Sunday, May 27, 2012

Day12 - Rome

Kathy and Tom took us to the downtown Rome area and showed us around for the first part of the day.  They had arranged for us to have tickets to the Vatican in the afternoon, so around 1:00 pm they left us to spend the rest of the day exploring.  All in all we spent 10 hours in Rome seeing and walking everywhere.  It was fabulous.  We took the elevator part way up to the top of St. Peters, and took hundreds of steps the rest of the way to the top for a fabulous view.  I'll let the pictures do the talking:

The Colosseum
 The thickness of the walls.  The holes in the surface are because when this and other buildings were first built, marble was affixed to the surface.  The Rome LDS Temple is being built in the same manner.
 Arch of Constantine

Arch of Titus
The Forum (above and below)

 
Victor Emmanuel Monument
Trajan's Column with Basilica Ulpia in the background
 Trevi Fountain
Beautiful flowers
 Pantheon
 Piazza Navona - Fountain of Four Rivers
Castel Sant' Angelo - built originally by Emperor Hadrian as a mausoleum
 St. Peter's Basilica - largest church in the world
 Vatican Museum - I thought these guys look like the one in the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland that start singing!
Laoocoan, warned his fellow Trojans: "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts." But the gods wanted the Greeks to win, so they sent huge snakes to crush Laocoon and his two sons to death.
I told you I love ceilings!

 Huge marble bowl
 Mosaic floor
 Grounds outside the Vatican Museum with St. Peter's Basilica dome
 This is a painted ceiling, completely flat, but it looks like it is a bas relief
 Tapestry of Christ emerging from his tomb
 Huge hallway with painted ceiling

 View from top of St. Peter's Basilica
 Michelangelo's Pieta - something I've wanted to see since high school
 Pope John XXIII
 Vatican Swiss Guards - tour books say Michelangelo designed these uniforms, but an internet search yields information about them being designed in in 1914 by Commandant Jules Repond, who the Vatican’s website states was “exceptionally gifted with fine taste in colors and shapes.”  Whaaat?
Spanish Steps
My only disappointment in Rome?  You can't take pictures in the Sistine Chapel!

3 comments:

laura said...

Correction: you CAN take pictures in the Sistine Chapel if you are stealthy enough and do a quick shot of the ceiling with your camera concealed. Not that I would know anything about that.

Great pictures! How many times did you have gelato?

Morrie said...

Great photos. Did you take your interior pictures using just available light, or did you use some sort of flash? They came out very well.

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