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Published: February 27th 2010
... Roooome Around The Woooorld! That's how it goes doesn't it?
There's a certain sense of trepidation, mixed with an almost nauseous excitement and even a tiny touch of adrenalin that comes with the realisation that you are about to enter one of the most, if not THE most, important cities in the whole world.
As we arrived at Camping Roma on the road into the city, we checked in with a very helpful young lady who spoke the most beautiful English and was so nice in answering all our questions. Our room was to be, as previously stated in the other blog, a self contained “bungalow”. As we drove up to the top area, past the other campers and the restaurant, we realised that the definition of the word is very different from somewhere like, say, Thailand. It was essentially one of those pick-up-on-a-truck mobile homes, split in two, and looked almost brand new. For the measly price of €26 per night, we could park the van outside and walk into our own room, complete with bathroom with nice shower, double bed, desk, lock up cupboards, curtains, loads of powerpoints, and vinyl imitation wood floor covering. Truly nothing
One Of The Axis Fountains
Piazza Pio XII, Vatican Cityto be sneezed at, as we paid more than that to sleep in the van in Toledo!
Happy as pigs in shite, we trundled off down the restaurant/bar to get some dinner, meeting Sebastian, who is probably the best waiter in the world. Seriously, he should be working at some triple Michelin star joint somewhere, so polite and easygoing but incredibly professional at the same time. Aleks wanted to take him back to Australia, and it's pretty likely that he could have fit in our pocket. We ordered ourselves a couple of pastas and some wine and ate with gusto, and marvelled at how cool the interior of the bar was. It's very geared towards tourists, of course, but instead of being stuck up about it, it's like a Cairns bar. There was even a big XXXX beer sign in there! I had a moment of Aussie bogan pride. If I ever go back to Rome it's going to be there, in summer, to party it up with the hundreds of travellers! It really is that cool, I was totally blown away.
The next day was the 3rd of February, and as our eyes cracked open, we realised
Aleks And St Peter's
Piazza Pio XII, Vatican City where we were and jumped out of bed like we'd been kicked out by a horse. The breakfast, brushing of teeth and last minute day-packing took all of about six minutes, and we went charging down to the reception at 8:30am to get transport tickets, buy some food for the day, and bus it into Roma. All day's worth of travel in Rome is €4, pretty respectable considering it gets your fat ass around on buses AND metro trains, and the services are great. We caught a bus into a stop near the Vatican, and within ten minutes of walking along the incredible city walls, we arrived in Piazza Pio XII, home of St. Peter's Basilica.
If Rome is the most important city in the world, The Vatican is it's most important sector. There's no denying it; even if you're a complete atheist, you have to admit that there is no place on earth with more power per square kilometre than this miniscule miasma of ministerial monopolisation. It's the centre of what is essentially the richest unofficial “business” in history. They've got themselves pretty well set up, and you can see that as soon as you walk into the
The First Interior Shot
St Peter's Basilica, Vatican piazza. I took a video of it, because there's no way that you can capture the moment in photos, but you're going to have to wait till I get home as video uploads on the blog are near impossible. The piazza, named after one of the past Popes, was home not only to the most important Basilica in the world, but also a couple of fountains that mark the axis of the building itself, a nativity scene (in the process of deconstruction), a stolen Egyptian obelisk (thieving bastards) and also the huge columned walls themselves like the embracing arms of God Almighty himself. Ha! 😊 Obviously we decided to go straight into the basilica, so we lined up with happy snappers, nuns, priests, old pious country folk and school groups alike to go through the security screening.
St. Peter's Basilica doesn't really look that grand from the outside. It's sandstone carvings are simple and to the point, the structure is boxy not overstated. Sure it's the centrepiece to an incredible plaza, but even the height of the dome doesn't make it feel like it's claim as the biggest basilica in the world is justified.
