People, I'd forgotten two things about Rome: first, how ridiculously grand everything there is, and second, how much I love it. The magnificence (amazitude! spectaculocity! overwhelminess! and other words that should be invented to describe it!) of that city just does not stop. Back in the middle of September, we were very fortunate in that Mike's brother Bobby and sister-in-law Anastasiya invited us to meet up with them there, and, as Rome is one of the places in the world to which I'll never say no, off we went. Mike found us an absolutely glorious apartment right in the middle of the city, and our apartment hostess was kind enough to make us late reservations at her favorite local osteria, Il Sostegno. Folks, the food there was nothing short of tremendous--in fact, it might even have been my favorite meal of the trip. (In particular, my cacio e pepe [pasta with pecorino and black pepper] and radicchio salad with walnuts and parmigiano were just plain killer, and Mike's bresaola-arugula-parmigano plate and carbonara--the bacon was crispy, for crying out loud!!--were genuinely awe-inspiring. If that place were in my own neighborhood, I'd A) never eat anywhere else; B) be intimately familiar with their entire menu; and C) most likely, be as big as a house. A happy, happy, pasta-filled house.
Moving on, though...here's what we woke up to the next morning.
Excellent cappuccino and pastries in this somewhat-famous little coffee shop, which was about 3 minutes' walk from our apartment, and 5 seconds away from this:
The Pantheon. Built by the Emperor Hadrian sometime between 118 and 125 AD...still standing!...
...and now the burial place for--among other historically significant Italians--Vittorio Emanuele II, one of the prominent unificators (heh) of modern Italy, and its first king post-unification in 1861. Trust me when I say that you see monuments to this guy everywhere in that country, and so it was pretty interesting to see his final resting place. (Which, obviously, we've seen before, but just now figured out that it was important. Duhhhh.)
Next, we headed for the Colosseum, by way of Trajan's Forum (which is literally across the street from the Forum).
Trajan's column, carved in 113 AD to commemorate the Emperor Trajan's victory against the kingdom of Dacia (roughly, modern Romania and Moldova) in 106.
This thing is about 35 meters (115 ft!) tall, made of 20 32-ton drums of Carrara marble, and is absolutely packed with detail along the entire length of its 200-meter frieze. (They had an exhibition running along the Forum with photographs and descriptions of the entire frieze "unwound". It was super long and really interesting.)
Trajan's Forum (completed 112 AD) with 13th-century tower in background. Mmmmm, layers of history.
And then, this!
We took a guided tour of the Colosseum and learned about a few details new to us--for example, the carved numbers over each entrance, which serve the exact same purpose as numbered entrances in modern-day stadiums (your seat: this way). Neat.
View of Constantine's arch from the Colosseum.
Interior, complete with insane crowds. It always amazes me how much bigger this thing looks on the inside than on the outside.
Another nifty little detail: marble seats belonging to senators and other various wealthy parties, inscribed with the seat owner's name. Which was then "erased" and carved over whenever the seat passed to someone else. I think this is one such seat.
Next up, an evening tour of the Vatican Museums! Naturally, they don't let you take photos in the Sistine Chapel (although most people try, and get loudly chastised by the guards, who have seen every single trick there is when it comes to covert photography, so don't even try it), so you'll just have to take my word for it when I say that it's probably more spectacular even than you envision. The colors and the artistry are unequalled by anything I've ever seen, frankly, and it's worth braving the crowds every single time. If it's interesting to you, check this out.
In the mean time, here are a handful of the photos I was allowed to take inside the Vatican.
The Vatican Museums are positively rife with rooms such as this (the Room of the Animals, in this instance)--mosaics on the floor, marble sculpture perched in every niche, fancy ceilings, etc., etc. The building itself is remarkable, and would be even without all of the art (and there's a lot) inside.
My favorite part, the Gallery of Maps. The maps (on the walls--the ceiling is its own crazy frescoed-and-plastered thing) were painted between 1580 and 1585, and show the extent of the Italian and papal territories under Pope Gregory XIII.
