Rome’s a big city. You’ve probably heard horror stories of people trying to drive in Rome. It was busy on the streets, and there were so many motorcycles and Smart Cars.  But, we opted to use the bus (mostly) and subway (when it was useful). Unlike Berlin and London, there are only two lines on the Subway.

One day, there was a transportation strike. It was well publicized, and it must happen often enough that on our bus tickets to and from the airport it was printed, “This bus is not affected by transportation strikes.” (or is it “effected”??)

During strikes, some lines run and some don’t. We got right on one bus, and then waited 90 minutes for a second one. 

 

In the rain.

 

When the bus came, it was a mob scene. People we so smashed on, they could not shut the doors, and people had to get off. We didn’t even try for the first bus. The next bus came a few minutes later, and we got on. It was just as packed! I sat on James’ lap (sort of), and Rachel sat on Michael’s. 

 

But the buses weren’t always so crowded!

 

And it wasn’t always rainy.

 

We were very glad for our maps and tour books. (HIGHLY recommend Frommer’s Day by Day series for any city that you might choose to visit.) 

 

Getting around Rome was part of the fun, and we enjoyed it. 

     

Everyone said, “Oh! Have gelato in Rome!”  So we did. 

What’s gelato? It’s the Italian word for ice cream! The recipe is made the “old-fashioned” way with eggs and cream, but I am sure there are some places that make it differently. We’d been frequenting a gelato stand in Linz, so it wasn’t an uncommon taste to us. 

I like how they just stuck the fruit on top of the flavor to spare the endless questions from tourists. “Oh, what flavor is the pink one?”

Gelato is not just fruit flavor. It’s all flavors!

I enjoyed a scoop of Nutella and a scoop of stracciatella (chocolate chip)

 

There are literally gelato stores on every block in Rome. I guess they are pretty popular!

 

YUM!

The largest church in the world is Saint Peter’s Basilica. The reason it has its name is that it is where Saint Peter is buried. There is historical evidence, as well as a lot of church tradition, that says he is buried under the main altar in the church. It’s this wooden thing he’s supposedly buried under, not the shiny gold altar in the front.

 

This current church building was built over previous church buildings, and it was completed in 1626. 

I have a confession to make. I don’t remember much of Saint Peter’s. I am reading stuff online about it and saying to myself, “Did I even see that?”  So, I will give you some pictures and what I remember the most. 

The pope was giving an address the day after we were there, so the courtyard had a lot of chairs set up.

Here’s Saint Peter, holding the Keys to the Kingdom.

   

First of all, we stood in line. You have to go through metal detectors to get in. It’s free to get in, though. 

 

While walking up to the line, Libby came to me, eyes wide and excited. Her enthusiasm didn’t seem to match our destination, so I assumed something else was going on. 

“Mom! Mom! Gregg Sulkin is here! And he has David Henrie with him!”  

Now, you may remember from my Colosseum post that the kids saw a Disney Channel celebrity and had a picture taken with him. That was Gregg Sulkin. David Henrie is another actor from the same show.  I walked up to them, hand out. “Hello, we met at the Colosseum yesterday.”

“Oh, yes. That’s right.” (very smooth or he recognized the odd, middle aged woman in a black, floppy hat)

“My kids were wondering if they could get another picture.”
“Sure!”

  

Inside, it was a big church. I probably should have been more impressed, but I will blame the Birthday Dinner Burger King I had right before I went in. It made me not concentrate. (Yeah, right!) Saint Peter was inside, too. 

 

So was Michelangelo’s Pieta

 

I enjoyed this font. The cherubs made me smile. 

        

 

Many popes are buried here. We saw an Incorruptible Pope, Saint Pius X, who died in 1914.  What’s an incorruptible? It’s a body that does not decay even though no special embalming was done to it. (It’s interesting to read about. Do a Google search.)

In the middle of the basilica was an area that was marked off by curtains. I wondered what it was.

Turns out, it’s the area set aside all the time in case the pope wants to come into the church. Here’s an internet picture of him doing that. 

The funny part was that a tourist was trying to get a good picture of it and dropped her cell phone into the middle of the area. They had to call a guard.

 

Not this guy. He guards the doors. (And he actually stopped someone while we were outside!)

 

I also enjoyed seeing a list of all the Popes. Their names are carved into this large, marble slab. 