As I walked in
That Must Have Taken A While
St Peter's Basilica, Vatican the door, expecting Jesus himself to prompt me to take my beanie off, I stood and looked around. Between you, me and the air conditioner, I'm still undecided as to whether this whole religion thing is a crock. But I'll say this: St Peter's FEELS holy. It has this incredible electricity about it, but it's not just from the low thrum of the people's voices or the fact that there's so many people in there. It's in the stone of the walls and the paint on the ceilings and the wood of the pews. I reckon it would feel like that even if the place were dead empty. It's really hard to describe, but it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
And as I stood gawping, I had a sudden thought that might surprise you. St Peter's Basilica does't really FEEL that big. Sure, the place is absolutely immense. But for some reason I expected it to be... well... even bigger. It's the centre of the Roman Catholic church, man! I thought I'd need to take a Smart Car around it in a day! In my feeble mind, it just doesn't convey a sense
of enormity like I thought it would. Now before you go calling me heathen scum, let me quickly reiterate that by no means is St Peter's anything short of incredible; I'll get to that in a second. I suppose that after years of having it pounded into my head as the centre of western religion as we know it, I just expected it to be a juggernaut beyond human comprehension.
I don't know, I probably sound like a crack addict, but anyway.
The fact that SBP is built on top of the first Apostle's burial ground is incredibly important, and in terms of interior decoration, it's second to nothing I've seen so far. It's ornate beyond anything you'll ever see. But unlike other major Houses O' God, t's not covered in swanky gold or super detailed wood carvings or anything like that. Instead it's the scope of different types of coloured marble and other stone in the carvings that get your attention, as the range is immense: red, black, green, multicoloured, white, pink, purple... it's all there. The carvings on the tombs are incredible though, with their sculptors somehow managing to make solid stone resemble drapes and cloth!
That takes a lot of work, and the best sculpture in the place is actually the four legged main altar over the top of St. Pete's tomb. I think it's called the Baldicchio. Above it and further along is the Michaelangelo masterpiece in the dome. I gotta tell you, that man must have taken up levitation as a trade with the amount of roof work he did. The frescoes are beyond description.
There are past Popes buried everywhere in SBP, and their tombs are a true one-upmanship competition, some of them with so much carved stone around them I'm surprised there's any left in Italy. That, and huge Pope names like Benedictus, Clemens, Pio etc engraved everywhere. “SO-AND-SO” PP PONTIFICUS MAX is written in so many places it's hard to see marble sometimes. On the floors, the walls and the ceiling, everywhere. We wandered around, shoes squeaking on the floor, and saw mass taking place in a side chapel, and also the glass-cased remains of one of the popes. Innocentius XI I think. He's all black looking and creepy, but it's interesting nonetheless.
And that's about all I can say about the place, the rest you're going to
Aleks, Blessed Somehow
St Peter's Basilica, Vatican have to see for yourselves in the photos. Do you like the one with Aleks' divine benediction under a shaft of light? That's one of my favourite photos of our travels, and is the true definition of irony. Ha! Oh, and the other one to take note of is the statue of St. Peter with the shiny right foot. That piece of bronze has been touched by pilgrims so many times it has been worn almost flat. That takes a LOT of touching to do that. There's a kilo of foot bronze on billions of hands out there somewhere.
Once we were done getting our photo taken and laughing at groups of priests, nuns and also two people taking their own wedding photos in front of the Basilica, we thought it was a good idea to send a postcard or two from the Vatican's post office. Just to the parentals though, so sorry if you missed out, but we were on a limited schedule. It's not every day that you get a postcard as important as one stamped with the Vatican's seal, so that was a must-do. After that we moved out of the square toward the centre of
How'd They Paint That?
St Peter's Basilica, Vatican the city, and took some photos. We walked past Castel Sant'Angelo, a huge round castle from the 15th century, and onto the Aelian bridge, decked out with statues of trumpeting angels. The bridge was our connection over the Tiber River... “No way! We're walking over the Tiber?!” It was another one of those moments.