Ooh, look, the Piedmont! All those wee tan dots are villages/castles, and the largest one in the center is, naturalmente, "Turino."
I thought this ceiling fresco in one of the Raphael rooms was particularly striking. The central imagery, not entirely subtle, represents the destruction of the old (pagan) gods and the triumph of Christianity.
Hadn't realized it, but the original of Raphael's 'School of Athens' (1509-10) is actually on a wall in the Vatican. How philistine am I??
St. Peter's at night. The sheer size of this place is mind-boggling.
After the Vatican, we caught a late dinner on the piazza in front of the Pantheon at Di Rienzo--admittedly, not my first choice, as that square is packed with tourists day and night, and so one might assume that their food is neither the best, nor the cheapest--but I was pleasantly surprised, as their suppli' (very Roman street food--basically, a ball of tomato risotto stuffed with mozzarella, then breaded and fried) and my pasta with tomato and basil were quite nice. A lovely way to end a busy day.
Day two began with a fantastic cappuccino and the most addictive sandwich of my life--just plain prosciutto and mozzarella on ciabatta, grilled on a panini press--and I have no qualms about confessing to having eaten this same sandwich for breakfast on each of the following three days. (Thanks, Giolitti. I will return someday for the rest of your sandwiches, all of which are belong to me.) Then it was off to see the Vittorio Emanuele II monument up close and personal. Friends, that thing is massive. And it has an elevator that you can take to the very top, for some decent views of the city.
Il monumento.
Also massive: those bronze statues on either end of the top. Here's one with a few people thrown in for (at least a bit of) scale.
View of the Forum and Colosseum from the top.
Next we headed for the (Imperial) Forum, which I think is my favorite ruin (at least, of the ones I've seen!) in Rome. Slightly less insanely crowded than the Colosseum, it really gives you a sense of the awesome scale of Rome at its peak. Plus, it's littered with prettily carved marble and bits of Roman script, two things for which we all know I'm a huge sucker. Also, this time around, we got to see a bunch of places--previously under restoration--that we hadn't seen before. Excellent.
Carved things and script, all in one shot! (And the arch of Septimius Severus--sadly, surrounded by scaffolding-- in the background.)
The Forum, with columns from the temple of Castor & Pollux in the foreground.
Looking southeast, lengthwise, through the Forum.
Temple of Saturn, with various pieces from 42 BC and the 4th century AD. This thing is hugely impressive, and really, just huge. Imagine an entire temple built at this scale...!
Reconstructed piece of the Temple of Vesta (this iteration of the temple dates to 191 AD).
Something we'd never seen before: the courtyard of the House of the Vestals, from 191 AD.
Remnants of a medieval portico within the Forum. Not much of medieval Rome still exists, so it's pretty fascinating to see something like this, smack in the middle of all of these much older ruins.
Not far from here, we had a really delicious late-afternoon lunch and lovely service at L'Invincibile, which, considering its location, was a shockingly good find.
As in, this was our view from lunch. And an old Fiat 500 (turquoise!) drove by, and made the whole scene look like something out of an old movie, for a brief moment. Seriously, this city. (There's no way the food this close to a major tourist attraction should have been that good, or that reasonably priced--they had a 2-dishes-plus-drink lunch menu for 15 Euros!--and yet, there it was. I kinda feel in retrospect like it might have been some sort of group hallucination, but we all agreed Mike's cacio e pepe stole the show, and Anastasiya's bruschetta was excellent, so it probably was real.)
