I’ve been jaunting around Italy with my Dad for a week now, and it has been fantastic. The food is amazing, the art is beautiful, and what more can you ask for? We’ve crammed a lot into this week, so I’m only posting our Rome activities now. Florence updates will come later. For now, you can check out some pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/isaisastc/ItalyForPicasa#
Here’s the list of what I’ve been up to:
Day 1: Saturday, June 20 – Rome
We arrived in Rome around 9:30 AM after an overnight flight and checked into the Hotel Isa (for real). Exhausted, but determined to overcome jet lag, we refused naps and set out. We hit up most of the major monuments, including the Piazza Navona, the Monumento di Vittorio Emmanual II, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, and Trajan’s Column. The highlights were seeing the Rostrum in the Forum (from which politicians made their speeches while running for office and most of the big public speeches, i.e. not made in the Senate, were delivered), Constantine’s Arch (an amalgam of several styles of art, based on whatever Constantine decided to pillage), and Caravaggio’s “Calling of St. Matthew” in the Chiesa di san Luigi di Francesci.
Day 2: Sunday, June 21 – Rome (Cerveteri)
We spent Sunday on a daytrip outside of Rome, to Cerveteri, the site of the Banditaccia Necropolis, an Etruscan necropolis active from ~700-200 BCE. It was truly amazing, and my favorite thing I’ve done so far. Walking among these ancient tombs and thinking about the thousands of people, dead and alive who have trodden the same paths is breathtaking.
The Museum has some beautiful bucchero pottery in it, and a nice cinerary urn that’s essentially the small version of The Married Couple. On whole, it’s small but nice. But the necropolis itself outshines anything the museum could present. It’s about a 20 minute walk from the town, and as you walk up the cypress-lined path it is when you begin to pass the a few scattered fringe tumuli that you begin to realize just where you are. Accessing the “park” is typically strange and somewhat unprofessional, but once inside it’s a completely different world. The tombs are all around you, ranging from the earliest monumental tumuli to the later “suburb” tombs, lined up on carefully planned streets. It truly is a city of the dead. Some of the tombs I had looked forward to, like the Tomb of the Statues, were not open, but the Tomb of the Reliefs, arguably the single most famous Etruscan tomb, was. It was disappointingly but understandably behind glass, but the effect was not lost, and I’m so glad that I was able to see it. However, some of the best tombs were the unnamed ones which you could simply wander around in, contemplating the history of the site and the continuity of time and place.
Day 3: Monday, June 22 – Rome (Vatican City)
Monday was spent in essentially the polar opposite of Cerveteri – Vatican City. From St. Peter’s Square we went into St. Peter’s Basilica, which was stunning in size and decoration. We climbed up to the cupola, where we were treated to some spectacular views of Rome and the Pope’s private gardens.
Afterwards we headed over the museums, which were remarkable. I had greatly looked forward to the Etruscan Wing, which houses the Exekias vase among other treasures, but it was closed, as was the Bracchia Nuova, which sports the famed statue of Augustus (the one where he’s wearing the cuirass – you know, the Augustus statue). But despite missing out on these two, I had a good time. The Pinacoteca was pleasantly uncrowded and filled with beautiful paintings, including Caravaggio’s “Deposition of Christ.” After that we made our way through the main museum, which serves as a sort of chute channeling all the visitors toward the Sistine Chapel. There aren’t a lot of separate rooms, so there is little space for the crowd to thin out, and the inexorable push toward Michaelangelo makes it difficult to stop and really look at something. But the Egyptian Wing was wonderful and there were some great corridors of Roman sculpture, though bewilderingly label-less. The Raphael Rooms were pretty incredible, and the “School of Athens” was fascinating. The final stop was, of course, the Sistine Chapel, which was amazing.
Day 4: Tuesday, June 23 – Rome
For our last day in Rome, we decided to try to get to a few random places that we hadn’t yet fit into our schedule, but mostly just see where the wind took us. We started off at the Spanish Steps, then got ourselves lost and fortuitously ended up in the Piazza del Popolo, which is home to the Chiesa di Santa Maria del Popolo, which has Caravaggio’s “The Conversion of St. Paul” (I guess this post makes my affection for Caravaggio pretty clear…). Then we dashed off to the Museo di Ara Pacis, the architecture of which has apparently started some controversy. I actually quite liked it, and found that the extreme modernity of the building didn’t overwhelm the Ara Pacis, but actually emphasized it. Plus, an inscription of the Res Gestae Divi Augustae was on the façade, so how could I complain? After that, the Trevi Fountain, which is so clogged with people that the spectacle is somewhat lost. Then to the Chiesa di San Pietro in Vinculi to see Michaelangelo’s unfinished tomb for Pope Julius II, the centerpiece of which is the Moses. Our last stop was the Chiesa di Santa Maria della Concezione, which has an incredible monument made by the Capuchin monks below. It consists of several rooms lavishly decorated with the bones of over 4000 monks. It’s macabre, but fascinating.
Then we hopped on a train and made our way to Florence….