 

This is the entrance to the crypt. It was closed when we were there. 

Here are a bunch of pictures. I am not even sure what they are, but you can figure out the altar and and a statue and such all on your own. 

 

                          

We also enjoyed taking pictures outside at the gate.

And that is not much information about the most famous church in the world. 

 As I mentioned previously, our tour guide centered his tour around Michelangelo and told us some interesting stories about him and his art which was on display at the Vatican Museums.

Michelangelo is known by his first name, sort of like Cher.  His full name was Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. He was born on March 6,  1475, and even in his own lifetime, he was famous as a sculptor and painter.  He loved the human body, and he spent time as a youth dissecting and examining dead bodies. If you compare his work with other artists of the time and a bit previous, the attention to the human form and how it moves and how muscles are shaped is unparalleled.  Michelangelo loved sculpting and thought painting was for “sissies.” So, why did he paint the Sistine Chapel? It’s a good story.

Meet this guy.

This is Pope Julius II. His nicknames were “The Fearsome Pope” and “The Warrior Pope.” In other words, he was not a doddering, old man. He was elected Pope in 1503, and in 1505, he summoned Michelangelo to come to Rome. The first thing Julius wanted was a tomb for himself. That should have been easy enough for a sculptor like Michelangelo, but it turned into a “forty year nightmare.” M. put in tons of work and drawings and searched for just the right marble, and then the Pope stopped work on the tomb.  M was pretty ticked and left in a huff.  

In 1508, Julius II summoned M. again, this time to decorate the Sistine Chapel.  Michelangelo was less than thrilled. First of all, he didn’t like painting. Second of all, he feared it was a set-up by his enemies. It was a major project, and the Pope and he did not get along. If he failed to complete the work or the Pope didn’t like it, well…

 

 

 Michelangelo agreed to do the job. He was originally just supposed to paint the twelve apostles, but he was later given the freedom to paint what he wanted. He chose scenes from the Old and New Testaments. It was said that “Michelangelo read and reread the Old Testament while he was painting the ceiling, drawing his inspiration from the words of the scripture, rather than from the established traditions of sacral art.” 

His first paintings, Noah and his sons, for example, were too small when viewed from the floor, so the later paintings have less detail and larger figures.  

Michelangelo did the ceiling and the rear wall (which is where the door tourists enter is located. It’s dead ahead in this picture.) The side walls were painted by other famous painters of the time. 

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The most famous image on the ceiling is of God’s creation of man. 

 

It’s been re-created for years in many contexts. Sometimes imperfectly, but oh well!

     

At one point, Michelangelo was painting, and the Pope came into inspect. M. came down from his scaffolding, and the Pope sort of reamed him out about why did he do this or not do that. Michelangelo got really mad and told the Pope off. Maybe you can tell off some popes, but not The Warrior Pope. Julius II punched Michelangelo in the cheek with the hand that had his big ring on it. For the rest of his life, Michelangelo had a scar and a sunken-in cheek.  You can sort of see it in this picture by Raphael of young Raphael and Michelangelo. 

 

Our guide said that Michelangelo showed how he felt about the Pope in this painting on the ceiling. 

 

The back wall of the chapel was a later commission for Michelangelo. (The Pope was impressed with the ceiling, bare bottoms excepted.)  M. painted the last judgement with Christ in the center. Our guide told us that Michelangelo, who was really into bodies, chose the most perfect sculptures upon which to model his painting of Christ. 

 

He chose Laocoön’s arm (which if you remember was still missing at the time).

 

He chose the Belvedere Torso. It’s a fragment of a Greek statue believed to be of Heracles. 

 

And the face of Apollo. 

 

There are some other stories about this fresco, but I want to tell you another story!  

 

This one is about the Pieta. 

 

Michelangelo sculpted this masterpiece when he was 23 years old. It’s one of the few pieces he signed. One day, a group of artists were standing around looking at it. Michelangelo said to them, “Do you know who sculpted this?”  One of the men said, “It was done by one of the masters from Milan.” This upset Michelangelo so much, he took a hammer and chisel and carved his name on the sash that runs across Mary’s body.