Post-lunch, we headed over to Basilica San Clemente, which I suspect might be one of the most interesting buildings in the world. The present-day church dates to the 12th century, and contains some perfectly-preserved original mosaics and a massive marble choir--impressive enough--but one floor lower is an intact (and surprisingly large) 4th-century basilica containing several tombs, lots of inscribed stone remnants (even one giant stone with a Roman inscription on one side, and a pagan inscription on the other!), and some remarkable frescoes...and one floor lower still is a 2nd-century temple dedicated to the pagan god Mithras, as well as a few Roman buildings and streets. Around and through most of which you can stroll--it's that well excavated and preserved. It is an astounding place to visit, especially if you're into history at all, and you really shouldn't miss it, if you're in the neighborhood (it's a 5-minute walk from the Colosseum). Sadly, the bane of my existence--"No Photos"--struck again, but you can find tons of pictures online.*
In the evening, we got to do something really unique: we met up with Jill, a friend of Anastasiya's from college, whose husband Austin is an Episcopal priest right in the heart of the city, and who now works in the refugee center that they run out of the church. They have a lovely daughter who absolutely charmed us all and gave us a tour of their antique-filled apartment (no, really, they have Napoleon III's desk...) attached to the church, and they were kind enough to host us all for the evening. We had prosecco and antipasti on their balcony, the view from which looked like this:
It was pretty surreal, actually, to know people who live in a place like this. (Later, their daughter, Aja, convinced Mike, Bobby, and Anastasiya to climb that bell tower [which is not as leany as it looks in the above photo!]. Me, I decided to keep my feet on solid ground, thank you very much.)
Here's the side of the church building, which isn't all that old, but is pretty spectacular nonetheless.
Then we went out and had a tasty dinner in a super-traditional little osteria in a fantastic neighborhood, the names of both of which I completely failed to record. (Gigantic fail: I loved that neighborhood.) Thanks, Jill and Anastasiya, for the lovely and inspirational evening.
The next day, we went to visit the most amazing place: the Capuchin crypts, or, as I like to call them, the Bone Church. Because it's a sacred space, naturally, they wouldn't allow photographs, but you can find plenty online (sheesh, recurring theme here, especially in the most interesting places). Essentially, the space is six little chapels, all in a row, that are entirely decorated with the bones of something like 4,000 Capuchin monks, a few of which are intact (and partially mummified) skeletons, standing around or lying in niches, dressed in the robes of the order. Most of the bones, however, have been used to form surprisingly artistic designs around each of the chapels. I thought it might be creepy, but with the exception of the guys in robes, it was really more beautiful than anything else (and also maybe a little bit poignant). Who knew scapula could look so much like butterfly wings, and that you could make such pretty little floral patterns with ribs and radii? The place was entirely unlike anything I've ever seen before, and utterly worth the visit.
The Spanish Steps weren't too far from the Capuchin crypts, so that's where we headed next. We found them just as I'd remembered: entirely covered in people.
Meh. Unlike most other things in this city, overrated.
At least we had the lovely walk to Castel Sant'Angelo to make up for it. (This here's the Vatican, FYI.)
And about 5 minutes' walk from the Vatican is this, the castle itself. Originally built to serve as Hadrian's mausoleum in the second century AD, it was converted to a military fortress around the year 400, and then into a papal residence in the 14th century. This place got some history.
View from the castle walls of the aqueduct-like-passageway that runs all the way to the Vatican--built in 1277 so that the pope could escape to the castle, in the event of an invasion. Sweet.
View from the top of the castle back towards the Colosseum and VEII monument.
There's some pretty paintin' inside the castle. (Lots of 16th-century frescoes in the upper floors.)
Then, since we had some time to kill before dinner and we were (quite literally) in the neighborhood, we decided to head back to Vatican City to check out St. Peter's from the inside. That place, my dears, is positively monumental--one of the largest churches in the world, or so Wikipedia (and my own eyes) would have me believe. Ooh, and something I just learned, in tracking down that little factoid: the early selling of indulgences to finance the building of St. Peter's was one of the factors that led Martin Luther to write the 95 Theses...and to kick off the Reformation. Maybe not exactly the direction one might want to head, perhaps, when one is building the largest Catholic church in the world.**
Anyhoo. St. Peter's. Huge.
The papal balcony, from far, far below.
