Rome! part 2

Rome is definitely a city with history.  A lot of history.  It's actually pretty rare to walk down a street without coming across some sort of historical ruins.  Down the street from our apartment was a park at Piazza Vittorio Emanuele and in that park were some ruins.  The unique thing about these ruins was that they were a cat colony!  You can see them there behind the statue in the picture to the left.  We noticed the cats as we walked by several times, and eventually saw a sign that it was in fact an established cat colony in those ancient ruins.  Way to put them to use Rome!

Like I said before, along with ruins Rome also has an abundance of churches.  When we walked around Rome and came across a church that looked open we would usually go inside and check it out, as the churches there have spectacular artwork and decorations inside.

We came aross this church, the Church of Gesu, and when we went inside we saw that a service was just about to start so we stayed for the first part of it.  It was really beautiful when they lit the church up and all the walls and paintings were illuminated. The ceiling painting was especially wonderful in this church and looked almost three dimensional.  As the choir began singing a procession came in and we got an up close and personal view of them, and I even got a little smile from this guy ------- >




One of my favorite church ceilings was this one, at Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.  It was unlike many of the others we'd seen, with a bright blue pattern that definitely stood out.  On top of that it had an elephant obelisk outside (which we later read was actually by Bernini)!  Found another elephant for you mom!

Also while wondering the city we found the Teatro Marcello, which looks kinda like a mini colosseum, it's round and has similar "window" arches, and it has some interesting ruins around it that you can walk through.






We really liked the part that has been rebuilt though, where three different styles met.  It was cool to see them all up against one another.

Borghese Gallery and Gardens

Galleria Borghese

One of our favorite parts of Rome was the Borghese Gardens near Piazza de Popolo.  It's a huge area with museums, parks and gardens in it, including one of the most popular art museums in Rome, the Borghese Gallery, which was the only place in Rome we actually had to make reservations for.  The Gallery has several amazing Bernini sculptures, including The Rape of Proserpina and Apollo and Daphne as well as many paintings by artists like Carvaggio and Raphael.  I have to say though my favorite thing there was a little mosaic picture by an artist I had never heard of, depicting an ancient greek myth involving many kinds of animals and some type of volcano god in the background (sorry there's no picture but we couldn't even take our cameras inside).

After the Gallery we wandered around the gardens which include lots of open spaces, sculptures, fountains and even a pond you can rent little boats on.  We had a wonderful time there.  Give us a park and a nice afternoon and we're happy girls :)

Appia Antica

Another place we went during our time in Rome was Appia Antica, the old Roman road in the southern part of the city.  We ventured down there to see the catacombs and walk the old road.  We actually tried walking there from our apartment, which I hate to say was the wrong decision.  It was way longer than I predicted and I'm pretty sure we were on a freeway overpass at one point. Shady.  But we eventually found our way and saw some pretty cool things while we were there!  Including a field full of sheep and a beautiful villa full of black and white photos of the area.



  We didn't expect to see something like this until we got to England!  So many sheep!

We also went to the Callisto Catacombs there.  They were pretty cool, being down there reminded us of the Indiana Jones line at Disneyland, it was very cave like!  The tunnels were endless too.  I'm glad you have to go down with a guided tour because I'm fairly certain we would have gotten lost down there.  Erin enjoyed a couple of the rooms we saw that were blocked off and had a weird blue light and signs saying they were doing a study of the bio luminescent bacteria down in the catacombs.

There were also ruins, museums and an old castle along the way which was actually a tomb for, I believe, St. Catherine.

Possibly my favorite part Appia Antica was this villa.  The entrance has a beautiful flower covered walkway, then the courtyard had ruins of an old bath house, and the villa itself had been converted into a photography gallery that displayed photos of the area from the last several decades.

Despite the rainy weather we made it along most of the old road and loved seeing the houses as it became more residential.  I think one of my favorite things about Europe are the doors.  They are much more exciting than Arizona doors, and here a few from Appia Antica and the little project I've been working on.  

 Appia Antica and the catacombs were definitely awesome to see, but after the extremely long walk and rainy weather that day, we definitely took the bus home (no way were we walking back over that sketchy overpass and we figured the one bus stop available down there would get us to somewhere we would recognize and we'd take it from there) and had a relaxing evening in.