This statue has had criticism because Mary looks so young and Christ, who should not fit on her lap at all, fits so well.  Our guide told us that what this statue is supposed to be is Mary holding her infant son on her lap. She had a vision of what would happen to him. Her face is serene, knowing all is in God’s hands.  That is why Mary is young and Christ fits like he does. The statue is incredibly detailed. It’s behind glass at St. Peter’s, but they had a model of it at the Vatican Museums so you could get close to it. 

I am sure there are dozens of other stories of Michelangelo that could be told, but that’s enough for now. 

The city of Rome is in Italy, as you know. And inside the city of Rome is another country, Vatican City.  It is surrounded by a wall.

     

 

And it has its own guards. 

 

In Vatican City (which has the lowest birthrate of any country in the world, for obvious reasons), you will find the Vatican, the Vatican Museums, Saint Peter’s Basilica, and grocery stores, barbers, and clothing stores.  Of course, you have to want to dress like this to shop there…

 

Anyhow, unless you want to get tickets for an audience with the Pope, your best bets for visiting Vatican City are to visit the Vatican Museums and St. Peter’s.  We were advised that a tour of the Vatican Museums was well worth the cost (45 Euros a person! But it included admission and let you skip all the lines.)  I heard someone say that if a person were to tour the Vatican Museums and take just one minute looking at each item on display, it would take 15 years. My family was not really excited about spending more than Rachel’s current age in this museum, so they thought the 2.5 hour tour would be just the thing.

Our tour guide Jonathan was pretty good. He focused the tour around the life and story of Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, which made it interesting and gave us a reason for visiting certain places in the museum. I know we skipped lots and lots of it, but we saw enough to say, “Okay, check that one off the list!”

 

But, as usual, I’d like to give you a bit of history.  The Vatican Museums got their start 500 years ago because of one piece of sculpture. 

 

This is Laocoön and his sons being killed by a sea serpent. (He was the guy who tried to talk the Greeks into not accepting the Trojan Horse.)  In 1506, this sculpture was discovered in a vineyard in Rome. Pope Julius II bought the sculpture and put it on display one month after it was purchased.

Our guide told us an interesting story of Laocoön’s arm. When the statue was discovered, the right arm was missing. Artists and historians debated how the arm should have looked. Michelangelo was convinced it should have been bent back (as you see it in the photo above). But not everyone agreed. The Pope held a contest among sculptors of the day to see who had the best idea of how the arm should have been. Raphael judged the contest and chose the winner as an outstreched arm in a heroic pose. 

In 1906, they dug up a random arm and put it in the Vatican store rooms.  In the 1950′s, they decided that this really was Laocoön’s arm, just in the pose Michelangelo had said it should be. They removed the old arm and put on the new one.

We saw paintings and frescoes and tapestries and mosaics. Now you can see some of them!

                  

      

 

And we saw sculptures, like this baby coffin.

 

Even though it’s not REALLY a flute, it reminded me of you, Susan K!

 

This is Nero’s bathtub. It’s made of porphyry marble. Apparently, there isn’t any left in the world to mine, and the Vatican owns 90% of what is made from it.  We were told that it is as expensive as gold (by weight). Our guide told us what it would have cost (millions of dollars), but I cannot remember the amount now. 

 

Look! Statues!

     

 

I was glad the rain stopped because several times during our tour, we went outside. This was one courtyard, The Courtyard of the Pinecone. (It had pinecones marble thingies.)

But why is there a giant, gold Pokemon ball in the middle of the courtyard? Actually, it’s a sculpture called Sphere Within a Sphere. It spins on a system of ball bearings.

It was made in 1990 by the Italian scupltor Arnaldo Pomodoro. In Italian, “Pomodoro” means “tomato,” so maybe that’s what it is?  Of course, when I saw his name, I thought of this:

 

But since Mr. Pomadoro looks like this:

 

I didn’t think much more about Pomador hairstyles. 

And now that my wild rabbit trail is finished, let’s get back to the Vatican Museums, shall we?

 

We went into many elaborate rooms. Of course, the Sistine Chapel was supposed to be the end-all-beat-all of the whole tour, but these were pretty neat, too.

 

  

 

This room was particularly interesting. It was incredibly long and incredibly packed with people. I bet it took seven minutes to walk from one end to the other. (If that doesn’t seem very long, see how many times you can walk from one end of your house to the other in seven minutes.)