The next destination on the itinerary was the Pantheon. For me it's always been one of those places I'd heard about, but never really knew anything about it, even of what it looked like. And so as we slowly beetled around the corner I was a bit taken aback. It's an incredible looking building, and it's surprising that it's still here considering it burned down twice, once in 80AD, and again in 110AD, before finally being rebuilt by Hadrian in 126. It's been used as a church since 7th Century (of course) and the interior houses many important remains, such as Raphael, which we found out about five minutes ago. Damn. The interior's incredible. The whole building is round and there's a one-of-a-kind stone dome over the top of it with a 30 foot oculus (hole) in the top centre of it. Did you know
that the distance from the floor to the oculus is the exact same distance as the diameter of the walls, so if you had a 43.32 metre sphere, it would fit perfectly! How about that.
After bailing from the Pantheon and getting lost finding Tempio Adrio (also built by Hadrian ca. 120 AD) and the Area Sacra, we finally stumbled on the Trevi Fountain. Out of all the monuments in Rome, this is probably my favourite. The sculpting and the way it simply sits built into the side of the building behind it is very evocative, and the water is blue and full of coins from people chucking them in over their shoulder. From what the Lonely Planet says, about €3000 worth of shrapnel is chucked in there on an average day. My question is why doesn't someone just jump in there and get it? I didn't see any cops around, at least none that LOOKED like cops. But the number of people there was incredible, they were all just sitting around on the steps and looking at it, marvelling at it's beauty just like I was.
From the Fontana Trevi we strolled out through Quirinale and onto
The Men Of The Vatican
Outside St Peter's Basilica, Vatican Piazza Repubblica, noting once again many armed cops and state troopers around, but not quite sure what they were guarding. Deja vu? The piazza area is nice but nothing spectacular, so we sat down for a while to rest our feet and have a late lunch of sandwiches. By that stage we were in the area that the local Fratrinelli International bookstore was in, and so I quickly ducked in to see if I could find the last book in the George RR Martin series. And amazingly enough, it was in, so I snapped it up along with a copy of Edgar Allen Poe's selected tales and Stevenson's Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde for Aleks. After we were finished in there we tried our hand at finding our way on the metro to Spagne station. This was relatively easily found, albeit travelling like sardines in a tin with the other punters, and after we alighted we made a beeline for the Spanish Steppes, just as it began to rain. Luckily the rain was only light and nothing more than inconvenient. We decided that the best way to avoid it was to jump back on the metro to the Colosseo station,
Nemo Basking In The Glory Of God
Outside St Peter's Basilica, Vatican as it was finally time to check out the Colosseum itself.
The Colosseum is pretty massive, and far bigger than Nimes' amphitheatre. But in terms of atmosphere and feeling like it's a good representation of it's past incarnations, it falls a bit flat in comparison to it's French counterpart. The day we visited Nimes it was quiet, and there were blue skies, but here there were dopey, fat looking Roman blokes in cheap gladiator's outfits ripping off naive tourists, greyish skies, and the place was closed inside. It's not like we would have gone in anyway, entry alone cost €14 plus more if we wanted an audioguide. The least we could do though was have a walk the whole way around, and so we did before turning off and checking out the Arco di Constantino.
Now this piece, like all the other decorative arches around, is quite an incredible structure and has held up considerably better than it's larger neighbour. I suppose the reason being is that it has a lot less forces on it's various surfaces and is completely fenced off from the public. Maybe the moneygrubbing Italians should do that with the Colosseum too before it
falls down in a big pile. While we were there we also wandered down past the Foro Romano (which LP said was free, but was actually €9.50 and didn't look worth it) to Circus Maximus, the place where they used to have the chariot races. In it's day it was one of a kind in terms of size and crowd supporting structures, but now it's just a big patch of grass with a tree at one end. You can sort of make out that it's a long, thin O shape, but only just. I was quite surprised that they didn't take very good care of it; the ruins of the stands at one end are completely overgrown and neglected. If they rebuild it and start having chariot races again, THAT I will pay to see!
