Continuing with the sites. The sites decreased a lot from here on out by the way.

Continuning:

-We did not see Michelangelo’s moses, or the other famous art gallery, but we did hit

-Several designer shops. Thought it was out of my system from Milan, I guess not

-La Fontana di trevi. Big, huge fountain that people throw money into, and lots of it. Huge fine if you come and try and collect it. Awesome

-“St Teresa in Excascy” Located in a small church that is unobtrusive to its visitors. No lines no nothing, to see this super famous Very Bernini Sculpture of St teresa being pierced by an angel’s dart. What makes it controversial is the face and expression that teresa makes in it. While the subject matter of this probably breeches the pg 13 nature of this blog, I think you know what I am talking about. Its supposed to show her in utter lack of self control after receiving the grace of god in a very intense way

-A large statue of some sort, and many others

-A subpar interpretation of the beautiful Claire de lune by Debussy in a local mall

-A guided tour of the colleseum. Ok I guess.

-A Very brief and I mean brief peek inside one of berninis churches. There was no joke-an Italian wedding going on and my hair was beginning to get a bit raggedy so I just poked my head inside to see that alterpiece. It was one of the ones in his famous 4 corners which has several fountains and churches all located within a few blocks of each other. Not really all that surprising considering that Rome has over 900 [really?] churches.

-The style of this story was inspired by my own fathers portrayal of his experiences with the bear of the Olympic mountains

And who could forget-

-The Pantheon. Easily overshadowed by its more publicized and similarly spelled Parthenon, it is a truly fascinating building which no one knows how it was constructed. A building which has a hole at the top of the dome, was the only dome standing except for the Agia Sofia in Istanbul, until the Duomo at Firenze was completed nearly 1400 years later. It is made of panels of poured cement. To this day, it is a mystery as to how it was built. Now a church I suppose. I wonder, how many regular congregation members do all these big time churches have? None the less, this was quite the Roman spectacle, albeit turned over to the Christians like so many others.

-The Roman forum: Ruins a plenty around here. You can’t even turn around without getting an intense sense of history of the place. The temple of Saturn, Arch of Constantine, Arch of Titus, and many more. I have some pictures of myself laying on a roman column which is 2000 years old. In fact, there are more pictures of this section than just about anywhere else in the trip. Photos for arts sake too.

To my dismay, my studies of art and history are somewhat limited in Roman affairs despite my interest, so the exact significance is not as clear to me as it with baroque and renaissance art and design. However, it did renew the interest that was already there. Some common misbeliefs:

-the Coliseum is huge. Yeah it’s big but the movie makes it bigger than it really is.

-No other major misbeliefs.

Many of the structures found throughout the city have been plundered for supplies that were eventually used to build other monuments, especially the forum and coliseum. Literally everywhere there are lifelike, flowing statues that are far more interesting and modern looking than their gothic counterparts. Also, white is a predominant color. To boot, there are large pillars with various purposes just everywhere. To see it all here would be impossible, if not extremely difficult.

I also visited several other interesting looking churches on my own walking tour, as well as the Mausoleum of Cesar Augustus, recently unearthed. Not much left of that, and it was practically abandoned. Too bad, I guess he never should have changed his name from Octavian. In the next entry I will talk about some stories and some final thoughts on Rome and the trip back to Milan where I headed next to the great Istanbul.