The ceiling was done with all sorts of paintings. It reminded me of a large, beautiful stamp collection. Along the walls were all sorts of maps of Italy and around. I guess these maps were really accurate, too, even though they were painted hundreds of years ago. 

Eventually, we made it to the Sistine Chapel where no photos were allowed. But, I’m going to save that for the next entry, one about Michelangelo. 

I mentioned before that Rome’s birthday is on April 21st. We had a better birthday to celebrate. Michael turned 16 on April 20th.

It will be neat in the future for him to say that he celebrated his 16th birthday in Rome, but it was sort of a dud day. He got one present–a music box.  (Although it is neat, it’s not really the sort of thing to set a teenage boy’s heart racing.)  We tried to make the day special. What did he want?

 

So that is what he got.  And the promise of a big shopping trip when we get back to the US.  Happy birthday, Michael!

 

 

        

You’ve heard of the Pantheon, I’m sure. (Not to be confused with the Parthenon, which is in Greece.)  But what is this Pantheon?  If you know your Latin, you know “pan” means “all” and “theon” must refer to gods.  And you are right! The Pantheon was a temple originally built by Marcus Agrippa (which is why his name is carved into it) but was completely rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian in 126 AD to worship all their gods.  

So, why is it famous? Well, of all the Roman ruins, this is the best preserved. It looks pretty much like it would have  2000 years ago. What happened was that after it stopped being the Pantheon, it was used for other things. Since the 600′s, it’s been a Catholic church named Santa Maria della Rotonda.   Therefore, all the breaking down and stealing the marble and such did not happen to this building. It lets us imagine what all the other places must have looked like when they were functioning.  Just look at all that marble!

 

           

We walked on the original marble floors, and they were still gorgeous. 

 

The building is round with a porch in front. It’s got a neat dome. Building a dome of marble is heavy, but those Romans knew what they were doing. Instead of putting in reinforcements, they used a type of concrete for the dome. At the bottom of the dome, it’s 20 feet thick, but it gets thinner as it goes higher, and a lighter concrete was used for the upper part. Near the hole in the top (the oculus, which is the only light in the Pantheon), the walls of the dome are only 7.5 feet thick.

 

It’s not a very big building, as you can see. Raphael, the painter, is buried here (or encrypted?) as are several other famous Italians and a few kings.  It’s still a working church, holding mass on special occasions and even weddings. Can you imagine getting married here? Can you imagine how much it must COST to get married here?

     

The bronze doors are no longer covered in gold, but they are huge (as you can see in these pictures I swiped from the internet)–20 tons each! However, even after all these years, they are so well-balanced on a system of ball bearings that a child can open and shut them with one hand. Yet, they withstood battering rams from barbarians.  You can still see the dents and scratches from them. The barbarians eventually gave up trying to get in. The doors were too strong. (Side note–our guide and several websites say that the doors were the original ones. Other websites say these are not the original doors. Whom to believe?) 

 Here’s The Forum. 

(That’s a Penn State joke…)

 

Before we went to Rome, we borrowed a Rick Steves’ Rome DVD. When they showed pictures of people walking in the Forum, I said, “Oh, WOW.”  

 

I mean, just LOOK at that!! It’s like ten museums’ worth of stuff just lying around! And it’s huge!

    

 

The Forum, when it was being used and not looked at as ruins, was the main marketplace, meeting place, and as a general hang-out place.  It was also used as a place for triumphs, hence all the triumphal arches. When a general would be victorious, he’d get to ride around the Forum and be hailed by the crowds. Our tour guide told us that when this would happen, the general (or whomever) was required to have a slave ride in the chariot with him the whole time and tell him things like “This fame will never last” or “Remember, you are mortal.” I suppose a lot of us could use a person like that in our lives sometimes!

This is one of the triumphal arches, the arch of Septimius Severus. It was built in 203 AD to commemorate victories in Parthia (which is the Iran/Iraq area). 

 

     

Here is another arch, the Arch of Titus. It was built in 81 AD by Domitian to honor his dead brother, Emperor Titus, and to glorify Titus’ defeat of the Jews. 

This next part was….

That’s The Temple of Saturn. It was built around 42 BC.

 

Here we see what is left of the Temple of Vespasian and Titus.

Titus started building it in the first century AD to honor his father Vespasian. But Titus died. So his brother, Emperor Domitian, finished it and named it after his dad and his brother. 

