table at the Last Supper.

Next we found ourselves in the Museo Pio Cristano with an amazing collection of early Christian sarcophagi, where we could have spent far longer. I was particularly taken with the sheep theme, having already seen sheep on the apse mosaics in the early Basilicas and then on the frescos in the catacombs, here they were again.

Apparently the iconography of the shepherd bearing a lamb is found in the oldest art as a representation and of the divinity or faithful believer. They can be seen in Roman funerary art portraying the bucolic pleasures beyond this world, and then was adopted by Christian art as Jesus the Good Shepherd from the parable of the lost sheep, later evolving as Christ amongst his apostles and flock.

Shortly afterwards we were directed into a one way system with no way out except the end! This took us through the Museo Pio-Clementino which contains classical statuary including the Apollo Belvedere and the Lacoon in a courtyard, statues that any art student learns about and were good to see.

The route followed a serious of galleries past the only gilt bronze statue in the collection, a rather dopey looking Hercules …

… and then down the Galleria della Carte Geografiche, a corridor set with maps of all of italy and paintings on the ceiling about each region and set about with grotesque work.

Eventually we reached the Borgia Apartments, inhabited by Pope Alexander VI the Borgia who featured in my holiday reading Blood and Beauty by Sarah Dunant telling of his reign as pope, including the painting of the Sala dei Santi where St Catherine is said to be a portrait of his daughter Lucrezia. Her first wedding was celebrated here and reputedly ended up with the men tossing sweets down the front of women’s dresses! Chris wished he’d brought some Smarties.

When Pope Julius II succeeded Alexander IV, he refused to inhabit the same apartments and had another set of rooms decorated by Raphael, where the most famous fresco is the School of Athens, where Plato in the centre points upwards indicating his philosophy of spirituality (and is believed to be a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci) in his discussion with Aristotle, the father of scientific method who points down. Michelangelo also features, portrayed as Heraclitus writing in the centre and Raphael is there too, far right in a black beret.

We were now over 4 hours into our visit, and were very pleased to find a small cafe to get a sandwich and a sit down to prepare for the final event. The Sistine Chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV who restored it the C15 and is the site of the Papal conclave when a new pope is chosen. There are a series of frescos on the walls depicting the Life of Moses and Life of Christ , with papal portraits, and trompe d’oeil drapery painted by a team of Rennaisance artists including Ghirlandaio, Botticelli and Perugino and then the ceiling and Last Judgement by Michelangelo a little later. No photos are allowed and the room is very crowded, with everyone pointing and peering upwards with cricked necks and the guards periodically shouting for silence and pouncing on any camera or phone they see in action.

No doubt it was an incredible endeavour for one man to paint and the iconic image of those two fingers was definitely inspired, but the figures in the Last Judgement looked like they were body builders to a man! Possibly not the most normal reaction, but I preferred the earlier paintings on the walls, which were filled with colour and detail.

Chris was delighted to find lens clothes in the shop and I bought postcards and we sent a few using the special postal service from the smallest country in the world – The Vatican, reputed to be more efficient than the regular Italian service, and with its own stamps and postmark.

Escaping finally around 4.00 down a very impressive staircase …

we passed one of the Swiss Guard …

… and went for a rest, then out for a reviving Aperol or two in the last of the evening sunshine sitting in Bar Fantini where we have breakfast.

We ended our Roman Holiday as we started it – with pizza for dinner, this time a return to La Locanda Di Pietro for traditional oval Roman pizzas – delicious.

Rome was just the right temperature for sightseeing and we are pleased we mixed it up, spending time in green places as well as museums and churches and it delivered all we expected with surprises too. Hope you’ve enjoyed the trip and ciao till next time.

Much of the architecture in Rome is Baroque, born out of the Catholic Church’s determination to reassert itself after the Reformation and The Basilica di San Pietro is no different. We were there by 7.30 and walked through security and straight inside.  It is huge, but felt somewhat impersonal.

We admired Michelangelo’s Pieta from afar as there is a barrier to protect it …

… and admired the ceiling from below.

We took the lift then steps, stopping to walk round inside the dome where even the letters are 2m high …

… then between the layers of the dome to the top, with that view out over the Piazza San Pietro, designed by Bernini, which welcomes visitors with open arms.

Back to earth, we walked out across the piazza, stopping at a circular stone in the pavement which marks the focal points of an ellipse, from which the four rows of columns on the perimeter line up perfectly so the colonnade appears to be supported by a single line of columns. Clever stuff!

We were amazed how the queue had grown, and it was only 9am!

After breakfast we set off to the historical centre, passing the Trevi fountain which was undergoing its weekly clean and empty, carefully supervised by the police as some €20,000 is raked out each week and sent to local charities.

We picked up rolls for lunch at the nearby Antico Forno bakery …

… and continued to Piazza Venezia which is overpowered by the gigantic Vittoriano or Victor Emanuelle Memorial errected to celebrate Italian Unification.

The Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, one of the city’s finest Rococo palaces and still lived in by the family is our next stop. Jonathan Pamphilj himself led us round the sumptuous state rooms and extensive art gallery via the audio guide, pointing out the sparkly Gallery of Mirrors with tales of Hercules on the ceiling and decorated with grotesque work.

Then, towards the end, I saw a Caravaggio I liked. The Rest on the Flight into Egypt has no blood or moody lighting, instead an angel playing violin to soothe the baby to sleep!

Next up, a trip back in time beneath the government offices of Palazzo Valentini to visit Domus Romaine, ruins of Roman baths and a residential complex brought vividly to life by a high tec and dramatic guided tour. Afterwards, there was a virtual reconstruction of Trajans Column. This 30m column was built to celebrate the empires victories in Dacia (modern Romania) in 113AD.

