Rome day 1

About a week ago, we went on one of the big school field trips: Rome.

We set out for Rome by bus on a friday morning. Ali and I got the front seats.

The ride to Rome was awesome! There were beautiful landscapes with snow capped mountains in the distance and you could see the transition in landscape as we went out of Tuscany towards Rome.

Tuscan looking farms and very non tuscan flat areas.

As we started getting closer to Rome, we passed a wide super flat, long open plain area with fast trains speeding through it past us and sheep grazing in the fields. Ali and I don't like the bus as it takes twice as long as the train and you get bus sick and you cannot get up and walk around like you can on the train. We are on a bus for this trip however.

Getting closer to Rome these neat street signs started showing up. When we got to Rome it was cold and rainy. It was supposed to be cold and rainy all weekend so I packed my raincoat, warm clothes and boots. We were staying at a "residence" which was like a very small, cheap, long stay hotel/ apartment. I really liked the residence we stayed at. They used mirrors everywhere to make the space look really big and they used what little space they had super efficiently. Lofts and storage areas were stuffed into high ceilings, ironing tables and table extensions folded out of the walls and drawers were hidden all over the apartments. It was pretty cool.

After settling into our residence's, we started our tour of the Vatican (which was just right down the street).

For the tour of the Vatican, we were assembled into a tourist group and given the little tourist radios that we see all of the tourists wearing in Florence. The guide holds up an umbrella so you can follow her around and she wears a microphone and everything she says goes into the radio and you hear it through a little headphone that they give you. This was cool for about 20 minutes. As soon as we all put the headphones and radios on, we immediately all became a target for the people selling umbrellas and tourist knick knacks. They would not leave us alone. The microphone the tour guide was wearing did not turn off.... ever. Every little movement or sound that came near the microphone you heard clearly in your ear. After about 20 minutes of white noise and murmuring in my ear, I wanted to take the little earphones out and just enjoy the vatican in peace. It was nice to hear what the tour guide said, but Ali and I had just learned about all of this the week before in art history and we knew way more than what the guide was telling us. I did not however want to miss anything the guide said in case she said anything I didn't know so I left the earphones in most of the time. The final thing I will say about being in the tour group was that Ali and I really didn't like being herded through everything and we wish we could have spent a little more time at many things. We both realize that it would take you months to see everything in the Vatican, but when we stop at statues that changed the course of renaissance art, I really would like a little more than just a minute to look at it. Thats all I am going to say about being in a tourist group. I could ramble on for a few pages about how I didn't like it but I will leave it at that. At least we weren't at the Vatican in prime time tourist season (that would have been a nightmare!) I would have to interview people and ask why they are going to the vatican while waiting in a constant line.

We crossed through the Vatican walls and went through the security checkpoint into the Vatican city. The Vatican city is actually a whole different county. It is the only absolute monarchy left in Europe and it is completely ruled by the Pope. It is the smallest country in the world and has the least amount of passport holders (around 50). It is pretty neat to visit. I think it would be fun to count how many trees are in the country of the Vatican. It would also be fun to count how many crosses there are. Once in the Vatican, there was the Pope TV showing Pope Francis kissing babies and doing all of his papal duties. We all like Pope Francis.

Here I am in front of the Dome of St. Peter.

The Popes liked to collect classical antiquities. This bronze pinecone is from Roman times and is one of the few bronze statues we have from the Romans. Most of them were melted down for the precious bronze. Both the pinecone and the peacocks were both symbols of fertility.

In the middle of this square was a large spinning bronze sphere. A contemporary piece, I really wish I had more time to go look at it but before I knew it, the group was moving along and my radio was getting scratchy and choppy as the guide went out of range. Perhaps one day I will return to the Vatican, guide free!

Ali and I had seen these Roman "bird bath" type things before but rarely are they in this good of a condition or this big. The popes were one of the biggest plunderers of the antique artifacts. Many scholars say that the Popes did more damage to Rome than the barbarians did as far as stealing goes.