These three pillars are all that’s left of the Temple of Castor and Pollux.

      

The original temple was built in 484 BC, but it was rebuilt in 6 A.D.  Postumius, a Roman dictator, vowed to build the temple if his army defeated the Tarquin Kings who previously ruled Rome. According to the legend, Castor and Pollux, mythological twin brothers, helped the Roman army to victory, so they got the temple.

This column is a veritable baby! It was built in 608 AD to honor a visit by the Byzantine emperor Phocas. They named it The Column of Phocas. 

 

 

    

 

This is Michael who is planking. He was constructed in 1996.

 

This was a welcome sight. Otherwise, our day might have been in ruins!

This is the Temple of Romulus. It still has the original bronze door!

And the rest are just pictures for you to enjoy. 

                 

If you exit the Colosseum and head to your left, you’ll come to a low hill.

   

This hill, Palatine Hill, is the most important of Rome’s seven hills.  Why is this so important? It is the hill where Rome was “born.” It’s the hill where Romulus and Remus were supposedly found by their wolf-mother.  Since this seemed like home to Romulus, he decided to build a city here on April 21, 753 BC.  Yes, I’m not kidding about the date. Rome has a birthday, and every year it is celebrated with fireworks and a big party on April 21st. (We were there! We know!)  Why this date? None of my Google searches turned up an acceptable answer.

 

   

Anyhow, Palatine Hill was the heart of Rome, and that is where everyone wanted to live. At one point in history, it was the most exclusive and expensive neighborhood in the entire world.  All the emperors (except Nero) had palaces here.  That is where we get the word “palace”–from PALAtine Hill.

     

 

We had a tour of this place, which was good because otherwise we’d have said, “Yep, a falling-down pile of a former something-or-other.”   This was our tour guide, David. He was amusing. 

The first thing we saw was Domitian’s huge palace. This is only a part of it. 

  

 

What you see is a big porch that had pillars all along the side. If Domitian didn’t want to go ALL the way down the hill to the Colosseum, he’d have entertainment brought to him. They’d race horses, have athletic events, and even gladiator fights here for the emperor’s amusement. 

These ruins were scavenged, too. But there is a different story for the holes. These holes are regular and square. Can you see that in the picture? What they did was build the buildings from bricks. Then, they’d drill big holes in the brick wall and insert wooden beams with a big hook on the end. From this hook, they’d hang slabs of marble.  So, the palace would look like it was solid marble with no seams, but without the cost. 

The guide said to us that 500 years or so ago, the first botanical garden in Europe, the Farnese Gardens, were made. In 1550, a cardinal had these gardens designed. In order to create it, though, they brought in loads of dirt and covered over the ruins of somebody’s palace.  So the Romans have a problem: rip up the oldest botanical garden to see what is underneath or keep the garden? 

     

The tour guide said, “Whenever Italians are confused, they just stay confused.” So they’ve made no decision either way.  As for me, I was glad for the beautiful garden on such a lovely day! 

 

              

There were gardeners busy at work planting and pruning and making the place even more lovely!

 

We had some great views of Rome, too!

    

 

Next up…The Roman Forum

When I was in London, I went to the British Museum. Before I went in, I said, “I want to see the Rosetta Stone.” We saw it first thing, and then I said, “Okay, if we have to leave now, I’m satisfied.” That’s how I felt about the Colosseum. Once I saw that, everything else in Rome would just be icing on the cake!

 

Now, you all have seen pictures of the Colosseum, but if you are like me, you don’t know loads about it. So, here’s a little bit of history.

 

Imagine you are standing right as I am in this photo. If you look to your right (toward the woman in yellow), there is a smallish hill. On this hill, the Emperor Nero built a palace of white marble and gold.  Where the Colosseum stands now was an artificial lake, 39 feet deep. And to my left in the photo was an enormous, golden statue of Nero–about 100 feet tall.  It might have stood right where we are standing in this photo. (The Colosseum would be to our right. Behind us is Arch of Constantine, and behind that to the left is Palatine Hill.) 

Nero wasn’t well-loved, and after he died, Emperor Vespasian, founder of the Flavian Dynasty, started construction of the Colosseum. He tore down Nero’s palace, drained his lake, and designed the Flavian Amphitheater. Construction began in in 72 AD. It was completed in 80 AD, the year after Vespasian’s death. 