The nave, with Bernini's famous baldachin at the end (and--I just learned this--that sparkly gold thing behind it, also by Bernini, contains the relic of a chair on which St. Peter himself supposedly sat--although it really only dates to the 9th century, get a grip, people).
The main dome over the baldachin. And also, one more bit of architectural-history-super-nerdery, and then I'll stop, I promise. See that niche in the wall, to the left of the canopy, with the two little columns in it? Get this: those things are 2nd-century Greek marble, and there are nine of them that survived the demolition of the original St. Peter's basilica--to which they were donated by none other than Constantine himself in the 4th century. Wow.
The tomb of Pope Alexander VII, also designed by Bernini, with creepy face-covered skeleton in the middle. There are monuments everywhere in the basilica, but I love the drama of this one. It's really unusual.
Some Swiss guards outside. Those uniforms...honestly.
That evening, it was dinner at Caffe Propaganda, for some modern Roman cuisine. Cute little place, with some really good food: I started with some eggplant croquettes with ricotta and candied datterini tomatoes, then had a plate of pumpkin ravioli with herb butter sauce, and then Mike and I split a plate of crispy octopus with green beans, potatoes, and zucchini cream. And a dessert of hot chocolate cake with caramel sauce. Not too shabby, and have I mentioned lately how obsessed I am with octopus? YUM.
At no point during the first 33 years of my life could I have imagined digging with such gusto into a plate featuring chopped tentacles. Who knew cephalopods were so darn tasty?
The next morning, we hauled our cookies out to the baths of Caracalla, which were just as impressive the second time around. I love this place because it's genuinely spectacular, and yet almost entirely devoid of the Rome crowds. Amazing.
Just to spare you a few details, I've talked about the baths before, as my dear, loyal readers might remember.
Yeah...it's still pretty big.
Ooh, pretty floor mosaics. So much detail just in these vines.
Some nifty little marble remnants I hadn't noticed last time.
And finally, we launched into what has quickly become my favorite form of tourism: THE FOOD TOUR. Yesssss. Bobby and Anastasiya were good enough sports that they let me sign us all up for an eating tour of Trastevere, which is a far-less-touristed neighborhood of Rome rumored to have the best food in town. And really, having not done the appropriate leg work (...although I'd like to try), I can't contest that. I can, however, tell you that what they do there is genuinely wonderful.
First stop: Da Enzo al 29 for prosecco and artichokes alla giudia, which means Jewish-style--it's an ancient Jewish neighborhood--and also, apparently, means that they're double fried. Yes. You're even supposed to eat the stem, and boy, did I. (Note to self: return someday for the rest of their food. All of it.)
Only artichokes I've ever loved.
Next stop: the wine cellar of what I'm thinking is a tremendous little restaurant I will have to visit someday: Spirito di Vino, which not only occupies part of a building that was an ancient synagogue, but has a wine cellar that's older than the Colosseum. Kid you not.
Srsly, the synagogue here most likely dates to the early 12th century. (There are still Hebrew characters carved into that center column.)
The wine cellar: 160 years older than the Colosseum, and one full floor below the level of the synagogue... so really old. You get the picture. Here we ate wee snacks consisting of amazing cheese (marzellino), tiny beef meatballs, hunters' salami, crispy rye crackers with fennel and cumin, and a little orzo salad with barley, tomatoes, and peas. Accompanied, of course, by some really good wine from the Le Marche region (Il Casolare). All terrific, must eat there for real sometime.
Next, over to the Innocenti biscottificio--family-owned since 1920--for some crazy-good cookies: limoncini (lemon cookies with apricot filling!), brutti ma buoni ("ugly but good," essentially amaretti made from hazelnuts), and some sort of shortbread topped with chocolate, whose Italian name I failed to catch.
Then, to Antica Caciara, also family-owned since 1900, for some genuine Pecorino Romano, and for some amazing spicy salami that Anastasiya was nice enough to buy and share with Mike and I. (It was weird...other than at the cookie place, no one in our little group bought anything additional except for us. That's no way for supposed food enthusiasts to behave, people.)
