Rome!

[nycgirl]

Lovely photos, ssander. Those mosaics are so luminous. If I ever get to Rome, I definitely want to check out the Santa Pressade.

[fumobici]

Beautiful photos ssander. Mosaic lovers might want to drop by my new Ravenna thread:

anyportinastorm.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=gotopost&board=italy&thread=5573&post=124782

Anyone else got Rome photos to post up?

[ssander]

fumobici...

I had heard that Ravenna had the best mosaics in Europe. Now I'm convinced. Beautiful pix! I must go there!!

SS

[bixaorellana]

Thank you for hitting the ground running in such a luminous, beautiful way, Ssander.

The three of you together, Fumobici, Bjd, & Ssander, have made me think that Rome really needs to be my dream objective.

[ssander]

Oh well...I'll post some more. (Larger ones are on my own website: sanderhome.com)

Fountain on Via Giulia.




Trajan's Market.





Street in Trastevere:




For a Philadelphian like myself and a native California like my wife, this weather the first week in December was amazing - we went there for her 60th birthday.




















Piazza with Santa Maria Trastevere church - and stone carvings at the church entrance.









Another Trasevere street view.





Parking.





The Forum.







We stayed in the jewish Quarter - this street/pizza/largo was typical of the area.




Ponte Fabricio to isola Tiberina.




How about a multi-seat lavatory (in Ostia Antica)?





SS

[Kimby]

I won't be posting photos on here - who could compete with the beauts already on display? - but am copying the text portions about Rome from my Southern Italy and Sicily by car, Fall 2008 travelog, which is also a thread on Any Port.

Italy Travelogue - October 25 – Nov. 14, 2008

Day 1&2 – Travel Day

Free tickets on Northwest/KLM (viaMSP/AMS/Rome), arriving 8:30pm next day. Express train (€11 each) to Termini, short walk to Evergreen B&B (€80), our home for three nights, four rooms and a small lobby with free Internet computer, and a 24-hour receptionist who sleeps on a pallet behind the desk. Our room is taller than it is wide, but clean and serviceable, and the location is extremely convenient for our purposes. Last time in Rome (1997) we stayed in a small hotel near the Vatican. The sites we want to see this time are located east of the River.

Day 3 – Rome’s Churches & Monuments

After “breakfast” which was included in our B&B rate, but consisted of a ticket for a cappuccino and a pastry in the basement “bar” next door, we walked all over central Rome visiting churches and other free sites: Santa Maria Maggiore (432 AD, with 15th c. coffered ceiling gilded with gold from the New World, and a shrine under the altar with fragments from Christ’s manger); San Prassede (Byzantine mosaics from AD 822); San Pietro in Vincoli (440 AD with enshrined chains of St. Peter and unfinished but stunning Michelangelo tomb built for Pope Julius); San Clemente (a three-level archeological site with 12th century church built over a 5th century church built over a Roman house, €5 fee for lower levels and closed during the siesta, which we had discovered to our chagrin in 1997); a walk through Roman Rome (Colosseum, Arch of Constantine, Trajan’s Column, Pantheon; and finally St. Peters, where, since our last visit, Pope John the 23rd has been disinterred and enshrined in a glass sarcophagus! There were large rallies and marches today, protesting insufficiencies in higher education. It was raining when we left St. Peters, so took the Metro six stops to Termini and our B&B. Cocktail hour in the room before going out for dinner (kebabs at an inexpensive restaurant) and grocery shopping at the nearest supermercado.