    

 

The money used to build it was probably mostly booty from the sack of Jerusalem a few years before. And it would have been likely that Jews captured during this time would have been the ones to have built it. As a matter of fact, there is a picture on the wall (fresco) of the sack of Jerusalem. 

 

 

It is an “amphitheater” because a “theater” is just one semicircle. A whole circle is two (or “amphi”).  The Colosseum had seats for 65,000 people, but for some events, they’d squeeze in an extra 5,000 people. (Although some think it was closer to 50,000 total.) Tickets were pieces of bone with a section and seat number.  They would be gone three days after “printing.”  

How did people know where to sit? Easy. Each of the 80 archways were numbered (except for four of them which were for VIPs.)  This was gate 52. 

 

You would enter under an arched, interior walkway.

 

Go up some steps (slaves on the top floor, rich folks down lower)

 

And you would find your seat.  

Do you see those angled things that look like they’d support a roof or something? They were the supports for the seats. The seats and platforms they were on are gone, but you can see how very much like a regular football stadium this place was.  

It even had a roof of sorts! During bad weather, they would cover the roof with sailcloth, like they would use to sail boats. They had a special crew of sailors who took care of this. 

But anyhow, let’s go back outside to talk about more things.  This is the most shocking thing I learned. I always thought the Colosseum and other Roman ruins were in ruins because they were 2000 years old. But I was wrong! Romans built to last, and if you look at the Pantheon (a later entry), you will see what I mean. Why is it in such horrible condition then? Well, there were a few earthquakes, but mostly it was people coming and scavenging for building materials! 

Do you see those holes? You will find them in almost every ruin. Why? Well, the Romans used to drill a hole in the center of their blocks and put a metal rod in to hold things in place. People knew this, so they drilled into the blocks, removed the metal, and melted it down for whatever they wanted to use metal for. 

Romans used to build with bricks (hand stamped with the name of the current Emperor!) and cement. Then, they would cover these bricks with layers of marble to make it look impressive without having the expense of solid marble. 

But what they did with marble was really impressive! Around the outside are columns, each flanked by a capital. The lowest columns are Doric, the middle, Ionic, and the highest are Corinthian. This one is Corinthian. They are the “fanciest.” 

 

(A little side note–the Circus in Bath, which are three sets of house/apartments set on a circular road, has the same column structure!)

We were able to go inside and look all around. We paid for a tour, and it was good. It allowed us time to wander through the Colosseum at our leisure afterwards. 

 

     

 

In this picture, you can see where the wooden floor would have been. Yes, the floor was wooden. It allowed all the blood to be absorbed…  They only rebuilt part o fit so that people could see what was under the floor. 

 

       

Below the floor was where the animals were kept, gladiators stayed, and the dead bodies of both went.  There were a number of underground tunnels that led from this area to places nearby like the Emperor’s palace and a gladiator school. 

Speaking of gladiators, I will!  I always thought that one of the big events at the Colosseum was the killing of Christians. But it wasn’t. They were killed across the field at the Circus Maximus. The main function of the Colosseum was as a sporting arena. Bigwigs would arrange events with gladiators and wild animals. Betting was rampant outside the Colosseum. People would flock to the amphitheater to watch their favorite gladiator take on his challengers.  Who were the gladiators? They were slaves, usually prisoners of war. The most successful ones earned enough money for their owners that they were able to buy their freedom with part of the profits.  But, a lot of them died.  The animals–elephants, lions, tigers, and more–just died.  

 

The kids enjoyed the Colosseum as well, but for a different reason.  When we got inside, Libby came to me. “Mom! That guy is from Wizards of Waverly Place!” I said, “Do you want me to take a picture of you with him?”  They were shy, but then Libby said, “Okay!”  

I walked up to this person, held out my hand and said, “Hi, I’m Mary Sellers.”

“Hi, I’m Gregg.”

“My kids were wondering if they could have a picture with you.”

“Oh, sure!”

So we did. That’s Gregg Sulkin.   

I was trying to think of an equivalent person for most of my readers. It was sort of like meeting Chachi from Happy Days or one of Blossom’s brothers from that show or…um…I have no idea.  Anyhow, they were really happy!  And that makes for a good day.