The sights visited while in Rome (in chronological order): The Vatican Museums, The Sistine Chapel (included in the Vatican Museums), St. Peter’s Basilica, The Spanish Steps, The Roman Forum, a variety of Roman Ruins, Piazza del Campidoglio, The Basilica of San Clemente, The Colosseum, The Pantheon, The Trevi Fountain
What I thought would be my favorite: The Sistine Chapel, The Trevi Fountain
What was actually my favorite: The Pantheon, The Basilica of San Clemente
Inside the Vatican City I was most impressed by St. Peter’s Basilica. The dome is one of the largest in the world. The entire church was built on this absurdly huge scale. Its just as wide as it is tall and walking around there made me feel smaller than I ever have before. It was really a weird experience. I found a quote about the Basilica that describes it better than I can— “As we watch people draw near to this or that monument, strangely they appear to shrink; they are, of course, dwarfed by the scale of everything in the building. This in its turn overwhelms us.”I’m glad my trip was ordered the way it was, starting in the Vatican City and exploring the Roman ruins later, because this allowed me to enter the Basilica of St. Peter and admire the beauty in the vastness of the church rather than to stare at the immense size and only think about how much marble had to be taken off of ancient Rome in order to create that beauty.
Yes, St. Peter “recycled” the marble off of the facades of all of ancient Rome in order to decorate his church. Some of that recycled marble came off of the Roman Forum, some from the entire facade of the Colosseum. Because it’s not like anyone cares about the Colosseum or anything. It’s not like I would like to see the Colosseum in its original condition, covered in marble, or anything. Are you serious St. Peter? Really?Fortunately, some things were saved from this marble pilferage, like the Pantheon. Oh the Pantheon! The most beautiful building I have ever entered. It was built in 126A.D. as a temple to all the ancient Roman Gods. It was later converted into a Christian church, which is why the marble wasn’t stolen. And the marble inside is swirly blues and turquoises, some sections of pink. The shape of the building is magical and there is a hole in the center of the ceiling that was created as an eye to the Gods.
Where did I get all these facts? I explored Rome with 3 history majors— best idea ever.
Rome completely reconfigured my conception of time. We would be staring down (down, because life builds up on top of itself throughout the centuries) into ancient Rome, like a place where Julius Caesar had given a speech, and look up and see the balcony that Mussolini had given his infamous speeches from. We’d look over to the side and see steps designed by Michelangelo during the Renaissance. Then look over to the other side and see an ancient column crumbling into the ground — but it was built in the year 100. 100! It’s incredible that it’s even still standing! Our houses and buildings won’t be standing after that many centuries, that’s for sure. (We had some great conversations in Rome.) All I know is that my mind was doing a lot of flips and things all over Rome and it was wonderful.
For example, when I saw the Spanish Steps that first day the first thing I said was, “Roman Holiday was filmed here.” Then immediately, “Wow… Audrey Hepburn stood here.” And after getting over how excited I was about that I started to think about all of the other people who had stood there too, there or even on the ground before the steps were built over centuries and centuries. Unreal.
This is why I loved the Basilica of San Clemente so much. In that Basilica you can see history and time literally layered on top of itself. It started out as a Pagan church worshiping a God who was born out of a rock. They had a room for a ritual dinner in which they ate in a circle lying on stone beds with a seven holes in the ceiling to look up and see the stars through. In the 4th century Christians came through, filled this in with dirt, and built a new church on top of it. Then, in the 12th century, a new group came through and did the same thing filling the church below with dirt and building on top of it a new basilica, which was now at ground level. So eventually they excavated everything so now you can walk a level down and go back a few centuries, walk another level down and go back a few more centuries. It’s crazy. And actually, this place is not too well known or visited. I definitely recommend visiting if anyone is planning a trip to Rome soon.
My advertisement for Rome is done now.
“Why was this blog so extremely detailed?”, all two of you who made it this far, ask. Well I have an art history paper due next week that I need to write (in Italian) about the depictions of Helen in art. So I did this instead to pretend I am doing something important as I put off doing that. And I would like to say that taking a class entirely in Italian, after having only taken a year of Italian, was a really crazy idea I had. I’m not sure what I was thinking. When it’s all done I know I will be happy to know that I have the ability to do something like that. But, right now I just want to sit in the piazza, eat gelato, and pretend I’m Italian.
You saw the Pantheon!! Just a couple months ago I was reading about the Pantheon in this blog (http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/heliocentric-pantheon-interview-with.html). A film editor was talking about how its design might have influenced Copernicus, the astronomer who realized the heliocentric model of our solar system. Here's an excerpt (as if you have time to read such things):
ReplyDelete"...In 1500, a Jubilee year, Copernicus took time off from his studies in Bologna and he moved to Rome. This is where the Pantheon comes in. Circumstantial evidence would suggest that if you were a young man of 27, footloose in Rome, the Pantheon would be high on your list of places to visit: it was probably the most famous building in the world at that time – the only intact structure from Ancient Rome – and it featured the world’s largest dome: 142 feet in diameter. It remains, to this day, the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the history of architecture.
The Pantheon had survived mainly because it was consecrated in 609, yet the overwhelming feeling when you walk into that building is pagan: a series of concentric circles surrounding a single bright source of light – which is the oculus in the center of the dome. It’s pretty certain that the Pantheon was designed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian, and Hadrian was a Mithraist – a worshipper of the Sun.
The only writing about the Pantheon from around the time it was built appears in the History of Rome, by Dio Cassius. Dio Cassius mentions that some people believed the name Pantheon (which is Greek for all gods) came from the statues of the many different gods which decorated the building, “but my own opinion of the name is that, because of its vaulted roof, it resembles the heavens.”
That powerful image of the central source of sunlight surrounded by a series of concentric circles must have been an overwhelming experience for Copernicus, primed by his knowledge of Aristarchus. He would have been standing in a church (St. Mary All Martyrs) built 1400 years earlier as a pagan temple, looking up at Aristarchus’s theory “in the flesh” so to speak. .."
Then he talks about some drawings Copernicus did later of his theories on the solar system, saying,
"... I then superimposed Copernicus’s drawing over an image of the Pantheon’s dome – and found that the ratios of the circles in his drawing and the ratios of the circles of the Pantheon line up almost exactly."