This statue is called, "Lacoonte" and it is very famous. Unearthed in Greece in the early 1500's, It helped inspire the artists of the second half of the renaissance pushing them in a new direction. Michelangelo in particular was very inspired by this sculpture and he would proceed to start carving most all of his figures, extremely muscular with twisting, contorted bodies. People were very surprised by how much movement they were finding in ancient Greek sculptures. Once again, I wish I could have spent a little more time here but we were hurried along so quickly that I really didn't get to see it for as long as I wanted to. At least I am not in peak tourist season.

Mosaics are all over the place in the Vatican. Even the floors have mosaics. These mosaics are original roman black style mosaics. I cannot believe they let us walk on them. Thats just how things are in Italy, a country so full of old, precious artifacts, it doesn't know what to do with all of them.

We passed by this animal room really quickly, thought it was neat.

This room was really impressive. First of all, the coffered dome ceiling was huge and beautiful.

Then I mentioned the big "bird bath" earlier, this one makes that last one look tiny. I have never seen one so big in pristine condition and it is also carved out of the ultra rare purple stone from somewhere in the desert in southwest Asia. Amazing!

The mosaics seen on this floor are very impressive. These ones you cannot walk on.

More mosaics....

Can you imagine laying down each little stone!? Whats more, is that the pope probably found these at an ancient place and decided to take them and put them here. When your the absolute ruler of somewhere, you really can do anything you want.

The floor was full of these really neat stone inlays with precious marbles and granites.

The Papal symbol of the keys and the pope hat is everywhere. I think it looks coolest when its inlaid with semi precious stones.

Next we walked through a super elegant hall full of old tapestries.

Here is Jesus emerging from his tomb. There were soooo many tapestries, all with so much detail and they were so big.

This elaborate and ornate hall had maps of all over the area where Italy would be today frescoed onto the walls. When these were made, Italy as a country did not exist yet (Italy is still a relatively new country). Keep in mind, even with these huge crowds, it is nowhere near peak tourist season.

That looks a bit like Sicily......

An old "Firenze" Fresco. The Duomo still appears big as ever.

All of that trading and sailing along the coast meant that they knew the coastline really well and as a result had pretty decent maps.

Its our Favorite city! Venezia!!!!!!

This Fresco was high atop an elaborately painted ceiling in an elaborately painted room. I think it is interesting because it shows the toppling of a (presumably paegan Greek or Roman) statue and the replacement of the cross and Jesus sending the message of, "Christ conquers over the Paegans" Pretty interesting considering that so many popes were so fascinated with the ancient knowledge of the classical times. Good thing they were, or we might still be working as peasants in the dark ages.

As we got to the Popes apartments, we stopped by Rafael's famous masterpiece Frescoes. Rafael himself did not paint these himself. Rather he established the school of Rafael and had many, many apprentices paint everything. Rafael just laid everything out and told them what to paint. This is how Rafael was able to paint so much despite only living for about 25 years. This is Rafael's famed "School of Athens" fresco. In this Fresco, Rafael depicts all the great minds of the classical Greek and Roman times and he changes all of their faces making them the geniuses of the time. It is a genius painting. In tthe middle center you can see Leonardo Da Vinci and the first architect of the new St. Peter (A friend of Rafael's) Alone in the foreground you can see Michelangelo with no one talking to him as he writes and thinks. Michelangelo at the time was just a few rooms away painting the ceiling of the sistine chapel for Pope Sisto. Michelangelo was a man who was really hard to get along with and he was almost always working.

This is on the other side of the School of Athens Fresco. All of the thinkers are pondering some of life s deepest questions and this fresco shows them that Christ is the answer to all of their questions.

The man with the compass is supposed to be math genius Euclid. Raphael puts himself on the edge of all of the geniuses to the right looking at the viewer. He thinks of himself as almost as good as the rest of the geniuses.

The normal route to the Sistine chapel was closed and we were sent on a detour through the contemporary art wing. While on the detour, we saw lots of religious contemporary art. Here is a christ painted by Van Gogh!

Henri Matisse had almost an entire room full of contemporary religious art.

Matisse Jesus.

These are really cool. These are made by an artists in Africa named, "Anatsui". Anatsui directs a small factory workforce of people who weave together scrap metal bottle caps from all over the world into giant metal tapestries that can fold and hang. Anatsui instructs his workers what patterns to make and makes sure the "fabric" made by the bottle caps meets his standards of flexibly, neatness, etc. Anatsui tells them where to put the metal woven pattern strips to arrange abstract pictures and shapes. There were two or three Anatsui pieces here and these are all very small compared to the ones Ali and I have seen.