It is covered in reliefs commemorating the campaign, with some 2590 figures carved on a series of marble drums. The detail of the soldiers in their armour going off to war in their boats, blessed by Neptune is amazing considering its age.

Moving on to Piazza della Minerva we took photos of the cute elephant statue by Bernini …

…then went to the roof bar of the Minerva Hotel as we were given a tip that there was a good view of the Pantheon … and there was.

The Pantheon was built by Hadrian in 125AD, and consecrated as a Christian church in 609AD. It is an engineering marvel, with the diameter equalling its height and the oculus 8.7m across and remains the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome. It would have been richly decorated in its heyday and the niches filled with statues if the gods.

Just round the corner is Piazza Navona, Rome’s most famous square, with bars, buskers and lots of tourists and we found a nice little spot to watch the world go by.

Revived, we went and looked at Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi or fountain of the four rivers by Bernini, with figures representing the great rivers of the world – the Nile, Danube, Ganges and Plate and topped by yet another obelisk.

We returned to Cantina 26 for dinner and had another great meal – more pasta and aubergine patties with lemon sauce for Chris and Saltinbocca, a Roman speciality for me.

Our first stop today is Domus Aurea, only open at the weekends on a guided tour and undergoing a €39m restoration. This is Nero’s Golden House, a huge villa complex of banqueting rooms, baths and gardens with a facade that was supposed to be coated in solid gold, a revolving dining room which scattered petals and scent over the guests and a huge statue of Nero as a sun god requiring 24 elephants to put the base in place! The villa was torn down after his death, all the precious marble covering the walls was removed and the Colosseum and Trajans Baths built on top of part of the complex.

We put on hard hats for our tour and saw the excavations of a banqueting villa which had been filled with earth and used as foundations, accessed by holes in the roof in the Rennaissance and thought to be grottos by visiting artists of the day who copied the designs seen in the frescos to begin a style called grotesque which can be seen reproduced in almost every villas and palazzo of the time.

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This is definitely work in progress and a mammoth task to secure the site from damage from the garden above where the weight of soil and penetration of roots and water are continuing to undermine the structure.

Walking through the rooms alone would have been a disappointment as just a few small areas of fresco have been cleaned, and most has been badly damaged but fortunately our excellent guide, the video and the 3D reconstruction of the site with headsets really made the Domus Aurea come to life.

The afternoon was to have been spent at a football match … but it’s the end of the season with Roma playing Juventus and tickets proved rather expensive … almost as much as going to Liverpool for the weekend which would be Chris’s first choice … so we changed our minds.

With our remaining days already planned to take in the must-see sights of Rome, I was interested in finding some less-known gem and came up with Art Noveau Rome. Firstly we made our way to the Quartiere Coppede, which was designed by Florentine architect Gino Coppede in the C19. Piazza Mincio is surrounded by whimsical collection of buildings with turrets, columns and grotesque faces, surrounding a fountain topped with frogs.

From here, we walked to the Villa Torlonia, set in parkland and once lived in by Mussolini. In the grounds is Casina Delle Civette or small house of owls, a Liberty-style house full of Art Noveau features created in 1917 for Prince Torlonia, with owls above the door.

Unfortunately it became quite dilapidated before being restored but now contains a huge collection of stained glass, some original to the house, some remade from original drawings and other glass collected from the period.

Across the road we saw a large gathering of people holding gelato … always a good sign … and went to look. The tubs of gelato in the counter all had their own beater churning to keep the gelato at perfect consistency! Keeping the theme from the morning, I chose Nero Chocolate from Modica and Red Orange – an inspired combo if I say so myself … and Chris had surprisingly coffee, pistachio and mango! Well Guttilla has surpassed all the gelato we have had so far … so might be the best in Rome … but we do have two days to go!

As for getting back to the B&B, with a limited metro system, the Google bus information has been invaluable, telling us the best route and showing us where the bus stop is and even the time of the next bus and it also works for trams, so we got a ride back on this green one!

Today we headed north to the Villa Borghese, once the summer playground of the Boghese family, but now a large tree-filled public park and home to several museums. The Casino Borghese houses the art collection amassed by Cardinal Scipione Borghese when his uncle was Pope Paul V in the C17. The villa is sumptuous, with marble clad walls, gilding, frescoed ceilings, putti, columns, statues and paintings. The ground floor has one iconic sculpture in the centre of each of the first few rooms, beautifully lit and all so lifelike while the painting gallery upstairs was like a who’s who of Italian art.

Since I’m on a quest to try to appreciate Caravaggio better, here are two of his self portraits, one at each end of his life.

We wandered through the park, ate lunch and continued past the boating lake to the Pincio gardens, where a band played Dire Straits on the belvedere overlooking Piazza Di Popolo.

Santa Maria del Popolo is full of art and sculpture, but we came for the Cerasi Chapel where we continued my Caravaggio quest to see The Conversion of St Paul and the Crucifixion of St Peter, both showing unusual compositions and a dramatic realism which was considered risque when they were made … but do we like them?

We left the piazza and walked down one of the smartest shopping streets in the city till we reached the Piazza Spagna which was a little busy on a Saturday afternoon, home to the Spanish Steps, built with three flights and three landings for the holy Trinity and the view of the Trinita dei Monti church at the top.

We then wound our way down mainly pedestrianised streets to the Trevi Fountain, a very Baroque gush of water over statues and rocks on the back of a Renaissance Palace. It was designed by Bernini and they say if you toss in a coin you will return to Rome but you’d be lucky to get close enough.

Piacere Molise was our choice for dinner, a pretty family-run restaurant over the road from the hotel where we both enjoyed our food, but we were sat in a draught from the door and we felt a bit rushed so won’t be returning here … can’t win them all!