Engraved On His Hands: Roman Holiday Day 2

Ok, so we finished day one in the pouring rain. In fact, here is the last picture we took on that day. It's me in the pouring rain on the Spanish Steps. Ironically the first picture the next day was also me on the Spanish Steps. We just picked right up where we left off, but with better weather!

We walked through the lovely streets of Roma to the Ara Pacis, which is a Roman altar built to honor Augustus' victory over Spain and part of France and was intended to symbolize the ensusing power and peace of the Roman Empire. It is quite pretty and so is the building it is in. The picture below shows what the area looked like in ancient times. The altar was on the big marble quare in the middle. At the bottom of the picture you see the Pantheon which we visited later. The wide empty space was a miltary parade ground.

Here is the actual altar. They were working on cleaning it, so it was hard to get a good shot of it. I was glad that they allowed us in the building during the cleaning. It would have been a shame to have missed it. The bottom half of the altar is covered in an intricate floral relief of native flowers. Their symmetry and shows Roman control and order over the natural world, and the varying states of the flowers show a continous cycle of renewal. All the images on the altar are symbolic, but I don't know a lot about it. This why I think art is so interesting-- it carries a message.

After the Ara Pacis we headed up to a castle. Here is Brian and Iain walking by the Tiber River on our way to Castel Sant'Angelo. Like seemingly everything else in Roma, the Castel Sant'Angelo has a long and convoluted history.

There it is. Pretty impressive, don't you think? It was originally the Roman Emperor Hadrian's tomb, but somewhere along the way it was annexed by the papacy and became a papal fortress. The Vatican is within sight of the Castel, so the Pope could quickly flee to the castle in times of danger.

Besides all that, the Castel Sant'Angelo has some really amazing views of Roma. Can you see the statute on top of the building? That's Michael the Archangel. You can climb all the way to the top terrace where he is. Here are some of the shots I took from the top. I have lots more. Brian could have stayed up there for a long time just looking, but it started to rain afer we had been up there a few minutes.

It was very windy up there. Poor Iain hates the wind. Mama was able to get a half smile for the picture though. He was glad when we climbed back down.

There are good views from the top floor of the castle too. This is my attempt at a self portrait. It's pretty funny I think. The Castel was just lovely and we really enjoyed climbing all around it.

After the Castel, we were on the move again though the beautiful maze of alleyways that is Roma to the building that I most wanted to see in Rome-- the Pantheon.

We stumbled on this guy-- his name is Pasquino and he is a "talking" statute. In the 16th century it became popular to post anonymous pieces of political satire and dissent to statutes in the dead of night. Pasquino was the first and best known. You can see he is still talking away.

And here is the Pantheon. The ancient temple to all the gods, with the incredible domed roof. It has a large hole in the center of the dome, called the oculus. This is the best surviving temple from ancient times. Nowadays it is a church and it is considered the highest honor to be buried inside.

After checking out the Pantheon, we visited a church called Sant' Ignazio di Loyola. This caught my eye in the guidebook because the church was orginally supposed to have a dome, but funds ran out and they painted an illustionist fresco of a dome instead. There was also another amazing fresco on the ceiling there. It was too dark to get a clear picture, but it was one of the best works of art I've ever seen. It was supposed to be Loyola being received into paradise. Whether or not he is actually there is not for me to say, but this painting was so realistic that you almost felt as if the roof of the church had been lifted off and you were about to float up too. We sat and looked at that for a long time. I think it was better than the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

After that we met up with our friend Athena, who is a native Roman. She took us out for a great Italian dinner and helped us choose the best things on the menu, as well as translating and giving us the inside scoop on life in Roma. Spending the evening with her was one of the highlights of the trip.