Mmmm, the real thing, which is WAY better (read: less of a slap in the face, taste-wise) in Italy than anywhere else. Obviously.
Next stop: street food in the street. Piping hot suppli' from i suppli'. So crunchy and melty and tomatoey and awesome.
Then, La Renella, whose oven is older than the country of Italy itself (it's from 1860). Here, giant shelves of their pizza rosa and pizza bianca.
The margherita pizza we got to try. Holy wow.
I realize that one more shot of pizza could be considered excessive, but it was so pretty! We also tried the pizza bianca and that little guy with prosciutto for ourselves. Worth it.
Next came the actual "dinner" portion of our tour--as if we hadn't had enough already, we stopped at Enoteca Ferrara (in a cool little outdoor dining room area) for some pasta: tonnarelli pasta, cacio e pepe style; spinach and ricotta ravioli with tomato sauce; and gnocchi alla sorrentina (tomato sauce, mozzarella, and basil). All delicious, as was the Le Maestrelle wine. Sadly, I was too busy stuffing my face to take any photos, but it was a lovely place with a super warm atmosphere and terrific pasta.
Last stop: dessert. Fancy-schmance gourmet gelato, to be specific, at Fatamorgana.
Nothing artificial here. I went for the peaches-in-wine and blueberry flavors, and Mike opted for the plum-in-green-tea and some sort of vaguely cheesy flavor, which certainly tasted better than it sounds. Reading their website, though, there are about 30 more flavors I'd like to try.
Not a bad way to spend our final evening in Rome, rest assured. Mike was up and out early the next morning, headed to San Francisco, and I had a leisurely start in which I purchased my customary sandwich and cappuccino at Giolitti, then headed past the Pantheon to see Piazza Navona, just 'cause it was right there.
Forgot how pretty this piazza is. Jam-packed with people, of course, but just lovely. (And also with a few more fountains 'n things by Bernini--who also did all of the sculptures around Vatican square, as well as those on the bridge leading to Castello Sant'Angelo. That guy was prolific, man.)
Let me just reiterate: I had forgotten just how spectacular Rome is, and how much I really, really enjoy it, and so I was sad to be leaving.
However.
This was in line at the airport ahead of me. It suddenly became difficult to remain sad.
These people are just lucky this thing didn't come home with me. I assure you, it's a real dog, and not a Muppet on a leash. Seriously. There might not be anything cuter.***
Next up: our victorious return to Italy--this time with my parents in tow. Epic adventures to come.
*They also have a "no tank tops" rule, of which I was aware, of course, but--naturally--forgot to carry my covering-up scarf that day, and that's how I came to own a "University of Rome" t-shirt. Way to be prepared, Springer. Sheesh. You'd think I'd never visited a church before.
**Also, I'm sure I probably knew this somewhere back in the deepest and darkest recesses of my brain, but Michelangelo--in 1547, in his 70s--became the chief designer of the building, uniting positive elements from preexisting plans and drawing up a Greek cross-shaped (as in, all four arms the same length) basilica, the lengthened nave and grand facade of which were added roughly 50 years later.
Essentially, Michelangelo envisioned a square building, and Carlo Maderno, by order of Pope Paul V, turned it into a Latin cross-shaped rectangle (the Latin cross has one longer arm). Apparently, the Greek cross shape had vague implications of paganism, according to Counter-Reformers, and they also wanted the new building to encompass the entirety of the ancient sacred site on which the original St. Peter's, with its heaps of important burial sites and chapels and shrines and altars (and, of course, ridiculous wealth) had stood. (That basilica was built by Constantine in the early 4th century, eventually fell into disrepair, and was demolished in the 16th). Yes, I know this is a bit lengthy, and probably packed with unnecessary information for some of you, but the history of this building is super fascinating to me.
***This puppy was right up there with the pandas--both giant and red--and this wee swimmy baby otter. WANT. NOW. ALL OF THEM. CUDDLES. FUZZIES. The cuteness is too much.
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