I don’t know if I’m going to make it through all the photos from our trip to Italy in 2023 before we go on holiday this year. It’s the last few days of November 2024 now. We were already in Italy by this time last year, in Venice [confusion.cc] and then Florence [confusion.cc]… After this post on Rome, I will still need at lest two more posts. And we leave for our holiday in a week. Let’s see.
But back to last year. Rome [wikipedia.org]. The Eternal City. Blah blah blah. Rome. It’s a big, busy city. Noisy, crowded, even in December the key sights are constantly abuzz with tourists. After staying downtown in Florence we stayed a little outside of main tourist sites in Rome. It’s wasn’t far, but it meant we had to hike a bit and take public transport but that made the contrast between the medieval core of Florence and the more modern, living, city of Rome more obvious. Florence is a city that feels focused on the Renaissance. Rome, is focused on today, even as the monuments to more than 2000 years of history hide down every via, around every corner in some new piazza.
The glory that was Rome left Rome many must see sites; the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Forum… And Holy Mother Church has added many more. The Vatican City deserves it’s own post, so I’ll leave St. Peter’s and the Vatican Museums for then.
We did visit the Pantheon [wikipedia.org], a marvel of construction from two millennia ago. Light streaming through the oculus in the great dome. It’s amazing. The enormity of the open space, especially given it’s age lives up to it’s reputation. It’s an impressive building even today, and architectural marvel when it was built and for most of its history. Many a gothic cathedral’s feeling of size is outdone by this Roman masterpiece.
Oh, and Raphael is entombed there. Adding that to our two Ninja Turtle namesake tombs in Florence, we saw three on this trip, for those keeping count. Unfortunately the forth Ninja Turtle namesake is not buried in Italy, so we had no way to complete the set. Should have planned ahead in 2022…
Moving on. We braved the lines at the Colosseum [wikipedia.org] and the gray skies. I’m always a little disappointed with the Colosseum. The inside is ruins. Between the devastation of time and nature, and the plundering by humans of the past 1500 plus years, a lot has been lost. It’s hard to get the sense of grandeur. I know it’s huge, I know what it was, but being inside it never lives up to it. The exterior is amazing, though every time I’ve been there the crowds and construction have contrived to prevent me from taking a picture I’m truly happy with. Still, it’s The Colosseum, and it is worth the visit, but I recommend also going to see a more intact roman amphitheater —like the one in Verona.
We spent the rest of the afternoon after finishing the Colosseum in The Forum [wikipedia.org]. The Forum is an amazing space, packed full of history. If you are not into the history it underwhelming, a bunch of ruins. A few columns here, a triumphal arch over there, some statues, and more ruins. You have to be a student of history, to understand the momentous events of western history that took place in these ruins to truly make walking around the Forum worth it, else it’s just a bunch of old rocks. But… Caesar was here. Cicero was here. Sulla. Augustus. The Gracchi. And so many more people who’s names are known and ring out loudly through history. I really enjoy going to places that were important to history, where things happened. And there are few places as important to western history, and to world history as the heart of ancient Rome, Republic and Empire.
Of course we didn’t just see Roman ruins. We wondered around the city, had tea by the Spanish Steps [wikipedia.org], visited the Trevi Fountain [wikipedia.org] several times (it was on the walk from our hotel to most everything) walked around Christmas markets in Piazza Navona, strolled along the Tiber and admired the angels on Ponte Sant’Angelo [wikipedia.org], though we didn’t visit Castel Sant’Angelo [wikipedia.org], just walked past it a few times. We also found a little outdoor market in Piazza Borghese that was filled with stalls selling pages from old books, stamps and old travel posters. It was a lot of fun to flip through biology books from a century ago, page after page of detailed drawings of bugs or mushrooms or fish. I would love to decorate with framed pages from those books, but they were not cheap and hard to transport, and my house is already full. C’est la vie.
One last thing we did. Similar to how we stumbled upon the Anish Kupoor exhibit in Florence. We saw posters for an exhibit of M. C. Escher’s art [mcescher.com] at the Palazzo Bonaparte. According to the website it is the most comprehensive exhibit ever. It was very cool, to see in person all the famous drawings and prints of M. C. Escher: Hand with Reflecting Sphere (Self Portrait in Spherical Mirror) [mcescher.com], Drawing Hands [mcescher.com], Reptiles [mcesher.com], Sky and Water I [mcescher.com], Möbius Strip II (Red Ants) [mcescher.com], Bond of Union [mcescher.com], Waterfall [mcescher.com], and so many more. So many I’ve seen in books, on posters in college dorm rooms, on tee shirts. Very cool to see in person. It was also, as with Kupoor in Florence, a great way to break-up the monotony of Roman ruins and renaissance art.
That’s about it for Rome, other than the Vatican City, which I’ll try to cover next.
You can view the full Rome, Italy, December 2023 photoset on Flickr.