We grabbed ourselves a very crap small beer that cost us €3.70 each and snapped the sun setting over the Foro and the Colosseo, and then headed down to Piazza Venezia by way of the Fori Imperiali. The ruins here are, from what we saw, just as impressive as the Roman Forum on the hill, but you can see acres of them stretched out
The Aelian Bridge
Near Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome, Italy on either side of the road for free! The photos will do it far more justice than my description so have a look. We also got to see Palazzo Venezia and the monument to King Vittorio Emmanuelle II (First King of unified Italy), probably the biggest and most grand monument to any single person I have ever seen. There is so much marble it looks like a white mountain, and of course half of it was under construction, but the photo came out pretty well anyway. Then it was time for us to jump on a bus and head home to see Sebastian and have some more well-deserved pasta for dinner at the restaurant before heading to bed and watching The Matrix on the laptop.
The next day we headed back into town in the morning at around 10am, the second day of our time in Rome. It was always going to be a far more casual affair as we had seen a lot of the major sights the day before. The Foro Romano was the first stop, but after umming and ahhing and trying to work out whether it was worth all that money, we decided finally against
it and instead proceeded to Piazza Campodiglio, a.k.a Capitoline Hill, an area designed by none other than Michaelangelo. This was, in the past, a central area of government and administration, and was also the place where Brutus apparently hid after assassinating Caesar. Now it is simply a statue filled plaza with carved sculptures of Neptune, and Romulus and Remus suckling at the she-wolf, and it also has an incredible staircase leading down the front. You can see me standing on it in one of the photos. It's a really great spot to look out over a small section of the town.
We then made our way through Campo di Fiori, a square which houses a beautiful little set of street markets. It was here that we tried some homemade Limoncello and crème Limon in little cups. There were stalls filled to bursting with some of the most uniquely crafted pastas we have seen, red and black and green and all types of colours. My mouth was watering almost as much as Aleks', who was busy staring at the sundried tomatoes by the sackful, fresh dried spices in buckets that wafted incredible aromas, and vegetables of a quality we haven't
seen anywhere else in the winter months in Europe. We then went on through to Piazza Navona. The Ancient Romans came there to watch the agones (competitions) and hence it was known as “Circus Agonalis” (competition arena), and then over time this changed to Navona somehow. The area has four very impressive fountains and a nice church, and is filled with University students and buskers. There was a guy there playing a bass like a guitar, pretty damn impressive! Oh, and there's also another Egyptian obelisk there. Wasn't one bout of thievery enough! Bastards! 😊
And so the last order of the day were the Musei di Vaticani. That sounded a bit blah-zay didn't it? The Vatican Museums,along with the Louvre and the British Museum, have got to be some of the best in the world if not THE best. It was a bit of an extortionate entry fee (€28 for the both of us) but it had to be done. It was one of those things that you may never get to see again in your life. What if it all burned down next year and we hadn't been inside? That, my friends, would be incredibly sad. And
so we trundled in with hundreds of other people, first going out to the patio above the main entrance to look out over the Vatican gardens and homes where all the important people live. We then took to the maze of rooms, starting with some ancient sarcophagii, mosaics, and early Christian artwork. We then moved onto Italian painters and sculptors, bust galleries, ancient Egyptian artifacts and others.
But the real reason we were here was left until the very end. As we moved through more giant Egyptian carvings and sarcophagii, we finally found the sign that we had been looking for since the moment we walked in the door... “Stanza di Rafaello”, a.k.a The Raphael Rooms. These four rooms are part of the public section of the papal apartments, are were decorated by Raphael and the members of his workshop after being commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1509. The four rooms are all quite large, and contain tens of different frescoes depicting many different historical and religious anecdotes, the largest being the Sala di Constantino, but this room wasn't completed until after Raphael had died in 1520. The Stanza della Segnature (Room of the Signatures) was the first
to be decorated by Raphael's frescoes, and contains the famous “School of Athens” of which Aleks has a big copy at home. To see the real thing is incredible as it covers half a wall, and all the major players in the history of philosophy and science are there, such as Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle and more. It really makes you raise your eyebrows.