Day 4 – Roman Museums

Walked to National Museo of Rome in the Palazzo Massimo, four levels of sculptures, mostly, plus mosaics, coins and jewelry. Walking north to the Villa Borghese, we stumbled upon the Santa Maria degli Angeli, a grand Michelangelo-designed church built over Roman baths in 1561. Arrived late for our scheduled entry time at the Galleria Borghese, but they hadn’t yet given away our prepaid tickets, fortunately. (They allow 360 people to enter every two hours by prepaid reservation, €9.50 each.) The Galleria is in a lavishly decorated Palazzo and features exquisite art, including Bernini sculptures (David, Apollo & Daphne, Rape of Proserpine), Canova’s Venus, and a painting gallery upstairs. Walked through the Villa Borghese park with its broccoli-shaped pine trees and flocks of parrots to Piazza del Popolo and its namesake church, then to the Spanish Steps, where we were overtaken by a downpour while admiring the view of swirling flocks of birds heading to their nightly roost. The Metro stations were packed and steamy, so we decided to walk, getting turned around multiple times before getting home, soaked to the skin. After cocktail hour and a nap in the room, we headed out for dinner at the Bruno (€21) around the corner. Another downpour, and more wet clothes, on the way back to the room.

Day 5 – To Umbria

Visited the Baths of Diocletian (our National Museo pass was good for four buildings) before picking up our rental car at the Termini Station (actually, the cars are housed on the seventh floor of a parking structure several blocks away, though the Hertz and Avis desks are at Termini). Drove the Nissan Micra through the chaos of Roman traffic a roundabout route to the A1 and northward to Spoleto, 120 miles away.

Read more: anyportinastorm.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=italy&thread=3572&page=1#53013#ixzz1fvUu9ZzC

[Kimby]

And this from the archives - the Rome portion of our 1997 Italy trip... though some info is likely outdated, it gives an idea of the pacing of a trip to Rome, at least the way we travel.

We headed out for Rome (from Pompeii at the end of our trip), arriving just in time for rush hour.  We took the ring road around Rome and entered the city near the Vatican.  Parked on the street and went seeking a room.  Found one at a pensione called Lady, but the landlady turned out to be pretty nosy and obsessive about her rooms, so we moved to another pensione after two nights.

We returned the rental car our first morning in Rome and since it was raining, we spent the day at the Vatican Museums and St. Peter's Basilica.  The museums occupy Renaissance papal palaces, and are among the nicest we've ever visited.  Everything is displayed so tastefully, and the route through the collections is easy to follow.  After passing through the Egyptian mummy collection, and the Etruscan tomb discoveries, and the Greek and Roman sculptures, and tapestries and maps, and room after room of paintings, you finally arrive at the Sistine Chapel.  Michelangelo's Old Testament scenes on the ceiling and his Last Judgment on the altar wall have been restored recently, and the colors are surprisingly upbeat.  We found the Sistine to be a religious experience, even for the non-religious!

St. Peter's is the world's largest church (690 feet long) and can hold 95,000 standing worshippers.  Its marble floor is inlaid with brass markers indicating the length of the lesser huge cathedrals from around the world.  Though the present basilica was begun in 1506, it replaced an earlier basilica from 349 AD, which was built on a 2nd century shrine that was built over St. Peter's grave.  One of the first things you see is Michelangelo's lovely Pieta, behind bulletproof glass ever since an attack by a hammer-wielding maniac in 1972.  Michelangelo's dome rises 435 feet, and beneath it is the papal altar sheltered by a 65-foot-tall bronze baldacchino (canopy) by Bernini.  Below the altar is St. Peter's tomb, and you can go down into the crypt and see the tombs of many popes (including those of our lifetime, which are nowhere near as evocative as the old ones with their sculptures of the deceased on the sarcophagus lids).  You can also take an elevator up into the dome and look down on the ant-sized people in the nave, then climb 300 steps up to the top for windy views over Vatican City and Rome.  Birds were swirling like schools of fish as they returned to their nightly roosts in the trees below.  We found a great restaurant, frequented by locals, called Hostaria-Pizzeria Giacomelli, and ate there 3 of our 4 nights in Rome!