Here is a detail of Anatsui's work.
There was a strict "no photo" policy in the sistine chapel. Too many people accidentally use flash in the low light chapel and with so many people cycling through the chapel each year, the millions of high power flashes damage the frescos so they instituted the strict no photo rule. We learned all about the Sistine chapel in Art History and about how Michelangelo scandalously painted the last judgement. Michelangelo didn't want to paint the ceiling of the chapel to begin with and he was so picky about everything that the help he called in from Florence abandoned him after he finished just two sections. Michelangelo loved sculpture, not painting, but you cant say no to the pope, so he painted the ceiling of the chapel. After about 4 years, he finally finished. The chapel left Michelangelo with serious back problems and almost blind from always looking up and painting in the dark. It is neat to see it in person but I am sure glad I studied the slides in Art history. the slides let you get up close and see everything in super detail. Even though it is a Fresco, Michelangelo did not skimp on the fine details (technically he did, after his help abandoned him, he was forced to paint less figures than he originally planned). I could talk about the sistine chapel for awhile but we did other things in Rome.

After seeing the Sistine chapel, we abandoned out tour guide, (who wanted to give us just 15 minutes inside of St. Peter) and we went into the Church of St. Peter.

These very special doors only open to catholics once every 25 years on christmas eve. Pretty neat!

Ali outside of St. Peter.

Vatican Square.

Inside St. Peter is MASSIVE! It is probably the biggest church I have ever been in. St. Peter was the first official Christian church built. Built atop the remains of St. Peter, (the first one to start preaching Christianity) This is actually the new St. Peter. built in the 1400s by Pope Julius II. The old St. Peter was even bigger and more grand. I cannot even imagine how big it would have been. Sadly, since it was built around the year 400, it started to fall apart after around 1000 years. Pope Julius decided to rebuild St. Peter. It took about 100 years of mostly dawdling and changing plans around but it was finally completed after Michelangelo took the reigns and got everyone to actually work.

Ali at St. Peter.

Me at St. Peter.

St. Peter is IMMENSE!

The ceilings are huge! Oh did I mention that there are no frescoes in St. Peter? Everything is mosaic, so its ok to use flash on your camera.

This is the tomb of Pope John Paul the II. The popes have to be declared saints before their bodies can be displayed upstairs (usually they are kept downstairs in the crypt). Usually the process to turn them into a saint takes at least around 50 years. So many people visited the body of Pope John Paul II that the church sped up the saint process to move his body outside the crypts so more people could access him. His body is not yet ready to be displayed (they put wax and make up on them to make them look nice).

Everything in this church is super elaborately decorated!

Look at how small the people are across the church!

Here is the body of Pope John Paul I. Yes that is his REAL body. It is displayed as a relic, proof that he really existed.

There are TV cameras in St. Peter for when the Pope gives sunday mass and especially for when he gives Christmas eve service.

More inlaid keys. So Cool!

The main dome.

Mosaic detail.

Yep, thats a mosaic!

The symbol of the pope is seen everywhere as you can see. here it is carved in stone with some baby "Putti" floating around it as decoration.

This church is huge! Those little dots on the other side of the seats are people.

Italian construction- even inside St. Peter, still goes on as slow as can be. In 6 years, they will still probably be working on that small repair.

While leaving St. Peter, I spotted a part of the Pope's security detail. A long time ago, when Rome was attacked by invaders, a group of heavily armed swiss guards came to guard the pope who was hiding in a prison fortress. Despite heavy attack on the fortress and many dead swiss guards, the Pope miraculously survived and since then, the Pope has always had swiss guards.

Leaving St. Peter. It was cold and rainy.

When I got back to the Residence, I saw possibly the coolest CFL bulb I have ever seen.
Day 1 in Rome was good. A bit wet and rainy, and very touristy, I still saw lots of really neat things. I also got to do some international traveling going to the Vatican. All in all, it was a good day! Be on the lookout for Rome Day 2 and maybe even a Rome day 3. I am getting so busy, who knows when I will have time to post them. I have many other things to post and not enough time to do anything.