You know, I have to put this in his own paragraph for emphasis. I really like Caravaggio more than any other Italian painter. He was the best of the best in the type of painting I like the most. But your man Raphael was incredibly talented, possibly the most widely talented of the High Renaissance painters. Not the most influential though, mind you. That still goes to the artistic genius that is Michaelangelo. No one can surpass him for overall influence in the time he was alive. That who-is-better point has been tossed around for centuries, and they're still debating it. Suffice to say I feel privileged to see both their work in the flesh. Not many people I know have.
Moving onto the Sistine Chapel, we found it as expected, stuffed to overflowing
with people gazing at the roof and the wall. But interestingly enough, once again we were completely underawed. Sure it was epic, but it's not all it's cracked up to be. Jeez, I tell you, Im starting to sound more and more like an American tourist... “Oh yeah, that big 'ole paintin' there's great but have these guys got the Empire State Building? Nope, I don't think so buddy!” But do you see what I mean?
AW - A bit of a note on the Sistine Chapel, I actually found that it was completely different to how I expected it, ceiling frescoes and all. It was magnificent in so many ways, but it didn't have the spiritual ambience of St Peter's. Surprising as it is so much smaller. But nothing can take away the perfection of the ceiling - it's incredible.
Anyway, that was the end of the Vatican Museums and almost every major attraction covered, save for a few churches. We slowly wandered our way back through the streets after nearly 16 hours over the two days of wandering around, and felt content that we had seen as much as we could see. Sure you could spend
a week there, just wandering amongst the trattorias and the ancient buildings and gelaterias and really get a feel for the place, but that's not conducive to the best use of the time constraints within a multi country holiday like ours.
That night we fell into bed after finishing the last two types of pasta on the menu and had a great sleep. The next day was a relatively early start, and we were soon on our way after checking out, heading in the direction of the Catacombs of San Sebastian. One of the smallest Christian cemeteries, this has always been one of the most accessible catacombs and as the other one we WERE going to was closed, this would have to do. On the way there, after having the absolute shit scared out of us in morning rush hour Rome traffic, we were lucky enough to drive down Via Appia Antica, a 2300 year old Roman road. With it's completely unflat cobbled surfaces and quaint potholes, the road proved a worthy adversary for the kinks in my back and minor bowel obstructions I might have had. We arrived and made it just in time for the 11am tour,
diving on in photo finish time with a group of about 15 other people, which was lucky as it was the last tour for the day. The staff all had to get home to their mama's food.
The tour was really great and took us down into part of the 12 kilometres of underground catacombs with a guide, and he was incredibly informative, sounding like he'd done it all a million times. He was very frenetic in his pace though... I think he may also have been busting to get home to Mama. The place though was amazing, mostly nothing more than dirt tunnels but they went up stairs and down around corners and twisted and wound around, they really felt massive and they were lined with grave holes that were all but entirely exhumed and relocated to better sites in respect for the dead. There were places where the early Christians had worshipped and hid out in the days of persecution, and their carvings and marks are everywhere inside. There are also a few places where the small mausoleums of families with carved pots and mosaics are all perfectly preserved to be gawked at by tourist like us.
It was totally unlike anything we'd seen yet, and was really worth the €6 each.
And that, my friends, was the end of our time in Rome. After that we began to head south towards Pompei for the next stop in our archaeological Indiana Jones tour, but I'm outta time and will get you up to speed in the next blog!
Ciao!
- Fishy
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Aga
non-member comment
OMG... its all really super cool
OMG.... Your next professions will have to be travel guides or a travel writers... Really cool stuff... I love it...