Rome Day Two

On the second day in Rome, we booked TWO formal tours.  It might not have been our best bet.  But it worked out okay!  We saw the Roman Colosseum first, followed by the Roman Forum, which has most of the Roman ruins. I know the Colosseum was kind of gross, but it was an awesome building and I was sad to see it have been scavenged and all the beautiful marble re-purposed.  I wish they'd kept it intact and used it for presentations or something!! It was SO neat.  All the Roman citizens could enter for free.  It was so impressive! 

  

 This was an arch in front of it.

 Here's the outer part of the Colosseum.  All the holes are the places where the marble facade was anchored and then torn out.  Even the metal that had anchored it was salvaged and re-purposed.

 These are the guts.  They apparently changed it all around all the time with wooden beams, floors, partitions, etc.  They used to flood the entire floor for boat events, etc.  Kind of amazing.

 There were a few remains inside, and they were just out for people to touch, see, etc.  It was kind of neat.

 Look at this graffiti that the locals carved!! Lots of pictures of their favorite gladiators, and carved words and names.  Pretty cool!

 Here's the Roman Forum.  You can see the Venus temple.

 In the top right corner is one stubborn block of marble they couldn't pry out of Constantine's personal palace thing.  That guy was interesting.  Apparently his mom converted to Christianity, and he kind of let her run the show on a lot of things.

 Here we are in front of the water that has been pouring out of fountains all around the forum for over a thousand years via aqueducts the Romans devised.  It's always cold!! So interesting and the water was delicious!

 I love this photo.  This is SO Whitney.

 Here we are at the end of that tour, in another plaza of some sort.

 Here's Whitney posing at our fancy restaurant with some fun Grecian armor!

 Love this man.

 Then we had a tour of the Vatican.  This is the Pope's garden.  You can take a private tour of that but it's pricey and you have to reserve far in advance and know someone.

 This is in the Plaza inside the Vatican.

 Some famous artist (??) donated this to the Pope and then made like 10 more.  Smart guy.  Boosted his fame that it was in the Vatican. It shows a city in the center of the world.

 This is one of the most famous pieces of art in the vatican, apparently.  Not, you know, the famous, but apparently Michaelangelo insisted the Pope buy this one.  It's from the first few centuries AD.

 I took a few shots of the statues in the vatican.  It was really funny that one of the popes (I forget who) took issue with the naked men and covered them with leaves.  So you can tell which ones date before his tenure.

 This is a red marble bowl.  Apparently it comes from Egypt and is very rare.  There's some left in the Roman Forum, but it's pretty precious.  Everyone kept talking about it.

 Here's another leaf covering.

 Here we are in front of St. Peter's.

 This is probably the most famous sculpture.  It's Mary holding her deceased Son and she looks so sad.  He looks so young an innocent.  It's another Michaelangelo.

 Here's the marker and alter for the tomb of St. Peter.  It has this gorgeous stain glass up high that looks like a star.  They built the church around the tomb because of that scripture "and upon this Rock I shall build my church."

Here is the Dutch guard.  They look so funny!! 

 

I love the backlighting.  I was having so much fun playing with it.  

 There were SO many bikes everywhere!

 Brian being himself.

I wish I had some shots of the Sistine Chapel.  They don't allow photos.  Back in the day when it was all painted, blue dye was SUPER expensive. So pretty much anything with blue was rare (in art and buildings.) So the first thing Michaelangelo did was the very top of the ceiling. It's like 9 phases I think. In that contract, he got paid a lump sum and had to pay for his own paint. Then he did the big painting on the side. In that contract, he made the Vatican agreed to pay for the paint. In the one he paid for the paint on, there's not much blue. On the one where the vatican paid, almost the whole wall is blue! 

Here's the ceiling, and it has very little blue (comparatively) because he was paying for the blue... 




Here's the scene, the Last Judgment, where the church was paying for the paint.  Look at all the blue!!



Kinda funny!

Also in the painting the last judgment, there was one guy who kept complaining to the Pope about how improper M was being with the figures (and their state of undress).  Michaelangelo responded by painting the guy as the devil in the lower right corner with a serpent biting his crotch.  Haha!  After M died, apparently that guy had the people and his own likeness painted over with clothing.  They didn't discover the real painting until it had been restored years later!