Europe Tour Day 6-7: Rome, Italy

Thursday, March 20th was a full day of walking tours around Rome for us. Our first tour was of the points of interest around the Vatican. We were really glad we were with a tour group to get into the Vatican Museum as we walked past the extremely long line of other tourists trying to get in who had to wait a couple hours to do so.

I absolutely loved the Stanze di Raffaello or Raphael Rooms in the Vatican Museum. These rooms are the public part of the papal apartments in the Palace of the Vatican, and the paintings on their walls and ceilings are really beautiful, especially in their entirety. Even the tile work on the floors was cool though. The painting of these rooms was started by Pope Julius II in 1508. Pope Julius II commissioned Raphael and his workshop to completely redo the rooms of his suite. Pope Leo X continued the project in 1513 after Pope Julius's death. After Raphael died in 1520, his workshop finished the last of these rooms known as the Sala di Costantino.

The Fire in the Borgo in Stanza dell'incendio del Borgo

The School of Athens in Stanza della segnatura (Room of the Signatura)

The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila in Stanza di Eliodoro
(Room of Heliodorus)

Sala di Costantino (largest of twelve rooms)

After seeing the Vatican Museum we got to go into the Sistine Chapel. That was also amazing to see, but we weren't allowed to take any pictures there. From there we went to St. Peter's Basilica, which was very impressive. This expansive church left us in awe. It is 15,160 square meters (about 163,180 square feet) inside and can hold up to 60,000 visitors. It was designed mostly by Donato Bramante, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Carlo Maderno, and Michelangelo, and the work of building it lasted between 1506 and 1626.

Each of the letters at the top here are 2 meters (about 6.56 feet) tall

St. Peter's Basilica also holds Michelangelo's famous sculpture of the Pieta. This is the only sculpture Michelangelo ever signed, apparently because other people were attributing the work to another artist. This sculpture was damaged in 1972 when a deranged man threw a hammer at it. After painstaking restoration, the sculpture was put behind a shield of bullet proof glass to protect it from any such further attacks.

We were fascinated to learn that the "paintings" inside the church aren't actually paintings at all. While there were originally some paintings placed in the basilica, the high humidity in the church started to ruin them. Consequently, the paintings were removed and replaced with mosaics that would be much less prone to molding or fading with time. Some of these mosaics were copies of the paintings that were originally there. Unfortunately, we actually never were able to get close enough to these mosaics to be able to see that they weren't paintings.

Even Austin was blown away by the magnitude and splendor of the church. When we got to the dome, he looked up at it in awe. Of course, having a short attention span, that didn't last particularly long. Luckily, our guide was pretty nice and let him help carry the group's marker flag.

Inside of the dome

The huge dome on St. Peter's Basilica is 42 meters (137.8 feet) in diameter and reaches 452 feet into the air. It was revised from an earlier design to is final form by Michelangelo. Positioned under the dome is an enormous bronze 96 foot tall canopy called St. Peter's Baldachin. Under this canopy is the alter, and Catholic tradition holds that under that is where the apostle St. Peter is buried.

St. Peter's Baldachin

Roman Aqueduct - Water ran along the top

After our morning tour we had pizza for lunch then made our way to the next meeting point for our afternoon tour of the ancient area of Rome.  We thought we were late (meaning, not at the spot 15 minutes early) and so we jogged from the metro stop to the meeting place only to have to wait there for people who didn't show up for another half-hour at least.  The group had about 50 people in it, so it seemed to go really slow. Overall, the group felt too large, and I had a hard time getting very much out of the tour besides seeing the interesting sites. My ear was bothering me from trying to listen to all the information through a single earphone, and our guide had an accent that made it hard for me to understand what she was saying through her microphone much of the time. Between trying to understand her, helping keep an eye on Austin, and taking pictures, it was just hard to focus as much as I needed to in order to get much from the guide's narration.

We first saw the Colosseum and learned some interesting things about it.  All of the holes seen in the walls, particularly on the outer walls, were from people salvaging the metal used to decorate it after it was no longer being used for the gladiator games.  That is also why most of the marble is gone.  There were various displays in the halls of archeological finds like "graffiti" that spectators carved into the benches while watching, or busts of famous gladiators.  The guide mentioned that there were all sorts of exotic animals that were hunted as part of the games and that the entire structure was covered by a huge sail-type awning. When we learned that the Colosseum was 48 meters high, we realized that it was less than half as tall as St. Peter's Basilica!

 

After seeing the Colosseum, our tour took us to the Roman Forum. We first came to the Arch of Titus with its famous relief carvings underneath. One panel shows the triumphant Titus carried in a four horse chariot, and the other panel shows the spoils of Jerusalem being carried off. As we went further we found the ruins of a number of temples and other government related buildings from ancient Rome.

The Temple of Vesta (left) and the The Temple of Castor and Pollux (right)

Temple of Saturn; one of the most ancient temples of Rome

Arch of Septimius Severus

 

After our tour ended we went to see the Pantheon, which is one of the best preserved Ancient Roman buildings. It was originally built during the reign of Augustus (27 BC - 14 AD) as a temple to all the gods, and it was rebuilt around 126 AD. It has remained in continuous use since that time. Starting in the seventh century it was used as a Roman Catholic Church. The rotunda is topped with the world's largest unreinforced concert dome. It has a circular opening in the center (called an oculus). The tombs of some artists are now inside the Pantheon, including that of Raphael.

Raphael's tomb

From the Pantheon, we went and found a place to eat dinner. Then walked around the Piazza Venezia a little more and took a couple pictures of the Altare della Patria/Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II, which looked really cool lite up at night. This monument was built for Victor Emanuel II who became the first king of a united Italy in 1861 and is known as the Father of the Homeland.

The next morning we headed out of Rome and drove to Venice. On our way out though, we went by the construction site for the Rome Temple, which was really fun to see.