Next morning, we moved our gear to the Pensione Florida, and went out to see ancient Rome.  It was raining again, so we took the metro to the Colosseum and paid our admission to go in (it used to be free).  We also walked through the Roman Forum, totally in ruins, and around several Roman arches.  We walked up Capitoline Hill and saw Michelangelo's square on top.  At the Santa Maria Sopra Minerva church, St. Catherine's body is buried beneath the altar (but her head is in Siena).  Fra Angelica is also buried there, and there's a little-known Michelangelo sculpture, too.  The Pantheon nearby is the best-preserved building from ancient Rome, and has been a church since before the time of Christ (the name means "all the gods").  The Pantheon is amazing, especially on a rainy day, since its only light source is the "oculus", a 30- or 40-foot wide hole in the top of the 140' tall dome.  Rain water escapes through drains in the marble floor, which slopes away toward the outside walls.   Walked through the Piazza Navone and past the Castel Sant' Angelo on our way back to the hotel.

Halloween dawned sunny and we walked all over central Rome.  Visited the Piazza del Popolo and the Santa Maria Popolo church, with its paintings by Caravaggio.  Climbed Pincio Hill for views over the piazza and the city, then walked down the Spanish Steps.  Strolled up the Via Veneto, once the most fashionable part of Rome, and visited the Capuchin crypts at the Santa Maria Concezione church.  Five underground chapels are decorated with the skeletal remains of over 4000 Capuchin monks, including about 20 whole monk skeletons, still dressed in their robes.  What a great place to go on Halloween!  Next to the Trevi Fountain (where we didn't toss a coin over our shoulders with the rest of the tourists).  We headed to the San Clemente church, a 12th century church built over a 4th century church, built over 1st century Roman ruins, and you can visit all three levels of the church, but we arrived just before the siesta, so we weren't admitted to the lower levels.  (Hate that siesta!)  We picnicked on a park bench, then walked to San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome's principal cathedral.  (St. Peter's is technically in Vatican City, not Rome.)  Elaborate marble work and mosaics decorate the interior, and the heads of both Saint Peter and Saint Paul are enshrined within the main altar tabernacle.  Climbed Celian Hill to while away the rest of the siesta in a lovely park, then to Santo Stefano Rotondo church, a circular church with 34 graphic frescoed depictions of the various ways in which saints were martyred (cutting off hands, cutting out the tongue, etc.)  We went back to see the Colosseum and Forum in the sunshine, and visited the 17th century San Ignazio di Loyola, a baroque church with 3-D illusions, including a fake dome.  (They ran out of money to build a real one, so they painted one in perspective on the flat ceiling where the dome would have been).  Back to Giacomelli for our last supper in Rome.

Next morning we spent the last of our lire on our hotel bill (having bought metro & airport train tickets earlier in the week), paying the balance on our credit card.  Then we took the metro to the Termini train station to catch the express train to the airport.  Flew KLM Rome to Amsterdam and on to Minneapolis through the long twilight over the Atlantic.  Finally arrived home around midnight, about 25 hours after we'd gotten up that morning.

[bixaorellana]

You didn't use those potties, did you Ssander? ;D

You take the most wonderful pictures and what a fantastic thing to do for a special birthday.

Gad, that golden Italian light is warming right through the monitor. It even penetrates those narrow streets. Love that high, bright patch of sunshine & shadow in the first Trastevere shot, the play of light and the strong uprights and arches (including the bike wheels!) in the second, and the gorgeously faded colors in the street pic of the Jewish quarter.

Speaking of which, I was going to ask if that was an accurate contemporary name, but then I saw the Star of David on the far bottom left. There do seem to be several classically black-clad nonnas in the photo, too.

Another question ~~ any idea what the stone carvings affixed to the front of the church represent? I can see "in pace" in one of them, so am guessing memorial or tombstones that were once part of the church floor.

Love your long views of the city, forum, & river plus all the other shots that are both beautiful and carry information.

What a treasure to have three such excellent "eyes" share their photos here along with Kimby's fun and practical account of her visit.